Dr. Heniford grew up in rural South Carolina and completed his undergraduate degree and played football at Clemson University. After attending the Medical University of South Carolina, he completed his surgical residency and research fellowship at the University of Louisville and a fellowship at the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio. He has been on the faculty of the Cleveland Clinic and, subsequently, the Carolinas Medical Center in Charlotte, N.C., where he serves as a Professor and Chief of Gastrointestinal and Minimally Invasive Surgery and the Director of the Carolinas Hernia Center. Dr. Heniford has authored 500 publications and book chapters and edited three books. He and his research fellows have won more than 65 prominent surgical and research awards, including multiple research project of the year awards from SAGES, the American College of Surgeons, American and European Hernia Societies, the Association for Academic Surgery, among others. He has developed successful surgical apps that have been downloaded in more than 135 countries world-wide and has multiple international patents. Google Scholar reports that Dr. Heniford’s peer-reviewed papers have been cited 29,000 times by other peer-reviewed manuscripts and has an H-index of 89 (average citations for each paper published). Dr. Heniford was the 2014 recipient of the MedStar Georgetown University Lifetime Achievement Award, the American Hernia Society Nyhus-Wantz Career Achievement Award, and named Medical Innovator of the Year by the Business Journal. He has honorary memberships in multiple international organizations, including Europe, Asia and South America. Dr. Heniford is a past-President of the Americas Hernia Society. Six of Dr. Heniford’s trainees have become President of the Americas Hernia Society, and an additional fellow will become President of the AHS in 2 years. Lastly, Dr. Heniford is the founder and President of a 501c3 charity, Barrel Aged Charities (BarrelAgedCharities.org), that supports prostate cancer detection, research and health equity.