Board of Advisors

Alan R. Batkin was vice chairman of Eton Park Capital Management, L.P., a global, multi-disciplinary investment firm, from 2007 to 2012. Prior to joining Eton Park, he was, from 1990 to 2007, vice chairman of Kissinger Associates, a geopolitical consulting company. He is chairman emeritus of the International Rescue Committee; chair of Airbel, IRC’s Innovation Lab; a trustee and member of the Executive Committee of the New York City Police Foundation; a member of the Board and Executive Committee of the MD Anderson Cancer Center; and chair of the Massachusetts General Hospital Center for Global Health. He is a member of the Columbia Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute’s “Brain Trust.” Mr. Batkin is a trustee of the Brookings Institution, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and a former member of the Trilateral Commission and the Inter-American Dialogue. He received a BS from the University of Rochester and an MBA from New York University.

As vice-chair of the Clinton Foundation, Dr. Chelsea Clinton works alongside the Foundation’s leadership and partners to help create economic opportunity, improve public health, and inspire civic engagement and service across the United States and around the world.  In particular, Chelsea focuses on promoting early brain and language development through the Too Small to Fail initiative, and uplifting/empowering female entrepreneurs and women-led businesses around the world through initiatives like the Caribbean-focused Women in Renewable Energy (WIRE) Network. She also serves on the boards of the Clinton Health Access Initiative and the Alliance for a Healthier Generation. In addition to her Foundation work, Chelsea also teaches at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health and has written several books for young readers, including the #1 New York Times–bestselling She Persisted: 13 American Women Who Changed the World, as well as She Persisted Around the World, She Persisted in Sports, Start Now! You Can Make a Difference, Don’t Let Them Disappear, and It’s Your World: Get Informed, Get Inspired & Get Going. She is also the co-author of The Book of Gutsy Women and Grandma’s Gardens with her mom Hillary Clinton and of Governing Global Health: Who Runs the World and Why? with Devi Sridhar. Chelsea holds a Bachelor of Arts from Stanford University, a Master of Public Health from Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, and both a Master of Philosophy and a Doctorate in international relations from Oxford University. She lives with her husband Marc; their children Charlotte, Aidan, and Jasper; and dog, Soren, in New York City.

Jean Drouin, MD, is the founder and CEO of Clarify Health Solutions, which enables health systems, payers, and life sciences organizations to deliver more satisfying and efficient care through advanced analytics, machine learning, and digital care optimization solutions. Prior to Clarify, Jean was a Senior Partner at McKinsey & Company, where his roles included leading the global Healthcare IT and Digital Practice, setting up the UK and Australian Healthcare Practices, and serving as the founding Head of McKinsey Advanced Healthcare Analytics (MAHA). He also served as Head of Strategy for NHS London, which oversaw London’s $15 billion hospital and primary care system. In these roles, he served over 20 countries and 100 health systems and payers on engagements that generated over $1 billion in efficiency and quality improvements. Jean is passionate about transforming health care delivery across the continuum of care. He has written and spoken extensively on value-based care, population health, new payment models, and the role of big data and analytics in delivering better outcomes. Jean holds MD and MBA degrees from Stanford and an AB in Molecular Biology from Princeton. He is the former vice-chair of Lester B. Pearson United World College of the Pacific.

Dr. Xue Fang is currently a member of the President’s Advisory Council and a member of the Graduate School Dean’s Leadership Council of Princeton University. She also serves as a director in Teach for China, Inc. Born in Beijing, China, Xue studied Biology at Beijing University before attending the Graduate School of Princeton University in 1988 to study Neuroscience. She received a PhD in Neuroscience and Psychology in 1995 from Princeton University and an MS in Biostatistics from Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health in 1998. She has participated in medical research projects and has worked as a biostatistician in Schering-Plough, a pharmaceutical company in New Jersey. Xue has a special interest in education and enjoys reading extensively.

