Dr. Leslie Cadet is a former U.S. Air Force flight surgeon who was named Air Force Global Strike Command’s 2015 Command Flight Surgeon of the Year, was just named one of two 2026 “Hidden Gems” among the 12 professionals honored at the second annual Work Comp Changemaker© Awards. The awards were presented at the ELEVATE® Work Comp Conference at the Hotel del Coronado in Coronado, California this September.
The honorees were announced on the Deconstructing Comp website. The organizers say the Hidden Gem category recognizes professionals whose leadership is quiet but has a significant effect on the industry. Dr. Cadet, a board-certified occupational and environmental medicine physician, QME, educator, and entrepreneur, shares the designation with Nicholas Fonner, a workers’ compensation case manager at Brooks Rehabilitation.
According to her honoree profile on the Deconstructing Comp website, Dr. Cadet began her career in the Air Force as a flight surgeon and occupational health consultant. The profile says her work supported 1,080 combat missions and 2,000 airlift missions in support of Operations Inherent Resolve and Enduring Freedom. As medical director of her flight medicine clinic, she led a 23-person team that cared for more than 700 beneficiaries and supported the medical readiness of about 5,100 active-duty personnel. Her patients included aviators, aircraft mechanics, intelligence personnel, and other service members working in specialized, high-demand jobs. In addition to the Command Flight Surgeon of the Year award, she was named her squadron’s 2015 Company Grade Officer of the Year.
After leaving the military, Dr. Cadet completed a residency in occupational and environmental medicine at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and earned a Master of Public Health degree there. She later served as Employee Health Medical Director at Loma Linda University Health. She still teaches as an assistant professor at the Loma Linda University School of Medicine and as an attending physician in its occupational and environmental medicine residency program. According to her profile, the residents she trains named her Teacher of the Year in 2022, 2023, 2024, and 2026.
Her current work is aimed directly at employers and claims professionals. Dr. Cadet founded and leads ASCEND Occupational Medicine Consulting, a physician-led firm that works with self-insured employers, claims professionals, attorneys, and others on complex workers’ compensation claims. Her profile says the firm provides medical oversight of those claims. That work includes testing whether diagnoses and treatment plans are supported by objective evidence, identifying barriers to recovery, setting realistic recovery timelines, and strengthening return-to-work plans so claims do not slide into prolonged disability. The profile describes the gap she is trying to close this way: claims decisions are usually guided by financial, claims-handling, and legal experts, but often without a physician at the table. Her approach, as the profile summarizes it, favors appropriate care over more care, function over disability, and early intervention over letting a claim grow more complex.
Ten other professionals were named 2026 Work Comp Changemaker© Honorees. They are Catherine Benavidez of Injury Management Organization; Anthony Culpepper, Jr., of Employer Defense Group and the African American Workers’ Compensation Professionals; Dr. Geralyn Datz of Southern Behavioral Medicine Associates; Dr. Steven Feinberg of Feinberg Medical Group; Kimberly George of Sedgwick; Agnes Hoeberling of AvonRisk; Kirsten Kaiser Kus of Downey, Lenkov, Milstein & Kus Law Firm; Roberta Serena Mike of Strategic Comp and the Workers’ Compensation Career Mentorship Group; Dave Taylor of Charter Communications; and Licia Thompson-Young of Licia Thompson Coaching & Consulting. Profiles of all honorees are on the Deconstructing Comp website.
The awards were created by Yvonne Guibert and Rafael Gonzalez, co-hosts of the Deconstructing Comp Podcast. They are not lifetime achievement awards. Instead, they recognize emerging and established professionals for their leadership, impact, integrity, and mentorship over the past two to five years. According to the organizers, honorees are chosen by an advisory committee of workers’ compensation professionals in three rounds. First, each committee member nominates five people. Next, each member champions two nominees they did not nominate, interviews them, and presents them to the committee. Finally, the committee ranks the finalists, and the rankings determine the honorees. Guibert described this year’s class as “people to watch” in the release.
And Dr. Cadet, thank you so very much for your service to our country.