Board of Directors

Lawrence K. Altman, M.D. is one of the few medical doctors who has worked as a full-time daily newspaper reporter.  He joined The New York Times in 1969 where he was senior medical correspondent until 2008. He continues to write medical articles and “The Doctor’s World” column in Science Times.

Currently he is serving as a Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C. He was a Kaiser Family Foundation fellow in 2009-2010.

Born on June 19, 1937, in Quincy, Mass., Dr. Altman went from Milton Academy to Harvard, from which he graduated in 1958 with a Bachelor of Arts degree, cum laude, in government.  He received his medical degree from Tufts University School of Medicine in 1962.

In college and medical school, Dr. Altman covered sports, did feature writing and helped out on the city desk at The Patriot Ledger in Quincy, Mass.  At Harvard, he was advertising manager and treasurer of The Lampoon.

Dr. Altman’s medical internship was at Mt. Zion Hospital, San Francisco, in 1962 and 1963.  Next he served for three years with the U.S. Public Health Service’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta as editor of its Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, a journal dealing with reported cases of communicable diseases in the world.  He also helped set up a measles immunization program for eight West African countries, which later was merged with the World Health Organization’s program that eradicated smallpox from the world. After this project, Dr. Altman became chief of the U.S. Public Health Service’s Division of Epidemiology and Immunization in Washington.

From 1966 to 1968, Dr. Altman trained in internal medicine at the University of Washington Affiliated Hospitals in Seattle, and later became a senior fellow there in medical genetics.

Dr. Altman has written articles for various scholarly publications on such subjects as viral encephalitis, canine cadaver blood and self experimentation.  In 1974, he won the Claude Bernard Science Journalism Award for a New York Times story “Baboon Experiment Shows Alcohol Damages Liver, Even With Good Diet.”  He also won the award in 1971 for an article on how dogs that had been taught to smoke developed cancer.

In 1982, 1983, and 1995, Dr. Altman won the Howard W. Blakeslee Award of the American Heart Association.  In 2001, Dr. Altman won the Howard Lewis Career Award from the American Heart Association.

In 1986, Dr. Altman won a George Polk award for his series on AIDS in Africa.  In 1993, he won an award of excellence from the Friends of the National Library of Medicine. In 2000, he won the first Victor Cohn Prize for Excellence in Medical Science Reporting from the Council for the Advancement of Science Writing. 

His book, Who Goes First? The Story of Self-Experimentation in Medicine, is published by the University of California at Berkeley Press.

In 2004, Dr. Altman received the University of California at San Francisco’s medal and the Walsh McDermott award from the Associated Medical Schools of New York. In 2008, The American Philosophical Association in Philadelphia awarded its Rhoads Medal to him for Distinguished Achievement in Medicine.

Dr. Altman holds medical licenses in the states of Washington, California, and New York, and is a clinical professor at the New York University Medical School.  He is a Master of the American College of Physicians, a Fellow of the American College of Epidemiology and the New York Academy of Medicine, and a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences.

David Blumenthal, MD, MPP served as the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology under President Barack Obama from 2009 - 2011.  In this role he was charged with building an interoperable, private and secure nationwide health information system and supporting the widespread, meaningful use of health IT.

Dr. Blumenthal received his undergraduate, medical, and public policy degrees from Harvard University and completed his residency in internal medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital.  Prior to his appointment to the administration, Dr. Blumenthal was a practicing primary care physician; director, Institute for Health Policy; and the Samuel O. Thier Professor of Medicine and Professor of Health Policy at the Massachusetts General Hospital/Partners HealthCare System and Harvard Medical School.

Dr. Blumenthal is a renowned health services researcher and national authority on health IT adoption.  With his colleagues from Harvard Medical School, he authored the seminal studies on the adoption and use of health information technology in the United States.  He is the author of over 200 scholarly publications, including most recently, “Heart of Power: Health and Politics in the Oval Office,” which tells the history of U.S. Presidents’ involvement in health reform, from FDR through George W. Bush.

