Dr Gearhart graduated from Loyola University Stritch School of Medicine in 1993. She completed her General Surgery Training at the Johns Hopkins Hospital in 2001. Following General Surgery residency, she completed a fellowship in Colorectal Surgery at the Cleveland Clinic Foundation in Ohio. She joined the faculty at Johns Hopkins in 2002. Her achievements included completing her Master of Education for the Health Profession at Johns Hopkins School of Education and implementing the first Advanced Colorectal Surgery Fellowship Program at Johns Hopkins in 2015 which engages many of the Johns Hopkins entities. Dr. Gearhart joined the Department of Surgery at Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center in 2015 with a desire to lead quality initiatives. Presently she serves as the Surgeon Champion for the National Surgery Quality Improvement Project and through this work has championed the implementation of the Enhanced Recovery after Surgery Program at Bayview which was recently recognized in the 2016 Clinical Excellence in Teamwork Award. In June of 2017, Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center was selected along with six other major institutions by the Coalition for Quality in Geriatric Surgery and the ACS-NSQIP to participate in a national project that would begin to implement best practices into the care of the elderly surgical patient.