Martha Bidez, PhD
President and CEO
A trucker’s daughter, Dr. Martha Bidez was born and raised in Jefferson County, Alabama (USA) with her roots among the state’s working poor in the textile and produce industries. She attended public schools in Birmingham throughout some of the city’s most tumultuous years of the civil rights movement and ultimately graduated from the University of Alabama at Birmingham with a PhD in biomedical engineering.
Dr. Bidez is currently Professor and Graduate Program Director of the Master of Engineering in Advanced Safety Engineering and Management, University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) School of Engineering (www.uab.edu/engineering/professional-programs/asem) and President and CEO of BioEchoes, Inc a biomedical engineering consulting firm specializing in system safety.
Dr. Bidez has received numerous recognitions for her accomplishments in both the academic and the private sectors. She was named a National Leadership Fellow of the W.K. Kellogg Foundation (1993-1996), UAB Distinguished Alumnus (1998), Alabama’s Business Woman of the Year (2002), inaugural inductee into the Alabama Women Business Owners Hall of Fame (2003) and recipient of the Jesse J. Lewis Community Service Award (2005) for her work in serving Birmingham’s homeless women and children. She has appeared on a broadcast of the ABC 20/20 news magazine addressing child auto safety and was featured in the book: Women Who Mean Business – Success Stories of Women Over Forty. Her career accomplishments were nationally recognized with her induction as a Fellow of the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE), which represents the top 2% of biomedical engineers in the United States. In 2011, the American Society of Safety Engineers (ASSE) named Dr. Bidez as one of “100 Women” (living or dead) who have made the greatest contributions to global safety.
Long dedicated to community service, Martha’s many civic activities have focused on the poor and excluded, particularly women and children. She was a founding director, Board President and now 20-year volunteer with Pathways (www.pathwayshome.org) a Birmingham-based, NGO providing comprehensive services to homeless women and their children to assist their re-entry into the mainstream of life. Martha also served as a Founding Director of the Women’s Fund of the Community Foundation of Greater Birmingham and Director of VOICES for Alabama’s Children (www.alavoices.org). She served as the sole Public Member on the prestigious Executive Council of the Commission on Colleges, the accreditation body for all colleges in the 11-state southern region of the U.S.A. Martha presently serves as a Trustee for the Union Institute and University (www.myunion.edu), based in Cincinnati, Ohio.
