Leana S. Wen , M.D.

Portrait
Leana S. Wen , M.D., Director

Dr. Wen has served as a member of our Board of Directors since March 2021. Dr. Wen is an emergency physician and visiting professor of health policy and management at the George Washington University School of Public Health. She is also a contributing columnist for The Washington Post, writing on health policy and public health, and an on-air commentator for CNN as a medical analyst. From 2015 to 2018, she was the health commissioner for the city of Baltimore, where she led the nation’s oldest continuously operating health department to combat the opioid epidemic and improve maternal and child health. From 2013 to 2015, Dr. Wen served as director of patient-centered care research in the department of emergency medicine at George Washington University, and authored a critically-acclaimed book on patient advocacy. She has extensive experience on boards in nonprofit and governmental sectors and with venture-backed health innovation companies, and is currently on the board of the Bipartisan Policy Center and the Baltimore Community Foundation, and the advisory board of the Behavioral Health Group. She has also been a global health fellow at the World Health Organization, a consultant with the China Medical Board, the president of Planned Parenthood and a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. Dr. Wen’s work has been recognized by numerous professional organizations, including as one of Modern Healthcare’s Top 50 Physician-Executives, and, in 2019, she was named one of TIME magazine’s 100 Most Influential People. She holds a B.S. from California State University, Los Angeles, an M.D. from Washington University School of Medicine and two M.Sc.s from the University of Oxford, where she was a Rhodes Scholar. She completed her residency training at Brigham & Women’s Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital, where she was a clinical fellow at Harvard Medical School.