Ala Stanford is a board-certified pediatric and adult general surgeon and the first African American woman pediatric surgeon trained entirely in the United States. In April 2020 she founded the Black Doctors COVID-19 Consortium, which mobilized more than 200 health professionals to deliver COVID-19 testing and vaccination in Philadelphia's Black neighborhoods. She later opened the Dr. Ala Stanford Center for Health Equity in North Philadelphia. She served as U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Region 3 Regional Director from 2022 until May 2023, and in 2024 joined the University of Pennsylvania as a professor of practice in biology and director of community outreach for the Penn Institute for RNA Innovation.