From Small-School Roots to National Leadership: Meet Dr. Todd Alamin `86

When Dr. Todd Alamin `86 walks into an operating room at Stanford Medicine, he brings with him not only decades of surgical expertise but also the curiosity, creativity, and intellectual fearlessness he first nurtured at Cincinnati Country Day School. Today, he is recognized as one of the nation’s leading spine surgeons, a physician whose insights are sought by national news outlets and whose innovations in medical device development may soon transform the future of spinal care. Yet when he reflects on the path that led him here, he traces it back to a small, tight-knit community – one where it was “cool to be intellectual and curious.”

Todd, who was named one of America’s best spine surgeons by Newsweek in 2024, describes his Country Day years as a rare blend of strong academics and joyful independence. “My group of friends was phenomenal. We got in trouble together, had a great time together; it was a great crew.” They wrote eccentric, free-form articles for The Scroll, bonded over soccer (including seasons when he played alongside both of his brothers), and immersed themselves in the stories and passions of their teachers.

Those teachers, he says, were formative. There was Mr. Christopher Cerf who reported that he once lived on a commune and captivated students with unforgettable stories; Mr. Robert Plummer, the brilliant and unabashedly quirky math teacher; Mrs. Wynne Curry, the French teacher who was “was just like an incredible older sister”; and an art teacher whose bear painting was memorable enough to become legendary. “We even listened to the Grateful Dead with him and jumped the fence at a concert back in 1984,” Todd laughs.

What CCDS offered, he explains, was the confidence to explore – to try, fail, think critically, and write deeply. “The writing we learned at Country Day was a really important skill set. Our teachers had the time and space to push us.” And being in a “small pond” allowed him to take intellectual risks that later helped him thrive in elite academic settings.

Rather than moving directly into medical school after graduating from Stanford University, Todd took a gap year that became a pivotal chapter in his development. Fluent in French, he bartended in France, worked at a ski resort in Steamboat Springs, Colorado, and traveled across Asia before earning his medical degree at Yale. He believes those experiences broadened his worldview and strengthened his ability to connect with people from all walks of life – a quality he considers central to his leadership and patient care today. “Being an approachable person matters. Those random experiences gave me a big set of references and stories to connect with patients.”

Now more than 20 years into practice, Todd operates three days a week, performing exclusively spine surgeries. “My favorite is surgery is anterior cervical [otherwise known as neck surgery] because it involves elegant dissections, which I enjoy, and patients generally do really well.”

He is fueled by both the technical challenge and the opportunity to improve lives through precision and compassion. “If you try to take care of people as you’d want your own family members cared for, it changes everything. We all use our life experiences to relate to patients. In the end that relationship of trust is incredibly important, and sharing analogous experiences to patients helps to engender that trust and allows the patient to feel that they are trusting someone who is a real person to take care of them.”

He is also deeply invested in advancing the field. For years, he has worked to address shortcomings in existing surgical approaches, developing new technologies designed to improve outcomes and reduce complications. One device he has been refining in the field of spinal surgery is nearing approval in the United States. “It works better than what we have currently,” he says, and his excitement is unmistakable.

Outside the operating room, Todd likes to surf and plays soccer in a Sunday league to blow off steam. He and his wife, who is also a physician, are recent empty nesters after nearly three decades of raising their four children. Their oldest lives in Cambridge; their second is in medical school; and the younger two are pursuing undergraduate degrees.

Looking back, he believes Country Day helped set the foundation not just for academic success, but for resilience, flexibility, and the long arc of professional growth. “Being creative and embracing open-mindedness is incredibly helpful. But what students don’t always realize is that everything takes a large amount of work – way longer than you think it will. Overnight success is like hitting the lottery. Real success takes long, hard work over a long time. It’s about dedication, resilience, and creativity.”