Kelly A. Bownes is the President, CEO and founder of MedPlan Recruiting, Inc., a physician recruiting and medical staff planning firm located in Birmingham Alabama. Bownes works as a national recruiter and consultant assisting healthcare systems with recruiting efforts for practice positions and traditional hospitalist and/or outpatient care. MedPlan has a twenty year history of placing physicians in every specialty and subspecialty for hospitals and private practices in every county in the state of Alabama, the Southeast and the nation. Her company has a significant impact on metro, medium and rural size communities that would not be able to attract quality physicians without our assistance.

Growing up in a household dedicated to medicine, her father, a doctor, and mother, a nurse, she experienced first-hand the importance of quality health-care. Bownes received her undergraduate degree from the University of Alabama. She went on to receive a Masters Certificate in Gerontology from the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

Bownes is an active board member of many organizations including The Women’s Fund, Women’s Network Board of Directors, past president of the Women’s Forum and Hand-in-Paw. A passionate advocate for the elderly, Bownes is the UAB Palliative Care Center Board of Directors Chairman of the Board and serves on the UAB Center for the Aging Board of Advisors. She also volunteers her time at St. Martin’s in the Pines Retirement Community.

She was a member of the 2007-2008 class of Leadership Birmingham and will participate in the Leadership Alabama Class of 2009-2010. Bownes received an appointment from Lieutenant Governor Jim Folsom to the Women’s Health Steering Committee, Office of Women’s Health for the State of Alabama in 2007 and presently serves on that committee. Ms. Bownes will follow legislation that relates to women in Alabama and advise on those issues.

As a testament to her success in her local Birmingham business community the Birmingham Business Journal voted her as the 2007 Rising Star at the Best in Business Awards. In 2008, she was selected as the Birmingham Business Journal’s Top Ten Birmingham Women. In 2009, the Birmingham Business Journal recognized her as the top 100 of Who's Who in Healthcare in Birmingham.