Odette Harris has made history by becoming America’s first Black woman professor of neurosurgery, The Stanford Daily reports.

Harris who obtained M.D. status in 1996, specializes in traumatic brain injury, has served as the director of brain injury in Standford University’s department of neurosurgery, as well as the department’s associate chief of staff of polytrauma and rehabilitation at the Palo Alto Veterans Administration Health Care System since 2009.

Harris is also a faculty research fellow at the Clayman Institute. She attributes her passion for the physical sciences and chemistry to studying then at an all-girls high school.

“All those cliches about girl schools and empowering girls and women, I think they’re true,” Harris said in an interview with Stanford Medicine.