A member of the Institute of Medicine and a former board member and national correspondent for the New England Journal of Medicine, Dr. Blumenthal has held several leadership positions in medicine, government, and academia including Senior Vice President at Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital; Executive Director of the Center for Health Policy and Management and Lecturer on Public Policy at the Kennedy School of Government; and as a professional staff member on Senator Edward Kennedy’s Senate Subcommittee on Health and Scientific Research.

He was the founding chairman of AcademyHealth and served previously on the boards of the University of Chicago Health System and of the University of Pennsylvania Health System.  He is recipient of the Distinguished Investigator Award from AcademyHealth, and a Doctor of Humane Letters from Rush University.

George Campbell Jr., PhD is a physicist and president of The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art. Founded in 1859, Cooper Union is an all honors college and one of America’s most selective institutions of higher education. Perennially at the top of U.S. News and World Report’s baccalaureate college rankings, it offers degrees in architecture, engineering and fine arts. All admitted students receive a full-tuition scholarship. Its historic Great Hall has provided a platform for leading thinkers and public figures, including many American presidents from Abraham Lincoln to Barack Obama, and has been the birth place of major social reform movements of the 19th and 20th centuries.

Dr. Campbell spent much of his career at AT&T’s Bell Laboratories where he held various R&D and management positions. He later served as CEO of NACME Inc., a non-profit organization focused on engineering and science education and research in science and technology policy.  He is a Director of Consolidated Edison, Inc., Barnes and Noble Inc., and the New York State Foundation for Science, Technology and Innovation. He serves as a Trustee of the Josiah Macy Jr. Foundation, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Montefiore Medical Center, the New York Hall of Science, the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation and the Institute of International Education. Earlier in his career, Dr. Campbell served on the faculties of Nkumbi International College in Zambia and Syracuse University.  He has published many papers and served on a number of national science and technology policy bodies, including the Morella Commission of the U.S. Congress and the U.S. Secretary of Energy Board.

A former Simon Guggenheim Scholar, Dr. Campbell is a Fellow of the AAAS and the New York Academy of Sciences, and is the recipient of several honorary doctorates.  He earned his PhD in theoretical physics from Syracuse University and a BS in physics from Drexel University, and he is a graduate of the Yale Executive Management Program.

Linda Cronenwett, PhD, RN, FAAN, is the Beerstecher Blackwell Term Professor and former dean of the School of Nursing, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.  She earned her master’s degree in parent-child nursing from the University of Washington and her undergraduate and doctoral degrees in nursing from the University of Michigan.  Prior to her appointment as Dean, she was the Sarah Frances Russell Distinguished Professor of Nursing Systems at UNC-Chapel Hill.  From 1984-98, she was an administrator in the Department of Nursing, Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, and provided leadership in nursing and inter-professional research utilization and quality improvement projects.

Dr. Cronenwett is the principal investigator of a national initiative, Quality and Safety Education for Nurses, currently in its third phase of funding from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.  She is also the newly selected Nursing Program Director for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Executive Nurse Fellows Program, in partnership with David Altman of the Center for Creative Leadership in Greensboro, North Carolina.  She serves as a member of the Board of Directors of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, the North Carolina Institute of Medicine, and the North Carolina Center for Hospital Quality and Patient Safety and is an appointed member of the Special Medical Advisory Group on Veterans Affairs. 

Dr. Cronenwett is an elected fellow of the American Academy of Nursing and the North Carolina Institute of Medicine.  Her past service includes terms of office on the National Advisory Council for Nursing Research at the National Institutes of Health, editorial advisory boards of Applied Nursing Research, Online Journal of Knowledge Synthesis for Nursing, Journal of Nursing Measurement, and the Joint Commission Journal of Quality Improvement, and numerous offices in professional associations, including President of the New Hampshire Nurses Association and Chair of the American Nurses Association’s Congress of Nursing Practice.

Harvey V. Fineberg is President of the Institute of Medicine. He served as Provost of Harvard University from 1997 to 2001, following thirteen years as Dean of the Harvard School of Public Health. He has devoted most of his academic career to the fields of health policy and medical decision-making. His past research has focused on the process of policy development and implementation, assessment of medical technology, evaluation and use of vaccines, and dissemination of medical innovations.

