10,000 Babies and Counting: Shirley Wilkerson, M.D., Ph.D., Creates the Dr. Shirley A. Wilkerson Endowed Scholarship Fund Through Outright Gift and Bequest Commitment

Shirley Wilkerson, M.D., Ph.D.

By Emma Lang

After a life spent caring for the tiniest and most vulnerable patients—premature infants and newborns with complex medical needs—Shirley Wilkerson, M.D., Ph.D., is ensuring their care extends far beyond her lifetime.

Through a combination of an outright gift and a bequest in her will, Wilkerson has established the Dr. Shirley A. Wilkerson Endowed Scholarship Fund at the UAB Heersink School of Medicine. Endowed scholarships provide a stable and lasting source of support, easing the financial burden for generations of students.

Wilkerson’s goal with this transformative gift is to help medical students pursue their dream of working with children. And thanks to her recent blended gift to the university, Wilkerson is already supporting a student who volunteers with kids, with the hopes of building a career to serve them.

“I want to know that the money that I’m leaving, that the gift that I’m giving, will continue long beyond my life and will represent what I achieved during my lifetime,” she said.

Wilkerson pursued a doctorate in medical genetics at UAB in order to study under the late Sarah Crews Finley, M.D., a renowned pioneer in genetic research. Her interest in infant health was first sparked during her graduate studies, where she focused on genetics and birth defects.

Dr. Wilkerson with one of her patients

“Seeing Dr. Sarah Finley and her role in the lab and in the hospital was something that shaped my entire career,” Wilkerson said. The experience with Dr. Finley led her to apply to the UAB Heersink School of Medicine. She went on to complete her residency at the University of Louisville and spent much of her career at the University of Louisville hospital mentoring young doctors—just as Finley had influenced her.

Through her career, she served more families than she can remember: five sets of quadruplets, babies who stayed in the NICU for months, and many babies who, because of her intentional care, have gone on to have babies of their own.

“I took care of 10,000 babies, at least,” Wilkerson said. And through her gift to the UAB Heersink School of Medicine, she’ll ensure the care of countless more.

Wilkerson’s combination gift maximized her philanthropic goals. By endowing a scholarship now and enhancing it with a planned gift from her estate, she can guarantee the impact of her gifts during her lifetime and rest assured her wishes will be carried out in the future.

Bequests and beneficiary designations are flexible, deferred forms of giving through a donor’s estate that allow future support without parting with needed assets today.

Dr. Shirley A. Wilkerson Endowed Scholarship Fund recipient Lupita Contreras, a third-year medical student at UAB

The Dr. Shirley A. Wilkerson Endowed Scholarship Fund is already fulfilling her vision. The scholarship has been awarded to a third-year medical student, Lupita Contreras, who grew up in Birmingham but spent five formative years in Guadalajara, Mexico, while her mom cared for her grandfather through his battle with cancer.

“That was when I first felt called to medicine,” Contreras said. “I saw how love, knowledge, and advocacy could come together in powerful ways.”

One moment that especially stayed with her was volunteering with Operation Smile in Mexico.

“I was dressed as a superhero, greeting young patients awaiting cleft lip surgeries,” she recalled. “Many were scared, sitting in a sweltering hallway in hospital gowns. I remember looking into their eyes and thinking, ‘I don’t just want to make them smile today—I want to spend my life helping them heal.’ ”

That experience, combined with Wilkerson’s gift, transformed Contreras’s childhood dream into a mission to care for Spanish-speaking communities, where culturally responsive care can make all the difference. Her long-term goal is to incorporate animal-assisted therapy into clinical practice, using it as a tool to strengthen the doctor-patient connection and comfort children facing medical challenges. She’s currently training her golden retriever, Luna, to be a therapy dog.

“Education forms the foundation for what we’re able to achieve in life,” Wilkerson said, “and I hope this gift enables her to be able to fulfill her dreams.”

Like Wilkerson, you can support medical students with scholarships today and multiply that impact for future generations through planned giving. For information about establishing an endowed scholarship or learning about your planned giving options, contact Erica Hollins at (205) 996-6839 or UAB’s Office of Planned Giving at (205) 996-7533 or plannedgiving@uab.edu.