Resilience is defined as the ability to withstand adversity or other challenges. A resilient academic surgeon can navigate through various challenges to stay engaged in patient care, scholarship and teaching. This capacity is currently under considerable threat given the escalating demands that are due to a variety of forces including technical innovations, increasing societal expectations and decreasing funding that are all occurring in the midst of a disruptive reformation of healthcare. The culture of surgery suggests that improvement can occur if we are willing to embrace the idea that there is a need to improve our resilience. There are approaches shown to do this in individuals and the conceptual frameworks that are the basis of these interventions are also what has been shown to be helpful when surgeons face adversity. In order for real change to occur, we must begin the process of teaching resilience to our learners and creating the next generation of academic surgery leaders who are more enlightened about how to create work that is most engaging for academic surgeons.