Dr. Fineberg helped found and served as president of the Society for Medical Decision Making and also served as consultant to the World Health Organization. At the Institute of Medicine, he has chaired and served on a number of panels dealing with health policy issues, ranging from AIDS to new medical technology. He also served as a member of the Public Health Council of Massachusetts (1976-1979), as chairman of the Health Care Technology Study Section of the National Center for Health Services Research (1982-1985), and as president of the Association of Schools of Public Health (1995-1996).

Dr. Fineberg is co-author of the books Clinical Decision Analysis, Innovators in Physician Education, and The Epidemic that Never Was, an analysis of the controversial federal immunization program against swine flu in 1976. He has co-edited several books on such diverse topics as AIDS prevention, vaccine safety, and understanding risk in society. He has also authored numerous articles published in professional journals. Dr. Fineberg is the recipient of several honorary degrees and the Joseph W. Mountin Prize from the US Centers for Disease Control. He earned his bachelor’s and doctoral degrees from Harvard University.

Linda P. Fried, MD, MPH, is Dean, DeLamar Professor of Public Health, and Professor of Epidemiology at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health.  She is also Professor of Medicine at Columbia’s College of Physicians & Surgeons.  Dr. Fried is a leader in the fields of epidemiology and geriatrics and an internationally renowned scientist who has dedicated her career to the science of healthy aging and creating the basis for a transition to an aging world that benefits all ages.  She has led in defining the nature causes and consequences of frailty and disability in older adults and opportunities for prevention.  Dr. Fried is the co-founder of Experience Corps, a community-based senior volunteer program that deploys the social capital of an aging society to improve the academic success of children in elementary schools while simultaneously promoting the health of the older volunteers.  Dr. Fried is the recipient of numerous awards, including the American Federation for Aging Research’s Irving Wright Award, and the American Geriatrics Society Henderson Award.  She was named a “Living Legend in Medicine” by the U.S. Congress and one of the Top 100 Women in Maryland.  Dr. Fried is an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Medicine and of the Association of American Physicians and has a Merit Award from the National Institute on Aging, and is a member of the MacArthur Network on an Aging Society and the World Economic Forum’s Council on the Challenges of an Aging World.  Dr. Fried is an appointed member of the Macy Foundation Board.

Mr. Johnson, President and Chief Executive Officer, joined Fiduciary Trust in 1994 and held various business development positions before becoming head of business development in 1999. Following Fiduciary Trust’s acquisition by Franklin Templeton Investments, he assumed additional responsibility as executive vice president and U.S. head of Franklin Templeton Institutional. In 2003, he was named chief administrative officer of Fiduciary Trust and in 2005, he became the firm’s ninth president. In 2007, Mr. Johnson was named Co-Chief Executive Officer together with James C. Goodfellow and in 2009 he was named sole CEO. Mr. Johnson is a member of the Board of Directors as well as the Management and Executive Committees. Additionally, he sits on the boards of Fiduciary Trust’s affiliates in Florida, California, Delaware and Washington, D.C.

In addition to his responsibilities as a Vassar trustee, he is the board liaison to the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center Advisory Board. Mr. Johnson is also a member of the Board of Trustees and the Investment Committee of the Josiah Macy, Jr. Foundation. He is a Bryant Fellow of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and a member of The President’s Council and Financial Services Leadership Forum of The New York Public Library. He is also a member of the board of the New York City chapter of the Young Presidents’ Organization.

He earned a B.A. from Vassar College, an M.B.A. from Yale University and has held prior roles at The Blackstone Group, JPMorgan & Co., and Sotheby’s.

