Dr. Dianne L. Reynolds-Cane

2009 Honoree

Dr. Dianne Reynolds-Cane is a recognized force in Virginia’s volunteer and professional medical communities. While serving as medical director of The Daily Planet Health Care for the Homeless Medical Clinic, a federally qualified health center, in Richmond, Va. Reynolds-Cane became the first African-American woman president of the Virginia Board of Medicine.

The Virginia Board of Medicine regulates and licenses more than 40,000 health care providers in the state.

As board president from 2003-2004, Reynolds-Cane chaired committees that proposed amendments to Virginia’s health care regulations addressing standards for professional conduct. Those amendments are now Virginia law.

Her leadership and dedication are rooted in family values. Reynolds-Cane’s mother always said, "You can be whatever you want to be, just have faith and never give up."

She graduated from Mumford, then one of Detroit’s best high schools, in the top 10th of her class, and was admitted to Howard University’s College of Medicine after completing just two and a half years of college. She graduated with a medical degree and with honors in surgery in 1976.

Traits such as honesty, faith in God and unqualified help for those in need were instilled in Reynolds-Cane during her childhood in a poor suburb near Detroit. "Primarily, we are here to help each other," she says. Regarding her work at The Daily Planet, she states, "The health and hope we offer our homeless patients expedites their journey toward self-sufficiency."

Reynolds-Cane dedicates herself to serving patients and the Richmond-area community. She sits on the boards of the United Way of Greater Richmond and Petersburg, Leadership Metro Richmond, Sheltering Arms Hospital, and Randolph-Macon College. She also serves on the Virginia State Bar-Third District Committee, and is facilitator for the Health Care Working Group of Virginia’s Government and Regulatory Reform Task Force.

In addition, she is an assistant clinical professor in the Department of Epidemiology and Community Health at Virginia Commonwealth University, a Williamson Institute Health Law Fellow, and a Public Policy Fellow. She received the YWCA’s Outstanding Woman Award in Health/Science, the LMR Ukrop Community Service Award, and is a Virginia Hero designated by Arthur Ashe’s Virginia Hero Foundation.