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September 2, 2025

Looking outside your network to find an expert for a speaking opportunity? The AAN’s Women Speakers Directory is newly updated and features more than 500 women neurologists, APPs, and researchers.

“A lot of people are doing amazing work all over the place, but when it comes to being put forth for talks—at the national or international level at major meetings, or even locally at an institutions’ grand rounds—it’s often about who knows who,” said Sara Schaefer, MD, MHS, FAAN, whose spot on the directory led to a speaking engagement and even a nomination for the AAN’s Advancing Women in Academics Subcommittee. “Then people who are more junior or flying a bit more under the radar, but who are doing amazing things or are really amazing speakers, may not have their names put in the ring.”

The Women Speakers Directory seeks to combat this issue, while also addressing the inequities women academics face in being invited to speak at national and international conferences. The speakers are listed along with their institutions, email addresses, and areas of expertise. For many, you can even see draft titles or follow links to past talks. The listed speakers are open to being contacted by institutions or conference planners for speaking opportunities, and the directory is open for all AAN members to browse.

The directory was first launched in 2024, and numerous conference planners have used it to find leads for speaking opportunities. One example is Casey S. Albin, MD, one of the AAN Conferences Subcommittee members tasked with finding Neurology Update curriculum speakers for the annual AAN Fall Conference. 

“There are established favorites who are just fantastic educators and help bring people to the conference,” Albin said. “We certainly want to highlight those people, but we’ve also been really interested in bringing fresh faces—people who are growing in their careers and in the AAN, who have a lot of knowledge to showcase.”

Albin and her co-director, Vijay K. Ramanan, MD, PhD, find more than a dozen speakers each year for the Neurology Update curriculum. Recently, a few of those speakers have been found via the Women Speakers Directory. She said they’ve turned to the directory when looking for someone to give a talk on a specific topic—someone who may not have spoken at an AAN conference before, but who has demonstrated interest in speaking on the topic. They then do some vetting by reviewing the candidate’s relevant publications and speaking samples.

“Resources like this go a long way towards the AAN’s goal of creating a diverse neurology workforce,” Albin said. “It can help level the playing field for people who may not already know the people making speaker selections.”

Schaefer agrees: “It allows people’s work to be out there and to be seen in these brainstorming sessions, when otherwise their name would not be coming to the table.”

Explore the Women Speakers Directory and other resources for women in academic neurology.