As a child growing up on her grandparents’ farm in Athens, Alabama, Andrea Willis took an early interest in medicine when she heard the calls of a mother cat struggling to birth a kitten in a little shed behind the house.
Willis remembers at age 7 getting a pair of scissors and dishwashing gloves to help deliver the kitten, although all that was ultimately needed was some massaging of the cat’s belly. The kitten, named Fluffy, became her grandfather’s pride and joy and spurred Willis to become the first in her family to earn a college degree and ultimately to become a physician and now senior medical director for BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee.
“I knew from those moments in the shed I was going to be a doctor,” Willis recalls. “I never turned back.”
Willis says she acquired a strong work ethic working on her grandfather’s pig farm as a child and developed her compassion for others through her Christian faith. “I’ve always felt we were put on the earth to help others,” she says.
Dr. Willis was trained to become a pediatrician as Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., where she practiced pediatrics, and later earned her master’s degree in public health at John Hopkins to pursue her career in public health.