Member Spotlight: William Cotton, MD

William Cotton, MD

COTS Board of Trustees Member
Representative | Columbus Medical Association

November 2024

• Where were you born and/raised? Piqua, OH- a city 25 miles North of Dayton

• What was your first job? Lifeguard and swim lesson instructor at YMCA

• You have two weeks off and a plane ticket to go anywhere. Where would you go? Australia

• What would you like your fellow COTS partners to know about you? I am a retired pediatrician having spent my career initially working at Nationwide Children’s Hospital as an Emergency Medicine doc then as primary care pediatrician and medical doctor in the NCH primary care network. My passion is advocacy for patients as well as advocacy for the physicians who take care these patients.

• What made you decide to be a physician/nurse/EMT/emergency manager (whatever your chosen career path)? I initially wanted to be an oceanographer, but found out that the lifestyle wasn’t likely to be like Jacque Cousteau. I was good in science and liked people, so I picked medicine. I chose pediatrics because kids usually get better, and the pediatricians were the most fun to work with.

• What hobbies do you participate in your free time? Golf, reading, studying and reading politics (that’s why I like the public policy committee) and interfacing with my 4 grandchildren.

• If you could be any superhero, who would you be?  Superman, Faster than a speeding bullet. More powerful than a locomotive. Able to leap tall buildings in a single bound.

• What is your favorite thing to do in the Winter season? Go to Florida

• If you won the Powerball, what’s the first thing you would do? Buy a place in Florida and set up a trust fund to support some of my favorite organizations (CMA included!)

• What was the first concert you attended? Grand Funk Railroad. One of my friend’s moms was nice/ tolerant enough to drive a carload of us to Dayton Hara Area to see them. Several years ago, I got in a conversation with the guy who was the promoter of this concert as well as several other concerts I went to in Dayton.