(Ex-Officio Member): Linda P. Fried, MD, MPH, is Dean and DeLamar Professor of Public Health at the Columbia Mailman School, professor of Medicine at Columbia’s College of Physicians & Surgeons, and senior vice president at Columbia University Medical Center. Dr. Fried is a geriatrician, epidemiologist, and internationally renowned scientist who has propelled our understanding of how to create healthy aging and set the basis for a transition to an aging world that benefits all ages. She has led the scientific work to define the medical syndrome of frailty and its causes and prevention as keys to optimizing health and is the codesigner and founder of Experience Corps. Prior to becoming dean in 2008, Dr. Fried served as director of the Division of Geriatric Medicine and Gerontology and of the Center on Aging and Health at Johns Hopkins University. Dr. Fried is also the recipient of numerous awards including the French National INSERM International Prize in Medical Research and was named a “Living Legend in Medicine” by the U.S. Congress. She is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine and past president of the Association of American Physicians. Dr. Fried was named, in 2014, one of the most influential scientific minds of the past decade by Thompson Reuters, and the New York Times has called her one of the 15 world leaders in science. 

Ellen Hukkelhoven is a managing director at Perceptive Advisors, a leading health care investment firm. She focuses on public and private development–stage therapeutic companies. Ellen serves on the boards of MeiraGTx, Kindbody, and Partner Therapeutics. Prior to Perceptive, Ellen received her PhD in Cancer Biology from Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. During her tenure at MSKCC, she founded and built the life sciences division of InSITE, a top graduate fellowship program that helps early-stage companies with their most pressing needs. This program includes students across various Columbia University graduate programs.  Ellen graduated magna cum laude from Princeton University with degrees in molecular biology and finance.

Igor Kirman is a partner in the Corporate Department at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, where he focuses on mergers and acquisitions, activism and takeover defense, corporate governance, private equity, shareholder activism, and general corporate matters. Mr. Kirman is a frequent speaker at professional conferences and has written articles in numerous professional publications on topics relating to mergers and acquisitions and corporate governance.  He has been frequently recognized for achievement by professional organizations such as Chambers USA, New York Superlawyers, Who’s Who Legal, and Best Lawyers in America. He was twice named as Dealmaker of the Year by American Lawyer (2006 and 2015). Mr. Kirman is the author of a book, M&A and Private Equity Confidentiality Agreements (Thomson Reuters). He is the chair of the Practising Law Institute’s annual “Doing Deals” program in New York and teaches a course on M&A as an adjunct at Columbia Law School. Mr. Kirman received a BA in ethics, politics, and economics, magna cum laude, from Yale University in 1993 and a JD from Columbia Law School in 1996. He is involved in a number of civic institutions, including as a member of the Advisory Board of the Mount Sinai School of Medicine and Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, a trustee of the Trinity School, and a director of Renew Democracy Initiatives (RDI). 

Dave Magstadt is a senior managing director and founding member of the Medical Device practice at Guggenheim Securities, the investment banking and capital markets business of Guggenheim Partners. Guggenheim is a leading, independent, and global investment banking firm focused in providing advisory, capital markets, sales, and trading and research to institutional clients. Mr. Magstadt joined the firm in July 2015 to lead the medical device mergers and acquisitions execution effort with the group. Prior to joining Guggenheim, Dave spent 12 years at Citigroup Global Markets Inc. working in the global mergers and acquisitions group in New York focused on health care. Over the course of his career, Mr. Magstadt has advised on a broad range of public and private corporate transactions in the hundreds of billions of deal value. Dave earned a Masters of Business Administration with honors at Columbia in 2003 and spent three years prior to business school as a consultant at Accenture both in the U.S. and Europe. He holds a Bachelor of Science in Biochemistry from the University of Oklahoma, where he graduated Phi Beta Kappa and was honored as one of the 10 most outstanding students at the university. He has served on the Junior Board of the New York chapter of Covenant House and is an alumnus of Haymakers for Hope.

Phyllis Mailman attended Radcliffe College and is vice president of the Mailman Foundation and the Joshua Mailman Foundation. She and her late husband, Joseph L. Mailman, were principal donors to the Mailman Research Center at the McLean Hospital in Belmont, Massachusetts, and to the Mailman Center for Child Development at the University of Miami. In 1998, the Mailman Foundation made a generous gift to name the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. In addition to sitting on the Board of Advisors for the Mailman School, Mrs. Mailman is also on the board of Lincoln Center Theatre.

