Stephen Winters was born in New York City and grew up in the Bronx. HE attended De Witt Clinton High School and graduated cum laude from New York University in 1975. He completed medical studies at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in 1979. He completed a lengthy training in internal medicine as well as cardiovascular medicine in 1982. After an additional year as the chief medical resident at Mount Sinai Hospital, under Dr. Richard Gorlin, he completed formal training in cardiac electrophysiology and pacing there in 1996. He was a full-time faculty member at the Mount Sinai Hospital and associate director of the cardiac electrophysiology program, as well as director of the Arrhythmia Clinic there until 1991. Since 1991, he has been director of the cardiac rhythm management program at Morristown Medical Center, in Morristown, New Jersey.

He was a former President/Governor of the New Jersey Chapter and the Board of Governors of the American College of Cardiology. He served as a member of the Advisory Committee and the Health Policy Committee of the North American Society of Pacing and Electrophysiology, as well as Co-Chair of the Integrated Health Enterprise Committee of the Heart Rhythm Society and a member of the, Health Information Technology Task Force of the Heart Rhythm Society. He has coauthored more than 150 original publications and research abstracts predominantly dealing with cardiac rhythm disturbances, published in peer review journals. In addition, he has participated in over 85 clinical research trials, largely focused on various aspects of cardiac rhythm management. He has been a coinvestigator on several clinicals and has been a coauthor on numerous reports pertaining to Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy.