Marci Bowers

In 2018 and 2019, Bowers performed the first live surgical vaginoplasty surgeries in WPATH-sponsored surgical educational programs at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York.

Bowers appears as herself in the television documentary, Gender Revolution: A Journey with Katie Couric (2017), and in the 2016 and 2018 (seasons 3 through 6) of the reality series, I Am Jazz. She has been a guest on US talk shows including The Oprah Winfrey Show and The Tyra Banks Show.

She has led medical missions to Burkina Faso (2014), Nairobi, Kenya (2017 and 2019). Working with local plastic surgeon, Abdullahi Adan, and others, this specific surgical venue is a first for Africa after the failed opening of the Pleasure Hospital in Bobo-Dioulasso.

So too, clitoral restoration surgery remains controversial with some doubting restoration of sensation to the clitoris. After Pierre Foldès landmark study in Lancet February 2012, his results were met with skepticism from British gynecologists who wrote a rebuttal to his findings, questioning his methods and outcomes. Bowers is conducting ongoing studies using standard measures of female sexual function to definitively affirm Pierre Foldès' conclusions, but as Bowers has stated, "There is no happier text that I receive at three in the morning than someone stating they have had their first orgasm in their life."

In 2010, she relocated to the San Francisco Bay Area and continues to practice in Burlingame, California. She has also helped initiate transgender surgical education programs at Sheba Medical Center in Tel Aviv (2014), Mount Sinai Icahn School of Medicine in New York (2016), Denver Health in Colorado (2018), and University of Toronto (2019). The transgender surgical fellowship at Mount Sinai is acknowledged as the first of its kind in the United States.

Bowers is also an international expert on functional clitoral restoration after Female Genital Mutilation/cutting (FGM/c). She was chosen in 2007-2009 to mentor under Pierre Foldès, pioneer of Clitoral Restoration Surgery (CRS) and is the first US surgeon to do so.

She has spoken about her practice and other transgender topics in numerous documentaries, interviews, news reports, and articles. Media appearances have included The Oprah Winfrey Show (2007), The Tyra Banks Show (5 episodes), The Today Show, and CBS Sunday Morning feature. She is also the featured surgeon in a six-part BBC Channel 4/World of Wonder production, "Sex Change Hospital" in 2006-2007. In May 2020, The Times featured Bowers on their Science Power List.

She appeared briefly in the 2005 docuseries TransGeneration, produced by World of Wonder; soon after, World of Wonder turned their attention to Bowers herself and her practice, in their 2007 documentary series Sex Change Hospital—a six-episode series that follows 12 patients before, during, and after surgery. Sex Change Hospital premiered on More4, and was rebroadcast on E4 in the UK and WE tv in the US. She and her practice were also the focus of Trinidad (2009), an independent documentary directed by PJ Raval and Jay Hodges. The filmmakers examine the success of Dr. Bowers' practice, and the transgender people who travel to the town of Trinidad, Colorado for sex reassignment surgery. The film premiered in the US on the Showtime channel.

Not all of Trinidad's residents were happy with the town's title of "Sex Change Capital". In 2005, Terry Keith, a pastor for the All Nations Fellowship church, told The Pueblo Chieftain, "Our reputation as sex-change capital of the world has brought shame and reproach on the community." That same year, two pastors circulated a petition for the closure of the clinic. They cited a Johns Hopkins University study that they claimed was proof that gender confirmation surgeries were an ineffective treatment for gender dysphoria. The petition was rejected. Bowers said that the church misrepresented the study data: "If you look at the actual study itself, the satisfaction rates and happiness rates after [surgeries] were overwhelmingly positive, their interpretation of the study was that the respondents—the patients themselves—couldn't possibly be accurate about what they were feeling, because they were crazy in the first place. There's been nothing like it since—and it's very important to point out that it's from 1972."

Perhaps Bowers' first television appearance was a dramatic role in "Ch-ch-ch-changes" (2004), a season-five episode of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation that focused on transgender issues. She also served as a production consultant for the episode.

Bowers operates at Mills-Peninsula Hospital in Burlingame, California and San Mateo Surgery Center in San Mateo, California. From 2003 to 2010, she practiced in the town of Trinidad, Colorado, where she apprenticed under Stanley Biber, a general surgeon and father of international transgender surgery, until relinquishing these duties to Bowers in July 2003. Biber performed more than 2300 MTF genital reassignment surgeries and 1000 FTM surgeries and is credited for earning Trinidad the moniker, "Sex Change Capital of the World." Biber died in January 2006.

When Stanley Biber retired in 2003 at the age of 80, Bowers took over his practice, and since then, has done more than 2000 genital reassignment surgeries, performing as many as 12 gender affirming surgeries weekly. While performing surgery in Trinidad, Bowers estimated revenue at US$1.6 million per year to the hospital. Revenue generated in California may be ten times that figure.

Before moving to Trinidad, Bowers practiced Obstetrics and Gynecology at the PolyClinic/Swedish Medical Center in Seattle. In her 20 years practicing obstetrics, she delivered more than 2000 babies. She has served as Obstetrics and Gynecology Department Chairperson at Swedish (Providence) Medical Center, and was named the only physician member of the Washington State midwifery Board. She is a member-elect of the European Academy of Sciences.

Marci Lee Bowers (born January 18, 1958) is an American gynecologist and surgeon who specializes in gender confirmation surgeries. Bowers is viewed as an innovator in gender confirmation/affirmation surgery, and is the first transgender woman to perform such surgeries.