Dr. Joyce C. Lashof attended the Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania. Then, in 1953, she completed her medical residency at Montefiore Hospital in New York. Lashof then joined the University of Chicago as a physician at Student Health Services before becoming an assistant professor in the Department of Medicine. Her life was not without hardships being a woman in a male-dominated field. She faced discrimination when the chairman of the department refused to grant her tenure under the accusation that she’d use it to leave her post if her husband changed jobs. Although this was a hiccup in her medical career, it led to meeting her mentor and long-term collaborator Dr. Mark Lepper.