IRB Profiles

Gaston-Johansson, Fannie

Globe-trotting nursing innovator, researcher and educator

Medical professionals ask patients how they feel, where it hurts and how much, and patients struggle to answer the questions. But the Painometer, a pain assessment tool developed by Fannie Gaston-Johansson, helps patients better describe their pain to medical professionals and therefore receive better care.

A commitment to improving pain and symptom management and eliminating health disparities forms the foundation for Gaston-Johansson’s career at Johns Hopkins University. Named the Elsie M. Lawler Professor in 1993, she was the first black woman to become a full professor at Johns Hopkins. In 2007, she was appointed the first chair of the School of Nursing’s Acute and Chronic Care Department. Gaston-Johansson directs the Center on Health Disparities Research, leads the international and interdisciplinary Minority Global Health Disparities Research Training Program and is co-director of a postdoctoral training program in breast cancer research for underserved and minority women.

An opportunity to study in Sweden in the late 1960s served as the catalyst for a parallel career in that country. After a variety of nursing and faculty positions there, Gaston-Johansson served from 2001 to 2005 as the first female dean of Gothenburg University, the largest university in Scandinavia. A year before she became dean, she had inaugurated the university’s doctoral program in nursing. In recognition of her achievements, in 2005 she became the first nurse elected to the Royal Academy of Letters, History and Antiquities, a Swedish organization established in 1753. Gothenburg University held a two-day tribute honoring Gaston-Johansson in 2006, which included a symposium and the presentation to her of “The Apple of Knowledge.”

Glenn Sr., Chance M.

Visionary Engineer and Creative Futurist

He has been described as a jack of all trades and a master of some. Glenn characterizes himself as a creator, a technologist, a futurist and a visionary. In fact, he is all of this thanks in no small part to his accomplished career – a career guided by his education at the Johns Hopkins University. Glenn, now a tenured professor and dean of the College of Engineering at Alabama A&M, received his master’s and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from Johns Hopkins. He earned his undergraduate degree in electrical engineering from the University of Maryland College Park. He also studied management development, earning a certificate, at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

With his paper in hand, Glenn began his career at the Army Research Laboratory in Maryland where he designed microwave and radio frequency devices for a range of defense-related applications. At the lab, he also became involved in signal processing and the study of non-linear dynamical systems. He left the lab to co-start an engineering company. In 2003, Glenn joined the faculty at the Rochester Institute of Technology, where he was a tenured professor. Five years later, he was named associate dean of graduate studies at RIT. Throughout his academic and professional career, Glenn, who is well-published and has given talks nationally and internationally, has several patents to his name.

In 2012, Glenn was named dean of Alabama A&M’s College of Engineering, Technology and Physical Sciences, where he continues to position the university through its plan to prepare students and researchers to meet the global needs of the 21^st century. In his role as dean, Glenn works with faculty to develop new programs in engineering and applied science and he leads the university’s efforts to collaborate with industry and other institutions of higher learning around the world to grow research in materials science, image and signal processing, alternative energy and other areas of global significance. But Glenn isn’t all work and no play. In addition to his academic and professional accomplishments, Glenn is a singer and songwriter who has both written and recorded songs. One of his songs was nominated for a Grammy award.

Golden, Sherita Hill

Physician-Scientist Confronting Social Inequities

In the Media

During medical school, Sherita Hill Golden “developed a passion for inner city medicine,” particularly relating to diabetes among people of color. When she arrived in East Baltimore for her residency in July 1994, the young doctor appreciated the presence of so many Black support staff. “They were very proud when they saw a Black doctor, even if you were an intern,” she recalled. “If you stepped on the elevator and they saw the M.D., they were like, ‘Oh, Dr. Hill, I hope you’re having a good day.’ They would walk you to your car at night to be sure you were safe. They would make sure at holidays that you had food.” In fact, it was a unit clerk who introduced her to her future husband, pediatrician and neonatologist Dr. Christopher Golden. “One of the things that makes Hopkins such a special place is not just the intellectual capital of the faculty but the dedication of the staff, it’s those human relationships that people don’t always see that make a difference for many of us here.”

