Dr. Ai-Xuan Holterman is the founder and president of IPSAC Global — a pediatric surgeon, a researcher, and a professor emerita.

Born in Vietnam, Dr. Holterman left at 17 amid the war. She built a career in the United States & Canada — becoming a board-certified pediatric surgeon, NIH-funded researcher, and Professor of Surgery at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Through it all, she kept asking: how do I give back? She founded IPSAC Global to answer that question.

A surgeon-scientist with research interests in pediatric liver disease, she has published widely and is a member of the American Surgical Association, the American Pediatric Surgical Association, and the Society of University Surgeons.

Now retired from academic surgery, she devotes her time fully to IPSAC's mission — leading surgical exchange trips to Vietnam, overseeing the PASS course across six countries, and sponsoring a clinical trial for biliary atresia in Vietnam and Pakistan.