How one Preston Hollow doctor ended up with a statue

A room full of women isn’t something that Dr. Antonia Chen, who serves as the chair of the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery at UT Southwestern, is used to standing in.

When she decided to become a surgeon, she knew she’d spend her career in male-dominated spaces. The gender disparity only multiplied when she decided to specialize in orthopedics, which sees the lowest percentage of female participation across surgical specialties. According to the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons, the mean percentage of female surgeons across all states was only 7.5% in 2023, and that engagement is growing at the slowest rate across surgical specialties, too.

And when Chen developed further expertise in hip and knee replacements, in which women represent only 2.6% of surgeons, she realized she was paving an uncommon path.

“I don’t do it because I need to prove that I can be a woman who can do this. It’s because I really love it,” Chen says. “I love seeing people go from not walking to walking. But I will admit, when I was in training, most of the time I didn’t have mentors that looked like me.”

Over the summer, Chen found herself honored alongside 25 women who work at the intersection of STEM and sports as part of the #IfThenSheCan Game Changers exhibit displayed at the Dallas FIFA Fan Festival. The exhibit included 26 life-size, neon green 3D-printed statues of women who are trailblazing in fields like sports psychology, turf development science and franchise management.

Ten statues, including the one of Chen, depicted North Texas women.

“(There was) a panel discussion, and it was just so honest and freeing to hear that what they struggled with is the same stuff that I’ve struggled with,” Chen says. “I think historically, a lot of times people see women in these fields as being cutthroat or trying to take each other down or trying to get above each other. But no, this bunch of women showed the complete opposite.”

Chen grew up in New Jersey, but moved to Preston Hollow in 2024 by way of Boston. When initially looking into the UT Southwestern job, she was struck by the environment of people who “really wanted to grow and improve medicine and science in the DFW area.” She decided to take the leap down south — a decision that the warm weather and “phenomenal” local food scene have only validated, she says.

An overlapping interest between sports and orthopedics was natural. Nearly every person who plays a sport past the pee-wee level experiences an injury at one time or another, and typically, it is an orthopedic specialist who fixes those injuries.

“I had a 16-year-old patient who had juvenile rheumatoid arthritis, and he had really, really bad hip arthritis. He was told he was too young to do a hip replacement, but he couldn’t play (soccer) with his friends,” Chen says. “Now, after replacing both of his hips, he can run, he can be with his friends. … Getting people back on their feet is what we get to do in the world of orthopedics, and that’s what really attracted me to it.”

While a vast majority of Chen’s patients are the “weekend warrior” type of athletes (and, increasingly, pickleball enthusiasts), she’s used her expertise to aid professionals off the court, too. Under Chen’s leadership, UT Southwestern launched a medical partnership with the Dallas Mavericks, and Chen spent a season serving as an assistant team doctor fielding “phone calls at all different times of the night” in order to keep the team “at their best.”

Chen is now a “Mavs fan for life,” her fandom solidified during an encounter with former Head Coach Jason Kidd at an early training camp. Kidd played for Chen’s childhood team, the New Jersey Nets, for several seasons, so his leadership of the Mavs presented a “full circle moment.”

“We were in line to get coffee, and a guy came up to me and says, ‘Oh, hi, I’m Jason,’” Chen says. “I’m like, ‘I’m Antonia. No one knows who I am, but everyone knows who you are.’”

It was Chen who was a star during the Game Changers exhibit.

One of the selling points that convinced Chen to pose for her statue was the statistic that women are disproportionately underrepresented in statues. Additionally, depictions of women tend to portray a general character, such as the Fearless Girl statue on Wall Street, rather than a particular figure whose achievements are noted.

During the FIFA Fan Fest, Chen says she was able to see firsthand the way the stories of the featured women inspired attendees, particularly young women. Starting this fall, the exhibit will be on display at Pegasus Park, and Chen hopes it will continue to be an inspiration to young girls who may not previously have considered careers that can push the sports industry forward.

“The key factor is remembering what it does, not to represent me, but to represent what it means to the next generation of women who can see the exhibit and be like, ‘I can be that,’” Chen says. “That to me is the neatest part of it.”