Golden’s principal clinical and research interest is understanding the effects of chronic psychological stress “whether it’s from racism, depression, or environmental influences, and how that increases a person’s risk for diabetes and heart disease.” Recognizing a correlation between chronic stress and depression and the risk of developing diabetes, she employed the tools of population science to identify novel hormone risk factors as contributors to diabetes. “As a teacher, I wanted to train other physician-scientists how to study the hormonal risk factors in large populations because once you’ve figured out the risk factors, the next question is, how do you develop interventions to change hormonal responses to prevent or treat diabetes?” The system of checks and balances now in place for patients with diabetes throughout the Johns Hopkins Health System resulted directly from Golden’s clinical, research, and educational efforts.
When Freddie Gray was arrested in April 2015, Dr. Golden had been on the faculty for twenty years and executive vice chair of the Department of Medicine for two months. With her department chair’s support, she initiated a Journeys in Medicine discussion series to promote honest dialogue about everyday lived experiences of racial injustices faced by doctors, nurses, administrators, and support staff from minoritized communities. The department also welcomed East Baltimore civic leaders who directed conversations with medical faculty and staff and explained that members of the community sometimes felt they were treated with disrespect when they came into the hospital. They conveyed the community’s willingness to participate in research projects, but admonished, “don’t disappear when it’s over, take the resources, and never tell us what happened.” The series inspired major changes in the Department of Medicine.

In her current role as vice president and chief diversity officer for all of the Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions, Golden partners with administrative peers on other Hopkins campuses to align their approach to diversity awareness training for all staff and students. “After the murder of George Floyd, we worked together across the university and Johns Hopkins Medicine to understand the contribution of structural racism on society,” she recalls. “Just the concepts: What does structural racism look like in health care, in housing, in education?” Similarly, she and her team collaborate with the Office of Government and Community Affairs to support workforce diversity and health equity initiatives, and frequently testify before legislative committees as content experts on various related subjects. “We need more race and ethnic diversity, but we are making progress,” Golden recognizes. “If you treat everybody the same, inequity will persist because everybody needs something different. We aren’t all starting at the same place.”

Grovogui, Siba N.

Justice seeker

In Guinea, the country of his birth, Siba Grovogui excelled academically and became a judge while still in his 20s. But he soon discovered that the political structure in Guinea placed great constraints on judges and hindered justice. In moving to America and becoming an international relations and political theory professor, Grovogui found a more effective way to write and talk about justice. “I want to change how we think of ourselves as humans,” he has said. “We have to know our world. Social sciences really have to be about us in the world. Not what we in America can get from the world.”
In the process, Grovogui is helping to change the way Johns Hopkins teaches international relations. Through his commitment to the Institute for Global Studies, doctoral students have greater opportunities to do field work and to learn from diverse experts in various fields.

Guess, John F.

Catalyst for campus change—Black Student Union Pioneer

Empowered and inspired by the civil rights movement, students John F. Guess and Bruce Baker presented 12 demands to Johns Hopkins University administration in 1967. They sought such changes as increased black student enrollment and black faculty recruitment, a library section for black authors, and Johns Hopkins-Morgan State mixers.

A year later, Guess, Baker and others established a Black Student Union at Johns Hopkins. Although similar groups had already formed at other university campuses, students at Johns Hopkins found their initial requests for official recognition rebuffed. The student council expressed concern that this student union would be seen as hostile and divisive. Continued and mounting pressure from Guess and Baker caused the student council to reconsider its decision and grant official status in 1969.
The Black Student Union remains an influential group at Johns Hopkins, promoting diversity, respect, and understanding. The group also hosts events and lectures, organizes community service projects and works to improve the climate for black students at Johns Hopkins.

Its founders continue to serve as prominent community leaders.

Guess, a native of Houston, became the first BSU chairman and the first black president of the university’s student council. He is chief executive officer of the Houston Museum of African American Culture, managing consultant at The Guess Group Inc., a real estate services company and a Partner in the Dallas-based Access Seminars and Consulting Services. He is an active art collector whose works have been shown in museums across the country and in Europe.

Hall, Joseph S.

University-community convener

For most of his career with Johns Hopkins, Joseph S. “Jakie” Hall was a convener, building and maintaining bridges between university leaders, students, the community and faculty, as well as people in the U.S. government and in other nations.

Hall came to Johns Hopkins in 1973 as dean of students, and, with the simple act of accepting this appointment, he became the first black dean on the Homewood campus. Five years later, Hall was appointed dean of academic services and in 1982 became senior assistant to the president.
In 1986, Hall took on his last position with Johns Hopkins as its vice president for institutional relations. One of his first major projects was to lead a Human Climate Task Force, charged with addressing such issues such as the status of women, academic dishonesty and faculty-student relations. Dr. Steven Muller, then university president, charged the task force with finding a way to deal with these sensitive issues in a spirit of respect, civility and cooperation. The task force presented its findings to Muller in 1987.