Professor Judy Krauss has been a member of the Yale School of Nursing faculty since 1971and served as Dean of the School from January 1985 through June 1998. In 1998, the American Academy of Nursing and the American Nurses Foundation appointed her Distinguished Scholar in Residence at the Institute of Medicine (IOM), where she helped conduct the background research for the IOM report America’s Health Care Safety Net: Intact, But Endangered.  Professor Krauss is also Master of Silliman College, one of Yale’s 12 undergraduate residential colleges. She served as Chair of the Council of Masters from July 2003 to July 2009.  Judy was the Founding Editor of Archives of Psychiatric Nursing, a respected practice, research and policy journal. She served as Editor for 20 years and continues as a member of the Editorial Review Board.  Her fields of interest include leadership in health care organizations; and, health and mental health policy with particular emphasis on public policies that affect vulnerable populations.  She is a noted expert on care of persons with serious and persistent mental disorders.

Herbert Pardes, M.D., is Executive Vice Chairman of the Board of New York Presbyterian Hospital. Nationally recognized for his broad expertise in education, research, clinical care and health policy, he is an ardent advocate of academic medical centers, humanistic care and the power of technology and innovation to transform 21st-century medicine. He is a regular commentator in the national news media and other public forums.

Prior to joining the Hospital in 1999, he served as Vice President for Health Sciences at Columbia University and Dean of the Faculty of Medicine at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons. He served as Director of the National Institute of Mental Health and U.S. Assistant Surgeon General during the Carter and Reagan administrations, and was President of the American Psychiatric Association. He was appointed by Presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton to serve on health policy commissions, including the Commission on Systemic Interoperability, and the Presidential Advisory Commission on Consumer Protection and Quality in the Healthcare Industry. He is the former Chairman of the Greater New York Hospital Association, the Association of American Medical Colleges and the New York Association of Medical Schools.

Dr. Pardes is an elected member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, and earned the Sarnat International Prize in Mental Health from the Institute of Medicine. In 2009, the New York State Office of Mental Health named the main building of its New York State Psychiatric Institute in his honor.

Dr. Paul G. Ramsey is the chief executive officer (CEO) of UW Medicine and dean of the School of Medicine at the University of Washington. He graduated from Harvard College in 1971 with honors in biochemistry, and received his M.D. from Harvard Medical School in 1975. After completing residency training in internal medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital, he came to the University of Washington in 1978. He served as coordinator of student teaching for the Department of Medicine from 1982-1990 and was associate chair of the department from 1988-1990. He was appointed chair of the Department of Medicine in 1992, and became the first holder of the Robert G. Petersdorf Endowed Chair in Medicine in 1995.

Ramsey served as chair of the Department of Medicine until June 1997, when he was appointed vice president for medical affairs and dean of the School of Medicine. In 2006, he was named CEO of UW Medicine, and executive vice president of medical affairs, in addition to continuing to serve as medical school dean.

Ramsey has received the Distinguished Teacher Award from the University of Washington School of Medicine graduating class three times (1984, 1986, and 1987). He received the Margaret Anderson Award from the University of Washington medical school graduating class of 1989 for exceptional concern for and support of medical students.

Ramsey researches the development of methods to assess physicians’ clinical competence. He has been the principal investigator on many research grants to assess physicians’ clinical skills. He served as a Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation Faculty Scholar in General Internal Medicine for five years. In 1999 Ramsey received the John P. Hubbard Award from the National Board of Medical Examiners for his research contributions in the field of physician evaluation. He has served on many national committees, and is a member of several professional organizations. He is an elected member of the Association of American Physicians and of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences.

George Erik Rupp (born 1942) is an American educator and theologian, the former President of Rice University and later of Columbia University, and president of the International Rescue Committee since July 2002.

He was born in Summit, New Jersey, the son of immigrant parents. He studied in Germany before graduating from Princeton University. He then received a Bachelor of Divinity degree from Yale University and a Ph.D. in religion from Harvard University. He is an ordained Presbyterian minister.

From 1971 to 1979 Rupp held faculty and administrative positions at Johnston College in the University of Redlands in Redlands, California, the University of Wisconsin–Green Bay, and Harvard University. 

Rupp was the John Lord O’Brian Professor of Divinity and dean of the Harvard Divinity School from 1979 to 1985. Under his leadership, the curriculum of the school was revised to address more directly the pluralistic character of contemporary religious life. Further developments included new programs in women’s studies and religion, Jewish-Christian relations, and religion and medicine.

