Photographs by Shane Van Boxtel, Image Studios
Styling by Brianna Holubar
It was a pink chair that struck fear in the heart of Tina Sauerhammer, a woman who by all accounts shouldn’t be afraid of anything.
When you take a look at the shortlist of her accomplishments, you’ll understand why: The Green Bay prodigy graduated high school at age 14, college at 18, medical school at 22. In 2003, she became the first medical doctor to be crowned Miss Wisconsin and went on to place as second runner-up at Miss America. She served on the surgical team that performed the nation’s first full face transplant in 2011. She’s traveled the world performing reconstructive surgery on underserved populations. She launched and grew Wisconsin Institute of Plastic Surgery during a pandemic while raising three young children.
So you can see the irony of Sauerhammer being rattled by the upholstery her interior designer recommended for her practice’s waiting area. But it wasn’t just a chair to Sauerhammer — it meant revealing a piece of herself that, until starting her own practice in 2019, she felt the need to conceal in the male-dominated world of plastic surgery where less than a quarter of practicing surgeons are women.
“I loved the chair, but at first I was holding back a little; I was so nervous and reluctant to show this is who I am,” says Sauerhammer, a collector of Chanel and lover of all things hearts and Hello Kitty. “But that pink chair was kind of the first step in me really owning it. And now we have pink chairs everywhere.”
The chair was a gateway that led to more feminine touches and now, Sauerhammer’s new Appleton location has a cascade of pink flowers literally dripping from the ceiling. The lobby reading material consists of anthologies on fashion designers such as Dior, Prada and, of course, Chanel. Sauerhammer’s office chair? Pink.
What Sauerhammer feared would discredit her business has become her signature. In a field often defined by clinical sterility, her unapologetically feminine aesthetic has become a powerful differentiator.
“That flower wall, this femininity, that’s me. This is my business, and I need to own this,” she says. “Whether people like it or not, that’s what they’re getting when they come here. This is my vision of beauty. And it all started with this little pink chair.”
Seeing opportunity
It’s not just the practice’s decor that is feminine — today 16 employees make up Wisconsin Institute of Plastic Surgery, the only all-female private practice in the Fox Valley.
“I’ve learned that’s an asset,” Sauerhammer says of her all-female staff. “That’s something to be proud of, and patients come to us because of that.”
The practice provides cosmetic and reconstructive plastic surgery, as well as dermatology services including medical dermatology and aesthetic services. Sauerhammer has heard from patients seeking breast augmentations that surgeons will tell them how they should look rather than listening to what the patient wants out of the procedure.
“They’re being listened to for the first time, because a lot of times in the past they didn’t feel like that,” she says.
That patient-centered approach of listening rather than dictating has been core to Sauerhammer’s philosophy. Since age 2, Sauerhammer felt called to the medical field.
Initially she wanted to be a pediatrician. That dream evolved to becoming a pediatric general surgeon, but during her general surgery residency at the University of Wisconsin Hospital and Clinics, Sauerhammer completed a rotation in plastic surgery where she experienced her first cleft lip repair. Sauerhammer knew she had found her niche.
“I love working with my hands. It’s very technical, so the surgery aspect is still there, and you’re making a huge impact on these patients’ lives,” she says. “You are actually improving the quality of their lives, which is extremely rewarding.”
Sauerhammer went on to attend a plastic surgery fellowship at Lahey Clinic, where she trained at the Harvard hospitals. This led to a fellowship at Children’s National Medical Center in Washington D.C. She then served as the hospital’s co-director of burn service and clinical director of global health before returning to practice in a Northeast Wisconsin health system in 2014.
“If you would have told me then that I would start my own business, I would have told you you’re crazy,” Sauerhammer says. “I don’t know the first thing about starting a business, especially a medical practice with insurance and everything else. But that’s what entrepreneurs do — you see things that could be done better as opportunities to build something and provide better services.”
House of Sauerhammer
Sauerhammer couldn’t build the practice of her dreams working for a larger health system. But if she was going to start her own business, she knew she needed help.
“I always look to people,” Sauerhammer says. “There’s always smart people who can help navigate things.”
Her thoughts turned to Dan Dale, an eye plastic surgeon who had owned his practice in Appleton and Green Bay for nearly 20 years. He docked his boat at the same Door County marina as Sauerhammer’s in-laws, which is how the two crossed paths.
While Sauerhammer was looking for a path to entrepreneurship, Dale had been unsuccessfully trying to recruit someone to take over his practice. The timing seemed perfect, except for one problem.
“I initially tried to discourage her from joining me,” Dale says. “I had an eye plastics practice, and she’s a general plastics person.”
But Sauerhammer was persistent. As they talked more, Dale began to see a path forward. She could take over the business, Wisconsin Oculoplastics, and rebrand it for plastic surgery and dermatology. “As we talked more, I got convinced — actually this could work out,” Dale says.
Where others might have seen complications with this plan, the entrepreneur in Sauerhammer saw opportunity.
“I love puzzles,” says Sauerhammer, who joined Dale’s practice in 2019. “When I see a problem, I always need to figure out a way to solve it.”
