Kathleen Kobashi is Chair of the Department of Urology at Houston Methodist Hospital in Texas.  Prior to this, she served as Section Head of Urology and Renal Transplantation at Virginia Mason Medical Center for 14 years and Director of VM’s Pelvic Floor Center. She received her B.A. at Wellesley College and her M.D. at Hahnemann University in Philadelphia, and completed her urologic residency at the University of California, Irvine followed by a Female Pelvic Medicine and Reconstructive Surgery (FPMRS) fellowship at Cedars-Sinai in Los Angeles before joining Virginia Mason in 1999.  She is currently pursuing her Executive MBA at the University of Michigan.

In addition to her passion around clinical medicine, Dr. Kobashi is dedicated to research and education of patients and future urologists. She is a mentor for the AUA Leadership program, and she founded the VM FPMRS fellowship in 2003 and a new Urology residency in 2014, for which she served as the Program Director until her departure from VM in 2021.  Dr. Kobashi has authored more than 100 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters on topics related to urinary incontinence and pelvic prolapse and has been invited faculty on the subject around the globe. She is the Immediate Past President of SUFU (Society for Urodynamics, Female Pelvic Medicine and Urogenital Reconstruction), the Immediate Past President (and first female President) of the Western Section AUA and will begin her term as a Trustee of the American Board of Urology in 2022.  She is the Associate Editor of Urology Practice and the Societe Internationale d’Urologie Journal. She received the 2006 Continence Care Champion award from the National Association for Continence, the prestigious Paul Zimskind Award from SUFU in 2010, and a Presidential Citation from the American Urological Association in 2013.