Qaali Hussein, MD
Double board-certified trauma and acute care surgeon, mother of six, and founder of Defiance Academy. She speaks on why women leave medicine, the hidden curriculum, and what it actually takes to keep them.
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Dr. Qaali Hussein is a double board-certified trauma and acute care surgeon, mother of six, and founder of Defiance Academy. She teaches women in medicine how the system actually works so they can advance without burnout. She hosts The Defiant Career podcast. Her book, DEFIANCE, comes out in January 2027.
Dr. Qaali Hussein is a double board-certified trauma and acute care surgeon who still practices in the trauma bay. She had all six of her children during a surgical residency that had never graduated a mother. In her first year as an attending, she nearly left medicine.
Instead, she built a strategy. She's the founder of Defiance Academy, where she teaches The Defiant Career Strategy™ to women in medicine who are the only one, or one of few, in the room. She hosts The Defiant Career podcast, has appeared in more than 100 media features and podcasts, including STAT News, and has delivered an invited lecture at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. Her book, DEFIANCE: How to Build a Career Without Compromise, comes out in January 2027.
Dr. Qaali Hussein is a double board-certified trauma and acute care surgeon, a mother of six, and the founder of Defiance Academy. She trained at Baylor College of Medicine and had all six of her children during a surgical residency that had never graduated a mother.
Her first year as an attending nearly ended her career. She was written up almost every week for six months, and nurses were going around her to other physicians to get her orders changed. HR didn't fix it. Neither did DEI. So she learned how the system actually worked and built a strategy to move through it.
That strategy became The Defiant Career Strategy™, the three-step framework she now teaches through Defiance Academy: understand the system you're actually navigating, learn to read the hidden curriculum, and stop coping and start strategizing. Her work centers on a problem the data keeps confirming. Forty percent of women physicians either go part-time or leave medicine just six years after completing residency.
Dr. Hussein still practices trauma surgery. She hosts The Defiant Career podcast, has appeared in more than 100 media features and podcasts, including STAT News, and has delivered an invited lecture at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. She's represented by three national speaker bureaus. Her book, DEFIANCE: How to Build a Career Without Compromise, comes out in January 2027. She lives in Phoenix, Arizona.
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Our next speaker is a trauma surgeon who still takes call. Dr. Qaali Hussein is double board-certified in trauma and surgical critical care, and she had all six of her children during a surgical residency that had never graduated a mother. In her first year as an attending, she almost walked away from medicine. Instead, she figured out how the system really works and built a strategy for women who are the only one, or one of few, in the room. She's the founder of Defiance Academy, the host of The Defiant Career podcast, and the author of the upcoming book DEFIANCE. Please welcome Dr. Qaali Hussein.
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What she speaks on.
Each talk can run as a keynote, grand rounds, or a hands-on workshop, and is tailored to the audience.
Why Women Leave Medicine, and What Actually Keeps Them
For hospital leadership, department chairs, retention and wellness committees
Forty percent of women physicians either go part-time or leave medicine six years after residency. This talk explains why wellness programs don't retain women, and what changes when institutions treat losing women physicians as a structural problem instead of a resilience problem.
Leadership in High-Stakes Situations
For hospital leadership, surgical and clinical teams, patient safety and quality committees
In the trauma bay, a team member who's afraid to speak up is a patient safety risk. This talk covers how conflict, communication between team members, and hierarchy shape what gets said when the stakes are highest, and what leaders can do so people raise concerns before harm happens.
From Self-Care to System Change
For women physicians, wellness leaders, women in medicine groups, women's leadership conferences
Self-care and resilience training help people get through a shift. They don't change the conditions that wear people down. This talk shows how to move from individual coping to system change, using The Defiant Career Strategy™: understand the system you're actually navigating, learn to read the hidden curriculum, and stop coping and start strategizing.
Handling Workplace Conflict While Protecting Your Career
For physicians, residents, and professional women in high-stakes fields
What to do when a working relationship breaks down: how to document what's happening, how to choose which issues to raise, and how to protect your professional record along the way.
How she can show up.
- Keynotes
- Grand rounds
- Workshops
- Panels and moderated conversations
- Podcast and media interviews
- In person or virtual
Press and lectures.
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