• Professor of Pediatrics, University of Virginia

Ann Kellams, MD, is board-certified in both pediatrics and breastfeeding and lactation medicine, is an international board-certified lactation consultant, and a professor in the Department of Pediatrics. She has been practicing general pediatrics since 1998 and joined the faculty at UVA in 2006.

With her patients, Dr. Kellams tries to meet families where they are and help them reach their goals by providing experience and expertise. She feels especially privileged when new parents allow her to be a part of their journey.“Parenting is hard, and humbling, and also wonderful, and we are glad to support them in any way we can,” she adds.

From an early age, Dr. Kellams knew she wanted to be a pediatrician, and never swayed from that goal. She went directly through her education and training. Born in Texas, she spent some of her early years in Northern California while her father completed his PhD at Stanford. But most of her childhood was spent in Houston, with her mother and maternal grandparents. In high school, she helped lead a national championship winning dance team as a Captain.

Dr. Kellams attended the University of Texas at Austin for her undergraduate and graduated summa cum laude as a Dean's Honored Graduate. She then went on to medical school at the University of California, San Francisco. There, she met her husband, a family medicine doctor. They couples-matched for residency at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

For 9 years, Dr. Kellams worked in pediatric private practice in the Shenandoah valley, providing the full spectrum of care rounding on newborns and pediatric patients in the hospital as well as in a busy, pediatric clinic. In 2004, she began teaching a course called The Healer's Art for medical students at UVA. This course, which she helped develop as a medical student, is about finding meaning and humanism in medicine and is now taught at half of the medical schools in the US.

In 2006, Dr. Kellams joined the UVA Department of Pediatrics faculty and became the Medical Director of the Newborn service on the maternity unit. She became an internationally board-certified lactation consultant in 2007, and in 2011 became the founder and director of UVA's Breastfeeding and Lactation Medicine program, a program which has grown ever since. In 2018, Dr. Kellams became the Vice Chair for Clinical Affairs for UVA's Department of Pediatrics. In 2022, she was inducted into the American Pediatric Society, and in 2023 she was in the first class of physicians to become certified by the North American Board of Breastfeeding and Lactation Medicine.

In her free time, Kellams loves to cook, wine-taste, watch movies, paint, and spend quality time with family and friends.

• –present Professor of Pediatrics, University of Virginia

American Pediatric Society Inductee, 2023; Leonard Tow Humanism in Medicine award, University of Virginia, 2023; University of Virginia Dean's Excellence in Faculty Research Award for Team Science, 2022; Featured on Noah Sheinbaum's Inspired Service Podcast, Episode 16, 2020

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