The arrangement gave Sauerhammer an established practice to learn from, a mentor willing to teach her the business side and a runway to build something entirely her own. For three years, Dale taught her about managing people, handling finances and running the business operations — knowledge he’d accumulated through decades of experience, including as one of the principals who started BayCare Clinic.
“Tina is unique in that regard. She’s very determined, and she picked up on [the business side] quickly,” says Dale, who retired in 2022. “Of all the people I’ve met, there’s not many that really want to run their own practice, and she clearly did from the get-go.”
The data backs up Dale’s observations. Surgeon-ownership has declined from about 75% in the 1980s to a minority position of 44% in 2022, according to the American College of Surgeons. Between 2019 and 2024 — the exact years Sauerhammer was building her practice — more than 127,000 physicians left private practice for the stability of hospital or corporate employment.
Dale says private practice offers both challenges and rewards. In private practice, he appreciated the ability to establish meaningful relationships with patients and offer a continuity of care that is harder to achieve in corporate systems. Of course, that often meant working long hours on top of the business demands.
Despite the many rewards of private practice, its realities seem to be less enticing to a new generation of health care providers.
“But Tina doesn’t back down from challenges that other people might shrink from,” Dale says. “Her doctor-patient relationship is highly, highly important to her. She’s willing to be there, whatever hours it takes, to make it happen.”
Dreams realized
In addition to being the Fox Valley’s only double-board certified female plastic surgeon, Sauerhammer is a master in creating a vibe, which was an essential part of her new Appleton location complete with a surgery center.
Before now, Sauerhammer performed surgeries at local hospitals, which aren’t exactly known for their ambiance.
“It’s a buzzkill,” she says. “It ruins the vibe.
“My vision in having my own practice was having my own surgery center. I want patients to have that luxury experience from the time they step in the office for that consult to the surgery itself to after surgery.”
It also made financial sense due to the high cost of hospital facility fees.
“When you look at all the numbers, that was our biggest expense — paying the hospital fees to use the space and anesthesiologists,” Sauerhammer says. “Eventually my accountant, who originally thought I was crazy, said I think you need your own surgery center.”
In August 2024, construction started on the facility located off Ballard Road. The 8,700-square-foot building features a plastic surgery clinic in addition to a surgery center with an operating room and areas for pre-operative, post-operative and recovery uses.
The clinic opened in July and Sauerhammer anticipates she will be operating in the new surgery center — Wisconsin Institute of Ambulatory Surgery — by early next year.
Dale, who assisted in building two of BayCare Clinic’s Green Bay surgery centers, supported Sauerhammer’s vision.
“It’s the way things need to evolve, especially in the kind of practice she has,” he says. “It’s just a better experience for patients as well as the doctor. It’s a win-win.”
Creating access is another of Sauerhammer’s goals. In addition to her offices in Appleton and Green Bay, Sauerhammer and her team for the past two years have been providing services at the Door County Medical Sister Bay Clinic.
Sauerhammer rents space at the facility where her dermatologist physician assistant performs skin checks once or twice a month and Sauerhammer performs excisions monthly, sometimes up to a dozen procedures a day.
“It’s extremely busy there,” says Sauerhammer, whose Door County cosmetic practice is also growing. “There’s such a huge need. It’s continuously growing.”
‘Fiercely determined’
Sauerhammer’s work ethic was greatly influenced by her parents, who met in Korea while her father was serving in the Air Force. The couple returned to her father’s hometown of Green Bay, where he worked in a paper mill and her mother ran a sewing business.
Education was deeply valued in her family, says Sauerhammer, a first-generation college graduate. In third grade, Sauerhammer tested into seventh. By 14, she had completed all of her high school curriculum.
Moving straight to college was the natural choice for Sauerhammer, but it required an open-minded university partner willing to take on the nontraditional student.
“I would not be where I am today without UWGB taking a chance on me when I was 14 years old,” she says.
When she graduated from UW-Green Bay with highest honors and a double major in human biology and human development at age 18, Sauerhammer was the university’s youngest-ever graduate.
Chancellor Michael Alexander says Sauerhammer is a “poster child” for the university’s mission of making education accessible to everyone.
“Over half of our students are first-generation in college. These are really brilliant, hardworking people who just need an opportunity. And when they get that opportunity, they do amazing things,” he says. “Tina’s a prime example of that.”
Today Sauerhammer serves on the UW-Green Bay Council of Trustees and has for the past 10 years, including three years as chair.
Alexander says UW-Green Bay has grown 28% in the last five years and is the UW System’s fastest growing university. He says the university’s growth has been impacted by its access mission for first-generation college students — an initiative to which Sauerhammer has contributed.
“She was chair of the Council of Trustees as we came through COVID and as we really started to implement our new access mission,” he says. “It was really helpful to have someone with her background to think about how we move the university forward in a really complex time.”
Alexander has watched Sauerhammer navigate her roles as council chair, surgeon and entrepreneur with the same relentless drive.
“She’s fiercely determined. She loves to help people,” he says. “She’s someone who doesn’t just dream, but acts.”
But what stands out most, he says, is watching Sauerhammer refuse to compromise who she is.
“She’s an incredibly authentic person. She’s just totally true to who she is,” Alexander says, “and that’s really amazing to watch.”