In his five years as vice president, Hall continued to address the issues explored by the task force and to promote minority faculty and student recruitment; coordinate the university’s response to student protests over its investments in companies doing business in South Africa; serve as liaison to the International Fellows Program of the Institute for Policy Studies; and manage university projects with the Baltimore City Public School System, such as the Johns Hopkins-Dunbar High School project.

Hargrow, Minnie

Ambassador in the President’s Office

On her first day at work in the cafeteria at Johns Hopkins University’s Homewood campus, Minnie Hargrow looked around to see three buildings, male students wearing suits, and a student body and faculty that were all white. The year was 1946, and Hargrow and her husband had just moved to Baltimore following his return from service in World War II.

For 34 years, Hargrow-who quickly became known to all as “Miss Minnie” continued to work in the cafeteria providing physical and emotional nourishment to the university community, as she witnessed that community becoming larger and more diverse. At the same time, her desire to work in the President’s Office grew stronger.

In 1981, Hargrow was offered and accepted the position of assistant to the president, a position she kept until her retirement in 2007. Her constant smile and warmth permeated the office, yielding strong positive first impressions for countless visitors.

Haynes, M. Alfred

Architect of social justice in medicine

As a physician, mentor, professor and dean, M. Alfred Haynes, now retired, dedicated his career to reducing health disparities and improving health care systems in the U.S. and around the world. After joining the International Health Department at Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health in 1964, he went to India on an assignment in collaboration with the United States Agency for International Development. Tasked with improving the Department of Social and Preventive Medicine at the Medical College in Trivandrum, Kerala, Haynes created a system to place medical interns in rural primary health units for more meaningful field experiences. He also conducted research on background radiation and family planning services. Returning to Johns Hopkins in 1966, Haynes applied his lessons learned to create a program for teachers of community medicine and to develop a comprehensive health planning program. International students used principles learned in these programs to enhance health care around the world. In addition, Haynes published studies regarding opportunities for black health care professionals and contributed to the “Hunger USA” study. His research into racial health disparities led to the creation of the National Medical Association Foundation whose mission is to address the health needs of inner city residents. Haynes was the foundation’s first director. Haynes declined to become a full professor at Johns Hopkins so that he could accept the challenge of helping to establish the Charles Drew Postgraduate Medical School in the Watts area of Los Angeles in 1969. He ultimately became the dean and president of that school.

Hildreth, James

Advocate for Diversity in the Laboratory

A personal letter from pioneering cardiac surgeon Levi Watkins encouraged Harvard senior James Hildreth to apply to Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. After deferring his acceptance to pursue a PhD in immunology at Oxford on a Rhodes Scholarship, Hildreth came to Baltimore in 1982—joining a cohort of fourteen African-American medical students recruited by Watkins. “We all understood the significance of being at Johns Hopkins in unprecedented numbers. When we got onto the wards, we loved that the staff and housekeeping were all people of color and you could see the sense of pride they had in seeing us in our white coats,” Hildreth recalled.

Hildreth was invited to join the pharmacology and molecular sciences faculty in 1987, the same year he graduated from medical school. “It was stressful. You have to recover your salary from grants in the Basic Sciences at Hopkins. I think the pressure cooker helped me because now it’s easy, having been in that environment.”

The start of Hildreth’s professional career coincided with the HIV/AIDS crisis. “It became clear that this was going to be the challenge of our time as immunologists,” he explained. “As my project moved forward, I had to retool and relearn some things. At Hopkins, you could walk down the hall and find an expert and they were always willing to sit down and talk with me about their science.” He was a singular presence in his discipline. “I was the only Black faculty member out of over two hundred in the Basic Sciences at the time,” Hildreth remembered. He remained so when he became a full professor with tenure in 2002, and even when he left Hopkins in 2005 to lead research on HIV/AIDs at Meharry Medical College School of Medicine in Nashville.

Still, Hildreth’s influence remains at Johns Hopkins. In 2009, the Biomedical Scholars Association inaugurated the annual Dr. James E.K. Hildreth Lecture in order to showcase a scientist “who reflects, supports and/or promotes diversity in the fields of biomedical research, public health, or nursing in an effort to educate the Hopkins community.” The event is a fitting tribute for Hildreth, who gratefully recalls “the quality of students that Hopkins attracts. It helped me to be surrounded by brilliant young people.” He was pleased on a recent visit to see increased diversity on the East Baltimore campus.

