Jul 3, 2025

Meet the Class of 2025 Valedictorian, Dr. Kennedy Hao

Student Stories
Dr. Kennedy Hao

Congratulations to Dr. Kennedy Hao, who has been named valedictorian of the Anesthesia Class of 2025 and awarded the Thomas Donald Hammell Memorial Award. As she prepares for her next chapter, Kennedy took the time to speak with us about her residency journey, share advice for incoming trainees, and reflect on what’s ahead.

How did it feel to be recognized by your peers as valedictorian?

It’s an absolute honour to have received this award, especially from such a great cohort of residents. I’ve had the opportunity to share the last five years of my life with the graduating class and have the pleasure of calling them good friends. I’ve learned important lessons from each and every one. I’m proud to help celebrate our achievements as our cohort joins the world as staff anesthesiologists.

What inspired you to pursue a career in anesthesia?

To be honest, I was very lucky. I had many anesthesia mentors early in my medical training who took me under their wings and showed me what their life and career looked like. I was really torn between OBGYN and anesthesia in my last year of medical school and my OBGYN mentor (who was married to an anesthesiologist) told me to pick anesthesia. I did, and here we are!

What role has this faculty or your peers played in supporting you throughout your residency?

We face a lot of different struggles in residency. I was incredibly fortunate to find a group of mentors and peers who could buckle down together when the going got tough. Even though we work in a team environment on a daily basis, anesthesia can be an isolating specialty. We take accountability for our patients and when complications arise, many of us take it to heart. In those times, having a strong community of peers for support and staff that you can trust for guidance has been crucial.

What’s next for you? And what do you hope to bring from your residency into your next chapter?

I’m excited to start as a regional fellow at Toronto Western Hospital. This will be another big transition but I’m looking forward to diving into a subspeciality that I believe holds a lot of promise for patient care. I’m also incredibly excited to interact with the next generation of residents (from the other side!).

Moving into this next chapter, I hope not to forget my own experiences from residency. As we progress through each year visiting site after site, we face different challenges. I hope to be able to share some stories and help mentor learners along the way.

What message or advice could you share with the incoming cohort?

Residency had many highs and lows. I know that personally, there were many difficult periods where I was close to giving up. Challenging rotations, the depths of exam preparation, decisions about what a future in anesthesia would look like - these were times when I really leaned on mentors and peers to keep me moving forward.

I remember early on, one staff had told me that there are “some early bloomers and late bloomers, but eventually you will get there”. I think of that often, and I would categorize myself as a late bloomer. For the incoming cohort, I think it’s important to understand that everyone’s journeys look different. You have to believe in the process and the residency training, and that if you put in the effort and time, eventually it will all come together. During the training, it felt like we lived at the hospitals day and night. Now that it’s finished, I feel like it all went by too quickly.