Supporting graduate medical education is a family tradition for A. Michael Everest, head of Residents Medical Group and chair of the Edwin Everest Foundation.

“The foundation is named after my father,” Everest explained. “He was a big believer in medical education and in empowering international medical graduates. In fact, how that support would continue was one of the last conversations we had before he passed away.”

Everest’s father, who passed away in October 2008, was a lifelong advocate for the power of education as a tool to help future generations become innovators and leaders. As a doctor, he believed passionately that graduate medical education should be at the forefront of the country’s focus.

“Graduate medical education deals with both physical and mental health, so strides made there through research and training can be an immeasurable help to society as a whole,” Everest said. “His goal was to touch peoples lives.”

Everest is continuing in his father’s footsteps with a recent gift of $1 million to establish the Edwin Everest Foundation Fund at the Keck School of Medicine of USC. The fund supports medical research for volunteer postdoctoral trainees in the Department of Medicine. The gift will help train and support new international medical graduates entering research and diagnostic careers.

“I believe doctors of the future will need a mix of academic and clinical skills, and those who diagnose disease will be on the forefront of medicine,” Everest said. “We want to help them while they’re young because that’s where paradigm changes in the way we treat disease will begin.”

The Everest Foundation is a Los Angeles-based nonprofit charity organization dedicated to the advancement of graduate medical education. It works exclusively with medical universities, residency programs, and other research programs and foundations.

“We are committed to help provide outstanding research experiences for the doctors supported by the foundation under this unique program, which benefits not only the trainees, but also the USC faculty with whom they work,” said Edward Crandall, holder of the Kenneth T. Norris Jr. Chair in Medicine, Hastings Professor of Medicine and chair of the Department of Medicine.

Everest himself is passionate when it comes to helping students at USC.

“I was first introduced to USC through the work of Dr. Uttam Sinha [associate professor of otolaryngology and residency program director, Department of Otolaryngology at the Keck School] — I was drawn to his passion and dedication to medicine,” he recalled. “I supported a PhD student in his laboratory. Seeing the amazing work she produced led to my special relationship with USC.”

It also led to Everest’s recent support of the Department of Medicine.

“We have a responsibility to fuel the fire that supports thousands of research projects,” Everest continued. “The 14th Dalai Lama said that we’re on this earth for around 90 years and that material things will come and go, but the one thing that will remain is when you’ve touched another’s life. The success of these new doctors benefits humanity as a whole — and it’s through supporting them that we can change the world.”

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