Today, Dr. Hildreth is president and CEO of Meharry Medical College School, one of the oldest and largest historically Black academic health science centers in the United States. He is proud that Meharry graduates frequently perform their residencies at Johns Hopkins and other top-ranked medical institutions.

After more than thirty years of HIV/AIDS research, Hildreth pivoted in 2020 and joined Operation Warp Speed during the Covid-19 pandemic to oversee vaccine trials at Meharry. He also served on FDA committees that approved vaccines and drugs for treatment of the virus. “I was called upon by lots of organizations to explain the science. I did 109 press conferences. I was particularly interested in making sure that minorities understood because they were most at risk. If you are Black in the United States, you have every reason to be suspicious, based on Tuskegee and eugenics. People have thanked me, saying their loved ones would not have taken the vaccine were it not for me explaining the science.”

“I am committed to making sure there is diversity both in access to health care and in those who provide it,” Hildreth stressed. “I’m especially passionate about making sure we capture all the genius we have in this country. I think about all the brown and black kids out there who might be the ones to solve problems for us but they’ll never get a chance,” he explained. “I’ve ended up training about twenty PhD students and all of them are super bright and super motivated. The truth is, even today with some of the students I’m mentoring or co-mentoring around the country, I learn more from them than they learn from me.”

Hodges, Gertrude J. “Trudy”

Nursing pioneer

Trudy Hodges had no doubts that she should become a nurse. She knew this even as a 4- year-old. But she didn’t know exactly how she would accomplish this goal.

When she overheard someone discussing Johns Hopkins, she wrote to ask if black nursing students would be considered. The admissions office encouraged her to apply.

Throughout her years of study at Johns Hopkins, Hodges remained the only black nursing student. A special counselor was assigned to provide additional support for her. She did not socialize much with the other students and did encounter racism, but having grown up in a rural town in upstate New York, she was accustomed to being in the minority.

After graduation in 1959, Hodges became a head nurse at Johns Hopkins and, after returning to New York to earn a master’s degree, she also taught at Johns Hopkins and at the St. Agnes School of Nursing. Eventually Hodges joined the faculty of the Community College of Baltimore (now Baltimore City Community College), where she taught for 30 years. She often helped students who, like her, had dreamed of becoming nurses to achieve that goal and pursue graduate degrees.

Since retiring, Hodges has contributed to two projects that are building greater trust and collaboration between Johns Hopkins and the neighboring communities. She is an active advisory board member for Paul Laurence Dunbar Senior High School and serves on the advisory committee for the East Baltimore Development Inc.

Hopkins Dining

Nourishing and Nurturing Generations

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The more than 150 women and men who comprise the dedicated workforce of Hopkins Dining have nurtured generations of students, faculty, and staff, dishing up not only nourishing food but also plenty of encouragement and devotion to the JHU community, particularly students. “I love my job,” says Sarah Robinson, a 43-year veteran in Hopkins Dining. “I’ve loved everything I’ve done. I love the kids. We’ve had lots of fun. It’s a nice place to be and to work.”

Robinson says she has “done it all” for Hopkins Dining. “When I started, there was only Levering,” she explained, but by now she has worked in all the venues on the Homewood campus. She enjoyed cooking for seventeen years, then moved on to other positions, and is now a cashier in Nolan’s. She’s often on the job for twelve hours a day. “If people don’t show up, I fill in at the coffee station, or as a line server, or whatever needs to be done.”

Marie Wilson has filled many jobs on the Homewood campus since 1974. “I’ve been in the deli, the dish room, the stock room. I’ve worked for catering, as a line server, and now I’m a cashier. Hopkins has been good to me,” she says. Wilson wants students to feel that the university is their home away from home and enjoys engaging with them. “I treat them as if they were my own.” She likes talking with prospective students and their parents about the beautiful campus and assures them, ‘I’ll be here next year.’” Wilson appreciates the excellent health benefits Hopkins offers, as well as being part of a union.

Phyllis Prettyman began in catering and still enjoys serving at student dinners hosted by the dean of students in his home. Her primary responsibility now is working the register at the new taco station in Levering. Occasionally she will pick up a shift at Nolan’s, and students notice: “Miss Phyllis, you work everywhere!” Prettyman prizes being a team player and is impressed by how long some of her coworkers have been with Hopkins Dining. Together, she and her colleagues are welcoming and hardworking role models who demonstrate kindness and dedication every day as they provide fresh and healthy meals for all.

