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11 - Rafael Alvarez Cordero 2007-2008 Mexico

Professor Alvarez Cordero is one of the pioneers of MBS in Mexico
and a mentor to generations of surgeons across Latin America. He
founded the Mexican Society for the Surgery of Obesity (now the
Mexican College of Bariatric Surgery and Metabolic Diseases) and
served as its Honorary President. A founding member of IFSO, he
served as the organization’s first Executive Director, and was the
organizer and President of the second IFSO World Congress in
Cancún. In his Presidency of IFSO, and beyond, Professor Cordero
was known as a constant guardian of ethics in surgical medicine,
and of ethical decision-making within the IFSO organization.
Cordero was later named an IFSO Honorary Life Member. He was
also a founding member of ASMBS. Beyond IFSO, Alvarez
Cordero has written a long-running weekly newspaper column for
major Mexican publications, bringing medical topics to a general

12 - MAL Fobi 2008-2009 USA
Born in Cameroon, Professor Fobi came to the United States in
1966 and trained in surgery at King/Drew Medical Center in Los
Angeles, where he later became Chief of the General Surgery
Division. In 1981, he opened the Center for Surgical Treatment of
Obesity, where he would treat more than 12,000 patients, and
host an annual international symposium on the surgical treatment
of obesity that helped lay the direct groundwork for IFSO’s
founding in 1995. In 1989, he introduced the Silastic ring
(banded) gastric bypass, known as the Fobi Pouch, combining
elements of the Roux-en-Y gastric bypass and vertical banded
gastroplasty. Fobi was a founding member of ASMBS, and a past
president of the ASMBS Foundation. He served as organizer of the
15th IFSO World Congress in Long Beach, CA, and as chairman of
the IFSO Board of Trustees from 2013-2015. Known for operating
on numerous celebrity patients, he was often called the “surgeon
to the stars,” while also funding education and medical supplies
for numerous young people, and founding a school for deaf
children in his home village in Cameroon.

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