He was President of Rice University from 1985 to 1993, where in the course of his eight years applications for admission almost tripled, federal research support more than doubled, and the value of the Rice endowment increased by more than $500 million to $1.25 billion.

He became president of Columbia in 1993. During his nine-year tenure, he focused on enhancing undergraduate education, on strengthening the relationship of the campus to surrounding communities and New York City as a whole, and on increasing the university’s international orientation. At the same time, he completed both a financial restructuring of the university and a $2.84 billion fundraising campaign that achieved eight successive records in dollars raised.

As the IRC’s chief executive officer, Dr. Rupp oversees the agency’s relief and rehabilitation operations in 25 countries and its refugee resettlement and assistance programs throughout the United States. In addition, he leads the IRC’s advocacy efforts in Washington DC, Geneva, Brussels, and other capitals on behalf of the world’s most vulnerable people. His responsibilities regularly take him to IRC program sites in Africa, Asia, and Europe.

He is the author of five books:
• Christologies and Cultures: Toward a Typology of Worldviews
• Beyond Existentialism and Zen: Religion in a Pluralistic World
• ‘Culture Protestantism’: German Liberal Theology at the Turn of the 20th Century
• Commitment and Community
• Globalization Challenged: Conviction, Conflict, Community

George and his wife Nancy are the parents of two adult daughters who are teaching and writing, one with scholarly expertise in East Asia and the other a specialist in African studies, and the grandparents of six children, four boys and two girls.

George E. Thibault, MD became the seventh president of the Josiah Macy Jr. Foundation in January 2008.  Immediately prior to that, he served as Vice President of Clinical Affairs at Partners Healthcare System in Boston and Director of the Academy at Harvard Medical School (HMS). He was the first Daniel D. Federman Professor of Medicine and Medical Education at HMS and is now the Federman Professor, Emeritus.

Dr. Thibault previously served as Chief Medical Officer at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and as Chief of Medicine at the Harvard affiliated Brockton/West Roxbury VA Hospital. He was Associate Chief of Medicine and Director of the Internal Medical Residency Program at the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH). At the MGH he also served as Director of the Medical ICU and the Founding Director of the Medical Practice Evaluation Unit.

For nearly four decades at HMS, Dr. Thibault played leadership roles in many aspects of undergraduate and graduate medical education. He played a central role in the New Pathway Curriculum reform and was a leader in the new Integrated Curriculum reform at HMS. He was the Founding Director of the Academy at HMS, which was created to recognize outstanding teachers and to promote innovations in medical education. Throughout his career he has been recognized for his roles in teaching and mentoring medical students, residents, fellows and junior faculty. In addition to his teaching, his research has focused on the evaluation of practices and outcomes of medical intensive care and variations in the use of cardiac technologies.

Dr. Thibault is Chairman of the Board of the MGH Institute of Health Professions, and he serves on the Board of the New York Academy of Sciences, the Institute on Medicine as a Profession, and the Lebanese American University. He serves on the President’s White House Fellows Commission and for twelve years he chaired the Special Medical Advisory Group for the Department of Veteran’s Affairs. He is past President of the Harvard Medical Alumni Association and Past Chair of Alumni Relations at HMS.

Dr. Thibault graduated summa cum laude from Georgetown University in 1965 and magna cum laude from Harvard Medical School in 1969.  He completed his internship and residency in Medicine and fellowship in Cardiology at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH).  He also trained in Cardiology at the National Heart and Lung Institute in Bethesda and at Guys Hospital in London, and served as Chief Resident in Medicine at MGH.

Dr. Thibault has been the recipient of numerous awards and honors from Georgetown (Ryan Prize in Philosophy, Alumni Prize, and Cohongaroton Speaker) and Harvard (Alpha Omega Alpha, Henry Asbury Christian Award and Society of Fellows).  He has been a visiting Scholar both at the Institute of Medicine and Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and a Visiting Professor of Medicine at numerous medical schools in the U.S. and abroad.