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King-Hammond, Leslie

Force of art

Leslie King-Hammond, graduate dean emerita of Maryland Institute College of Art, stands at the center of the arts community in Baltimore and is a powerful force far beyond this city. She is chair of the board of the Reginald F. Lewis Museum of Maryland African American History and Culture and a board member of the Creative Alliance. She has served as project director for the Ford/Phillip Morris Fellowships for Artists of Color, an executive board member for the International Association of Art Critics, president of the College Art Association, a trustee of the Baltimore School for the Arts, and a trustee of the Baltimore Museum of Art. She has contributed to major exhibitions and publications for Studio Museum in Harlem, the Met Life Gallery and Columbus Museum of Art.

King-Hammond arrived in Baltimore from New York in 1969. A Horizon Fellow, she earned both her master’s and doctoral degrees from Johns Hopkins University. In 1976, she was appointed dean of graduate studies at MICA. After retirement in 2008, she was named founding director of the Center for Race and Culture at MICA, and she continues to teach art history at the school.

Knight, Franklin W.

Superlative scholar of Latin America

When Franklin W. Knight joined the Johns Hopkins history faculty in 1973, he discovered “an intimate community” on the Homewood campus he enjoyed. “People were very serious about the work they did. It was extremely collegial. The intellectual pursuit was up front, mainstream, and focused.” He relished the diversity in his graduate seminars on Latin American history, which drew students from medicine, public health, economics, and political science, as well as aspiring historians. “I remember having very strong differences of opinion during the seminar, and afterwards we would go to the faculty club and continue the discussions in a very tranquil way.”

A native of Jamaica, Franklin Knight earned his undergraduate degree at the University College of the West Indies–London and his graduate degrees from the University of Wisconsin in Madison. At Johns Hopkins, he became the first black faculty member to secure academic tenure. From 1998 he directed the Latin American Studies Program and between 2011 and 2014, Knight directed JHU’s Center for Africana Studies. His research centers on social, political, and cultural aspects of Latin America and the Caribbean, particularly following the eighteenth century. A highly respected scholar, Professor Knight has held fellowships from multiple foundations and research councils, and the National Endowment for the Humanities; and served as an academic analyst for public and commercial television and radio programs. He has been president of both The Historical Society and the Latin American Studies Association, served on numerous advisory councils and editorial boards, and lectured across the Americas, Europe, Australia, and Japan. The author, editor, or translator of influential books on Latin American history and culture, Dr. Knight has also written many chapters, articles, and forewords, as well as more than a hundred book reviews for professional journals.

Still, teaching remains Knight’s passion. “I have always said that what’s useful about what I’m doing in history is not the factual information I provide, but how you can use that factual information, how you can shape it to resolve a practical problem that you might have in any sphere of endeavor,” Franklin Knight explains. “I say to my students, year in and year out, that I want them to be less complacent about everything than when they came in. I want them to raise questions. I don’t presume that my students want to do history, but I presume that they want to be responsible citizens, and therefore what I want to do is to equip them to be better citizens wherever they are, and ‘better citizens’ means that they must be better informed.” Knight assumed emeritus status and joined the Academy at Johns Hopkins in 2014.

Laforest-Sharif, Regine

A Servant Leader

Regine Laforest-Sharif was drawn to Johns Hopkins because of its esteemed Black Faculty and Staff Association (BFSA).  Recalling her first BFSA meeting in 1995, she described “all of these very powerful, warm administrators who were very excited to welcome me. You could see they were committed to doing some really good work, and making sure that equity was going to be very much part of the university.” The organization included people “at all levels” and provided great networking opportunities. “Whenever I felt confused or isolated, I always found shelter in that space.” She quickly became involved, serving as membership coordinator and treasurer, then, as BFSA president in 2000–01, inaugurating the first university-wide full-day diversity conference that year, held on the East Baltimore campus.

Originally hired as a housing coordinator, Laforest-Sharif rose to associate director of Housing Operations after two decades of impeccable service.  She impacted many aspects of students’ experiences on and off the Homewood campus. “I often told students and parents that we’ve done you a disservice if you leave the university setting unchanged. Our job is to offer you an opportunity to think differently, to act differently, and to learn differently. And you only get to do that one time.” Within community living, “you learn how to negotiate. How do you tell somebody that something is not okay? How do you take care of yourself? How do you manage your time?”

