Thursday, October 1, 2026
As director of noninvasive cardiology at Mount Sinai South Nassau, Dr. Pilar Stevens-Haynes has built a career centered on precision, compassion and the belief that medicine can be both life-saving and life-changing.
That sense of connection is what ultimately steered her toward cardiology. Born and raised in the Elmont/Valley Stream area, Stevens-Haynes discovered her love of science in high school, drawn to biology and fascinated by a senior-year anatomy and physiology elective.
Though she once envisioned herself as a surgeon, clinical rotations changed her mind. “I thought I would just love surgery,” she said. “But I actually found I loved speaking to patients. In surgery, your patients are unconscious.”
Instead she chose a field that allows her to combine long-term patient relationships with moments of dramatic intervention. While many areas of internal medicine focus on managing chronic illness, Stevens-Haynes noted that cardiology allows physicians to intervene in acute, life-threatening situations — heart attacks, heart failure or dangerous arrhythmias — and dramatically improve outcomes.
“In cardiology, you can treat someone and sometimes give them back the life they had before,” she said. “I find true joy in taking care of people over time and watching them heal.”
A graduate of SUNY Geneseo, Stevens-Haynes completed her medical training in the Mount Sinai system before joining South Nassau over a decade ago.
Her current role centers on cardiac imaging, from electrocardiograms and echocardiograms to multiple forms of stress testing. Four days a week she oversees the lab, ensuring that the facility meets national accreditation standards.
“The lab has to do what it says it’s going to do,” Stevens-Haynes said. “We have to perform the studies accurately and meet the standards that are set.”
Patient care remains central to her. “I’ve got the best of both worlds,” she said. “I get to practice medicine, but I also get to do a little bit of curative medicine.”
Throughout her career, she has also navigated the realities of being one of few women — and often the only woman of color — in the room. “You have to get very comfortable by being the one and only,” Stevens-Haynes said. Early on, she admitted, she was “very, very quiet and shy,” hesitant to draw attention to herself. Over time, however, she came to recognize the importance of representation.
“Patients will say how wonderful it is to see women physicians and to see people that look like them take care of them,” she said. “They trust me because I look like me.”
Mentorship has become one of the most meaningful aspects of Steven-Haynes’s work. She recalled sitting down with a tearful young physician who worried that starting a family would jeopardize her medical career. Stevens-Haynes encouraged her to do both. That physician is now a cardiology fellow.
“It’s important that women know they can have grand professional goals and personal goals — and achieve them,” she said.
Stevens-Haynes credits academic medicine with offering flexibility that has allowed her to balance professional growth with family life. She and her husband, Hector Luna, are raising four children in Baldwin.
She remains driven by the passion that first led her into medicine, and by her belief that physicians can build meaningful careers without sacrificing the aspects of life that matter most.
“Even if it feels overwhelming or like an all-boys club, you can find your niche anywhere,” she said. “Chase your dreams. You don’t have to sacrifice.”
