After meeting and marrying her husband, a third-generation Pueblo native and employee of the local steel mill, Dr. Koshak (formerly Goldstein) is thrilled to call Pueblo home. Born in Cambridge, Ontario, she spent 20 years in Hamilton, the “Steel City” of Canada, where she completed an undergraduate degree in biology and biochemistry, as well as her medical and orthopedic surgery training at McMaster University, where the term evidence-based medicine was coined. She subsequently completed three years of fellowship training in complex adult spine surgery at the University of Calgary and the University of Toronto, where her clinical focus was complex cervical spine surgery and adult spinal deformity. Dr. Koshak began her career as an Assistant Professor with the University of Missouri Department of Orthopedic Surgery where she eventually became the Director of Spine Research and creator and Director of a mentoring program for orthopedic surgery residents. During that period, she also completed a Master of Public Health degree at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. After visiting the Anschutz Medical Center in Aurora as a recipient of the prestigious American Orthopedic Association North American Traveling Fellowship in the fall of 2017, an award granted to just over 80 orthopedic surgeons from Canada and the United States since 1992, she was recruited to the University of Colorado Department of Orthopedic Surgery as an Associate Professor to become the Medical Director of a new Orthopedic Spine Surgery program at the UCHealth Memorial Hospital North in Colorado Springs.

Having recently welcomed their daughter Charlotte to the family in July 2022, Dr. Koshak has joined the team at Maple Leaf Spine & Orthopedics to be able to devote more time to her family and to bring her talents closer to the homes of the residents of Pueblo and Southern Colorado, whom she often saw driving several hours to Colorado Springs and Denver for their care. In addition to providing non-surgical and surgical management of all spine pathology, including arthritis, infections, tumors, fractures and spinal deformities, Dr. Koshak is pursuing advanced training in spinal injections and medical acupuncture to be able to offer her patients a wide variety of treatment options in one location with one spine care provider. Dr. Koshak is also able to provide non-surgical care, injections, and acupuncture for all other orthopedic conditions. Her treatment philosophy is that surgery for spinal disorders should always be the last option explored, but when it is necessary, she strives to provide exceptional clinical results informed by her years of training at two of Canada’s top spine surgery centers as well as her extensive and ongoing involvement in research and education.

As a result of her dedication to the practice of orthopedic spine surgery, academics, education, and leadership, in 2018 Dr. Koshak was named one of the North American Spine Society SpineLine’s inaugural “Top 20 Under 40” in the field of spine care. As a fellow and attending surgeon she has performed close to 3,000 surgeries in over a decade and is Board Certified by the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada. She has won numerous research awards throughout her career and in 2017 was inducted into the University of Missouri –
Columbia chapter of the Alpha Omega Alpha Honor Medical Society. In 2022, she was also named a Fellow of the American Orthopaedic Association, an honor granted to fewer than 6% of orthopaedic surgeons after a rigorous peer-review process. She has published more than 40 papers in leading orthopedic and spine surgery journals, has authored several textbook chapters, has delivered over 100 peer-reviewed and invited presentations at national and international meetings, has been a member of multiple national and international spine surgery committees for the North American Spine Society and AOSpine North America, and has participated in multiple symposia, webinars and resident and fellow education courses on spine surgery. She continues to be active with the University of Colorado Spine Division as a part-time Associate Professor of Research, putting the skills she learned while completing her MPH to good use.

Dr. Koshak spends most of her free time with her husband Mark and their three children, Markus, Sophia, and Charlotte. They enjoy being outdoors, fishing and mountain biking and taking walks with their dogs. She also loves to read, watch sports (especially the NFL), knit and crochet, and is always looking for something else to learn. They love spending time with Mark’s family in Pueblo and whenever possible they travel to Canada to visit Dr. Koshak’s family as well.