Our Leaders

John K. Petty, M.D. is a Professor of Surgery and Pediatrics at Wake Forest University School of Medicine in Winston-Salem, NC. He grew up Portland, Oregon and left to attend college at Duke University. He proceeded to the University of North Carolina School of Medicine, where he completed an additional year of scholarship in medical ethics, graduating with highest honors. He returned to Portland to enter a residency in general surgery at Oregon Health and Science University. During that time, he conducted a year of research in tumor immunology. He then moved to Denver, Colorado for his fellowship in pediatric surgery at The Children’s Hospital Denver. He came to Brenner Children’s Hospital following fellowship in 2005 to join the Section of Pediatric Surgery. He helped start the first Level 1 Pediatric Trauma Center in the state of North Carolina. He served as the pediatric trauma medical director until early 2024. He has held leadership positions in the Pediatric Trauma Society, the Eastern Association for the Surgery of Trauma, and the American Pediatric Surgical Association. He has served as chair of the committee on trauma for the American Pediatric Surgical Association and as a member of the executive board of the Pediatric Trauma Society. He is a member of the ACS Committee on Trauma. He has numerous publications and presentations in pediatric trauma, with a special interest in venous thromboembolism prophylaxis. He currently serves as the director of the Childress Institute for Pediatric Trauma (CIPT). The mission of this research center is to discover and share the best ways to prevent and treat severe injuries in children. He is excited to lead CIPT to accelerate pediatric trauma multicenter research and to enhance the discovery of novel pediatric trauma solutions. He has also served in international medical missions in Haiti, Ecuador, Bolivia, the Dominican Republic, and Mongolia. He serves as the project director for the Mongolia project of Medical Education International. As project director, he recruits and leads teams to collaborate with the Mongolia National University of Medical Sciences to advance medical education there. At Brenner Children’s Hospital, he practices the full spectrum of pediatric surgery alongside five fantastic partners. Although he does not have the same energy on call that he once did, he finds great joy in being a pediatric surgeon. His practice of pediatric surgery is animated by the love of his children and the patience of his wife.