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Por Margarita Burciaga Del Real
elected as one of the top 24 best beauty surgeons in the nation by Harper’s Bazaar, it should be a joy to Austinites looking to rejuvenate their faces and bodies to have such a talented professional in town. Dr. Jennifer Walden trained with top New York surgeons; however, she chose to relocate to her hometown city due to cosmetic procedures being in high demand. With Austin being known as a rather green, natural, and holistic city, she used to worry that she would be “Sitting tapping her fingers waiting for her first patient,” but on the contrary, she found herself booking surgeries before her plane even landed. In fact, many of her New York patients travel to Austin on occasion to see her. Dr. Walden, a native Austinite, starts our interview by telling us about how she got her undergraduate degree from the University of Texas at Austin and then how she went to medical school and continued her residency training at the University of Texas in Galveston. She lived there for 9 years in school and in postgraduate training before getting accepted into a cosmetic fellowship program at the world-renowned Manhattan Eye, Ear, and Throat Hospital in New York City. This is where she studied for a year in cosmetic plastic surgery, where after all those years it has become her passion and profession. Moreover, she loved living in NYC so much that she decided to stay and practice there. She became the junior associate of an internationally known and highly regarded New York plastic surgeon, who had a discrete private practice on Park Avenue in the Upper East Side of Manhattan. She worked there for about 7 and half years. During this time she grew a practice of patients that wanted to look and feel better about themselves and she learned many lessons from this experience. Being in her late 30’s and not having met the right man to marry, she decided to do in vitro fertilization (“IVF”) becoming the sole parent of fraternal twins in November 2010. The idea of returning to her family in Austin had always been in the back of her mind. Once she had children she reconsidered her situation of living in New York with babies, and in December of 2011 Dr. Walden moved back to Austin. She started her private practice from scratch in Texas and that is how she remains as the sole practitioner in her office, her own manager and business owner. She has her own operating room within the office and she is 100% dedicated to cosmetic surgery. Upon her return, she found a “different city.” “You still get the small old-town feeling, but Austin is different in the sense that the traffic is overwhelming and the rate of people moving to the city is overwhelming in relation to the infrastructure,” she says. On the other hand, Dr. Walden adds that she is “Glad to see the Austin that it is now; it has become like a melting pot in itself and new businesses have infused financial growth.” She mentions she finds the Austin market somewhat more homogenous than New York City, however, that is rapidly changing. She has a large Hispanic clientele which she thinks is wonderful. She rationalizes that with its enormous growth, Austin is often viewed as more forward-thinking and progressive compared to other areas in a rather conservative state. Overall, she is glad she is back to this “new” city and surrounded by her family. Model Misty Mason
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