Surgeon, teacher, author and builder

He decided to become a heart surgeon at age 11, after watching a NOVA episode on public television. He studied biology at Saint Peter’s University, earned his medical degree in New Jersey, and trained in surgery at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, including two years of research in human gene therapy. He then trained in cardiac surgery at Columbia University Medical Center in New York.

At Columbia, where he served on the faculty from 2005 to 2013, he founded the aortic surgery program and specialized in complex aortic surgery, heart transplant and artificial heart surgery. In 2013 Mount Sinai Hospital recruited him to lead its Center for Aortic Disease, where he built an international reference center and served as Medical Director for Mount Sinai International. In 2018 he moved to Miami as Chief of Cardiac Surgery, and from 2019 to 2025 he led cardiovascular surgery for HCA East Florida as Medical Director, building structural heart programs and an aortic emergency center serving patients from across Latin America and the Caribbean.

Today he works independently through his practice, MIAORTA, taking on select complex cases in South Florida and around the world. He is a Senior Partner at Innovation Platform Capital, the founder and Chief Innovation Officer of U Gen Wellness, and an adviser and board member for healthcare companies. He is also the author of Heart of Longevity: A Surgeon’s Prescription for Strength and Vitality.

Dr. Stewart sees himself first as a teacher. He has trained more than two dozen surgeons in aortic surgery, and eleven of them now lead aortic programs in the United States, Japan and Israel. Outside the operating room he is a husband, a father of three, a cyclist, a marathon runner and a triathlete.