BRAIN SURGEON’S STORY HAS HEART

Dr. Juan Alzate’s drive to succeed in the field of neurology.

Juan Alzate was 19 and attending medical school in his native Colombia when he discovered the cure-all for his boredom one Friday night: head to the hospital.

“I didn’t have much money, and I had no social life,” recalls a smiling Alzate, now Dr. Juan Alzate, a board-certified neurosurgeon with Advocate Medical Group. “High school graduates in Colombia, unlike those in the United States, don’t spend four years at a college before going to a graduate school. While in medical school at a young age, I wanted to observe and help out in any way possible at the hospital.”

Alzate read “larger than life” pediatric neurosurgeon Dr. Fred Epstein’s book, Gifts of Time (1993), in Colombia and was mesmerized in no time. The book details Epstein’s pioneering work in developing treatment techniques for brain and nervous system disorders.

“I chose neurology because it’s complicated,” says Alzate, who arrived in the United States from Buga, Colombia in 2000 and, one year later, earned a fellowship before the start of his training at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York.

He’s had a career-long interest in minimally invasive spine surgery and complex and minimally invasive endoscopic cranial-base surgery. A research stint in Washington, D.C., preceded his move to NYC.

One day, figuring he had nothing to lose, he chose to cold-email (cold-call’s delicate cousin) the warm Epstein—“one of my heroes in medicine”—and then hope for the opportunity to conduct research with him and work with him in the operating room.

Hope turned into a meeting with Epstein. An interview followed. So did a fellowship.

“What a wonderful man, what a wonderful doctor,” says Alzate of Epstein.

Alzate married Robyn Tavel, a Canadian and serial philanthropist, in 2003 and welcomed their first child, Zoey (now 17). The couple’s second child is Lexi, 15.

For years Alzate worked at the American Center for Spine & Neurosurgery. The center joined Advocate Health Care in late March. Alzate now splits his time between Advocate Condell Medical Center in Libertyville and Advocate Good Shepherd Hospital in Barrington.

“Advocate Health is a great health system,” he says, adding it’s the largest health system in Illinois and the fourth largest in the U.S. “I care about what we’re doing and what we’re able to provide in Lake County. We do a large number of complex surgeries at Condell, which has the only Level 1 trauma center in the area.”

“Everybody has the need in themselves to help others,” Alzate says.