Alicia Cunningham, MD

Alicia Cunningham, MD is a direct primary care physician in South Burlington, Vermont, and the first woman to practice direct primary care in the state.

She grew up in New Orleans, Louisiana, where her mother taught medical ethics at LSU and her father served as dean of the LSU medical school. Tennis filled her summers there, often eight hours a day on the court, and she and her sister became the third-ranked doubles team in Louisiana before she kept playing through college. She met her husband, a Vermont native, at Princeton, and his roots eventually brought them north to Burlington. Entrepreneurship runs in the family too, and their conversations have long circled around innovation and doing things a better way.

The Cunninghams have settled in Burlington. She still gets out on the tennis court when she can, tends a little garden, and always has a book close by.