Dr. Cora Neumann is a public health expert and recently founded We Are Montana to support public health leadership across rural and Native Montana. Over the past 20 years, she has collaborated with local and national leaders to bring quality, accessible care to rural and Native communities—including during the current COVID outbreak. In 2009, Cora launched the Global First Ladies Alliance in partnership with the offices of First Ladies Laura Bush and Michelle Obama, over time working with more than 40 first ladies around the world to help bring critical health care and social services to their populations. Cora has served at the U.S. State Department and worked for the RAND Corporation, Bush Institute, Care.com, and more. She has a master’s in public health from Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health and a doctorate in international development from the University of Oxford. She most recently ran for U.S. Senate in her home state of Montana, currently serves on the board of Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, is a member of the Montana Public Health Association, and serves as an advisor to COVID Local and the Montana Democratic Party Native Vote Program. Cora grew up and is based in Bozeman, surrounded by four generations of family, from her grandmother to her two teenage children.

Mary Lake Polan served as the chair of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Stanford’s School of Medicine and is currently a Clinical Professor of Obstetrics, Gynecology Reproductive Medicine at Yale University. Dr. Polan served on the board of Wyeth Pharmaceuticals and currently serves on the boards of Quidel Corp and several privately held life sciences companies. She chairs the Scientific Advisory Board on Women’s Health and Hygiene for Proctor & Gamble and several other advisory boards of private life sciences companies. She is a managing director of Golden Seeds, an angel investing group which invests in women-led companies. A member of the Institute of Medicine, Dr. Polan has a long-standing interest in women’s health research and international public health. She founded The Eritrean Women’s Project to repair fistulas resulting from traumatic births. She received her BA from Connecticut College, her PhD in molecular physics and chemistry and MD from Yale, and her MPH from the University of California, Berkeley.

Paula A. Price was EVP and chief financial officer of Macy’s Inc. from July 2018 to May 2020 and currently serves as advisor to the renowned retailer. Price has been a visiting executive with Harvard Business School since July 2018, and was a full-time senior lecturer of business administration in the Accounting and Management Unit, having joined the faculty in July 2014. Until January 2014, Price was executive vice president and chief financial officer of Ahold USA, which she joined in 2009. At Ahold, Price was responsible for finance, accounting, and shared services; strategy and planning; real estate development and construction; and information technology. Price transformed the finance function; delivered a $1 billion cost-savings program to fund strategic growth initiatives; and led a team of over 1,000. Prior to joining Ahold, Price was senior vice president, controller, and chief accounting officer for CVS Caremark Corporation, and a key player in the $26 billion CVS/Caremark merger transaction. Previously, Price worked in the financial services industry at JP Morgan Chase and Prudential Insurance Co. of America; and in the consumer packaged goods industry at Diageo and Kraft Foods. Price began her career as an intern in public accounting at Arthur Andersen & Co. before joining full-time with clients that spanned financial services, consumer packaged goods, and health care. Price currently serves as an independent director for public, private, and not-for-profit companies. Today, she serves on the boards of the following publicly traded companies: Accenture, chairing its Audit Committee; Bristol Myers Squibb; Western Digital; and DaVita. Prior to her role as CFO of Macy’s, Inc., she also served on the boards of Dollar General, Newton-Wellesley Hospital, and Metropolitan College of New York. Price was previously board chair of Big Brothers Big Sisters of Massachusetts. She is a qualified audit committee financial expert as defined by the SEC and a certified public accountant. Price’s career includes senior-level finance, general management, and strategy roles based in New York, Boston, London, and Chicago in the retail, financial services, health care, and consumer packaged goods industries.  Price earned her MBA in Finance and Strategy from the University of Chicago and her BSc in Accountancy from DePaul University. 

