Meet Dr. James Elsey, Our Treasurer

For more than thirty years, Dr. James Elsey practiced medicine in the Atlanta area. For much of that same stretch he was also a reserve officer in a US Army MASH unit. Today he is the Treasurer of Friends of Fisher House Charleston, and that combination is not a coincidence.

His clinical specialty is vascular surgery, work that leaves no room for approximation. He recently served on the Board of Directors of the American College of Surgeons, and he currently sits on the College’s Health and Policy Advocacy Organization, bringing decades of bedside experience into the rooms where healthcare policy actually gets written.

Outside the operating room, he has a long record of civic work in child abuse prevention. One honor he still talks about came in 1996, when he was chosen to run a leg of the Torch ahead of the Olympic Games in Atlanta.

Dr. Elsey moved to the Charleston area not long ago and went looking for a way to serve. As Treasurer he watches every dollar that comes through the organization, and every one of those dollars ends up in the same place: the house on Wentworth Street, kept ready for veteran families whose loved ones are receiving care at the Ralph H. Johnson VA Medical Center. A surgeon’s precision turns out to be a good fit for a nonprofit’s books.

You can read his full biography on his leadership page, along with the rest of the board that steers this organization.