Alumni Profile: Kim Olthoff '82

“I work with liver regeneration, so renewal is what I do. It’s also what I believe.” — Kim Olthoff, M.D.

When Kim Olthoff was a small child learning to stitch, she had no idea that she was already training to be a surgeon. A few years later, avidly dissecting frogs in science class, she may not have paused to look extra carefully at the liver.

Even as a pre-med student at Calvin College, where she studied the mysteries of molecular biology along with the mysteries of God’s presence, she didn’t realize that one day she would work quite literally in renewal.

But Kim’s deft hands and fascination with biology – combined later with technical expertise, coolness under pressure, and a deep commitment to renewing people’s lives – led her naturally to the demanding work she does today as a leading liver-transplant surgeon and a researcher in liver regeneration.

Her Calvin education gave Kim a scientist’s reverence for the miraculous. “Whether I’m in surgery or in the lab studying liver grafts, I sense God at work. My Calvin professors taught me all the scientific explanations, but they also helped me see the wonder.”

That wonder, a key ingredient in Calvin’s highly regarded science programs, stays with Kim. “If you split a liver into two pieces, you can give the large piece to an adult and the small piece to a child – and incredibly, both pieces can regenerate themselves. They continue to live. What could be more renewing than that?”

In a tightly scheduled work week, Kim divides her time between hospital, clinic, and lab; surgeries, conferences, and organ procurements. Even at home – in her other roles as wife and mother – she stays ready to change gears on short notice. “I can never predict exactly what I’ll be doing on any day or evening,” she says. “Donors come when they come, and you have to act immediately.”

Widely recognized in her field – and even featured on Lifetime Television’s reality program Women Docs – Kim describes her surgical skill as “a gift from God”: “I don’t consciously pray during the operation, but I always know that God is there. At that point, my hands are doing the praying.”

In liver transplantation, Kim says, “We’re renewing the functions of people who are very sick, but we’re also continuing the lives of those who died and donated their organs. I see God’s hands in every surgery I do. And every time, it’s a miracle.”

An expert surgeon, an active scientist, and a caring doctor who can pray with her patients, Kim Olthoff helps keep God’s work of renewal in motion. Asked how she spends her extremely rare free time, she replies, not surprisingly, “I garden.”

Related Links

  . A Spark article describes Olthoff's work as a liver transplant surgeon.

  . Alumni profiles: A journalist, an attorney, a public safety director, and other alumni describe their works of renewal.