Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist CEO to retire at end of 2025

Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist CEO Dr. Julie Freischlag will step down at the end of the year. 

Freischlag says when she became a vascular surgeon only five other women were board certified to do so. She soon found that she enjoyed organizing operations and putting teams together as much as she liked surgery.

That led to a career combining both medicine and executive leadership that brought her to Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist in 2017.

She says when she turned 70, she realized it was time to step back.

“I started being a surgeon at age 32. I think it’s time to go into some retirement-type activities, not be quite as busy as I could," she says. "And plus, I could do it on my own terms, right? It’s time for me to step down and let others do it.”

Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist has grown considerably during her time, with a new critical care tower and additions of medical centers in High Point and Wilkes County. 

And with a new birth center, the hospital went from delivering only a few babies a year to more than 3,200, Freischlag says.

In the coming months, Freischlag will transition her academic duties to Dr. Ebony Boulware, Dean of Wake Forest University School of Medicine. Dr. David Zaas, President of Wake Forest Baptist, will take over her clinical operational duties.