Laforest-Sharif recalls the position as “a humbling experience.” She developed close relationships with many students over the years, taking a group to Ghana and Haiti and partnering with the Haitian embassy. She also advised the Caribbean Student Organization for over 27 years, and still advises three student cultural groups on the Homewood campus. “Students taught me things all the time. They kept me young. I miss them.”

Accepting a new challenge in 2023, Laforest-Sharif moved to the School of Nursing in East Baltimore. “I see a lot of value in being able to develop new initiatives and new programs. I get a lot of energy from that.” In her position as director of Student Affairs, she manages and oversees all student groups, sets programming, proposes collaborative opportunities, and helps to resolve students in crisis. She’s excited to be working with a new cohort of colleagues and students. “We all have ideas and thoughts about what we think people need but it’s really different when you give people the opportunity to say what they need.”

Laforest-Sharif stresses the importance of making an impact. “Whether it’s through my church, my sorority, the work that I do in the Baltimore community, I don’t want to just do stuff, I want it to be transformative for the people who are receiving whatever it is I’m participating in.” She grew up in New York City in a hardworking Haitian immigrant family that emphasized good manners, earning your own way, and being grateful. “The spirit in our home was always about empowering and serving other people, and that has very much informed who I am.” In Baltimore, she belongs to the oldest Black Catholic Church in the United States—St. Francis Xavier—and serves as president of the board of directors for the Pastorate, helping her church to join forces with two others. She is viewed as “a servant leader,” and acknowledges the efforts are a lot of work but, she says, “I get a hundredfold back for the work I’ve put in.”

LaVeist, Thomas A.

Health care gap closer

Identifying a problem is only the first step. On the issue of health care gaps, Thomas A. LaVeist has devoted his career to the next steps: why those gaps exist and how to close them. LaVeist is the director of the Hopkins Center for Health Disparities Solutions and the William C. and Nancy F. Richardson Professor in Health Policy at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

The recipient of major awards from the National Institutes of Health and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, LaVeist focuses on the areas of U.S. health and social policy; the role of race in health research; social factors contributing to mortality, longevity and life expectancy; quantitative and demographic analysis and access; and the utilization of health services. He earned a doctorate in medical sociology from the University of Michigan and completed a postdoctoral fellowship in public health at the University of Michigan’s School of Public Health.

At Johns Hopkins, he teaches courses in health policy, minority health, cultural competency and racial disparities in health. A frequent lecturer at other universities and professional conferences, he consults often with federal agencies and health care organizations. He has written five books, including two regarding minority health, Race, Ethnicity, and Health: A Public Health Reader and Minority Populations and Health: An Introduction to Health Disparities in the U.S. His research has been funded by the National Institutes of Health, the National Center on Minority Health and Health Disparities, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and numerous national foundations.

Lewis-Hall, Freda C.

Global Health Authority

When Freda C. Lewis-Hall speaks about healthcare which she does often-in corporate boardrooms, at conferences, on national boards and even on popular television shows, she addresses her audiences with the ease and authority of a physician who has risen to the top of her profession and who approaches medicine as a clinician, researcher, strategist, educator, executive and communicator.

After earning an undergraduate degree at Johns Hopkins, Lewis-Hall trained as a psychiatrist and worked in academia, medical research and frontline patient care. Her career path has included serving as vice chair of the Department of Psychiatry at Howard University College of Medicine and leading research projects for the National Institutes of Health.

Work for major global pharmaceutical companies including Vertex, Bristol-Myers Squibb and Eli Lilly led Lewis-Hall to Pfizer, Inc. where she now serves as executive vice president and chief medical officer. At Pfizer, she directs worldwide regulatory and safety strategy, operations and compliance; external medical affairs and communication; clinical trials excellence; quality assurance and the Center for Medical Advancement.
Lewis-Hall is a fellow of the American Academy of Psychiatry and participates on a host of boards including Harvard School of Medicine Board of Fellows; the Institute of Medicine-s Forum on Drug Discovery, Development and Translation; New York Academy of Medicine; the Society of Women-s Health Research; Save the Children and the Foundation of the National Institutes of Health. The Obama administration appointed her to its Inaugural Board of Governors for the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute. Lewis-Hall has been honored in recent years as one of “Savoy” magazine-s Top Influential Women in Corporate America and the Healthcare Business Women-s Association-s Woman of the Year.

Writing about her book, a peer described Lewis-Hall as a “luminescent leader” and noted that she “has enjoyed great success throughout her career, advancing to senior-most positions within the companies where she has worked. However, these are not the achievements that define her. Rather, her passion for healing and building people is what is most outstanding.”