Peggy Shepard is cofounder and executive director of WE ACT for Environmental Justice and has a long history of organizing and engaging Northern Manhattan residents in community-based planning and campaigns to address environmental protection and environmental health policy locally and nationally. She has successfully combined grassroots organizing, environmental advocacy, and environmental health community-based participatory research to become a national leader in advancing environmental policy and the perspective of environmental justice in urban communities—to ensure that the right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment extends to all. She serves on the Executive Committee of the National Black Environmental Justice Network and the Board of Advisors of the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health and was the first female chair of the National Environmental Justice Advisory Council to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Her work has received broad recognition: the Jane Jacobs Medal from the Rockefeller Foundation for Lifetime Achievement, the 10th Annual Heinz Award For the Environment, the Dean’s Distinguished Service Award from the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, and honorary doctorates from Smith College and Lawrence University.

Jonathan Smidt is the founding partner of Equable Capital, a New York–based private investment firm. Until May 2018, Jonathan was a Partner in KKR’s private equity practice in both London and New York, where he spent the previous 18 years.  Prior to joining KKR, Mr. Smidt was at Goldman Sachs in New York and Ernst and Young in Cape Town, South Africa. Mr. Smidt holds a B. Bus. Sci. and GDA from the University of Cape Town. He is a member of the Council of Foreign Relations and serves on the board of Team Rubicon.

(Ex-Officio Member): Dr. Ashwin Vasan is the Commissioner of the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. Dr. Vasan is a primary care physician, epidemiologist, and public health expert with nearly 20 years of experience working to improve physical and mental health, social welfare, and public policy for marginalized populations in New York City, nationally and globally. Since 2014 he has served on the faculty at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health and Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons, and he continues to see patients as a primary care internist in the Division of General Medicine at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia University Irving Medical Center. Dr. Vasan most recently served as the president and CEO of Fountain House, a national nonprofit fighting to improve health, increase opportunity, and end social and economic isolation for people most impacted by mental illness. Early in his career, Dr. Vasan spent nearly a decade at the intersection of global health, HIV, and primary care, working with the nonprofit Partners In Health (PIH) in Rwanda, Lesotho, and Boston, and at the World Health Organization (WHO) in Uganda and Geneva. From 2016 to 2019, Dr. Vasan served as the founding executive director of the Health Access Equity Unit at the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, which focused on the intersection of clinical and social services for the care of people involved in the criminal legal system and other vulnerable populations. He is a proud husband and father of three school-aged children who fill up every free moment of his time.

Jody Mailman Wolfe is the president of the Mailman Foundation. Retired after nearly 25 years in professional law enforcement, Ms. Wolfe has served on a number of nonprofit boards in New York and Miami with a range of interests, including child welfare, foster care, substance abuse prevention, independent school education, and the arts. Ms. Wolfe has long been involved in higher education and currently serves on the Board of the American Council of Trustees and Alumni based in Washington, DC. In addition to Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, the Mailman Foundation has also been an important benefactor to institutions such as the Mailman Research Center in Psychobiology at Harvard’s McLean Hospital in Massachusetts, the Mailman Center for Child Development at the University of Miami’s Miller School of Medicine, and Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts.

James (Jim) Harden served for over 15 years as the founding chairman of the Board of Advisors for the Columbia Mailman School of Public Health and is now chair emeritus. He also created two doctoral fellowship funds for the history of medicine and public health. As a 1983 alumnus of the School’s Health Policy and Management Program, Jim was a leader in the creation of the National Advisory Board for Health Policy and Management. He is also a 1978 graduate of Columbia Business School.

Having served the maximum term of twelve years as a trustee of Columbia University, Jim is now trustee emeritus. He served as chair of the Board’s Nominating and Governance Committee, as well as a member of the Finance Committee and the Health Sciences Committee. A retired health care executive, Jim served a total of 30 years at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. For nine years until his retirement, Jim was the CEO of Catholic Health Services on Long Island, the second largest nongovernmental employer in the region.

The Rev. Dr. James Alexander Forbes, Jr., is senior minister emeritus of The Riverside Church and president of the Healing of the Nations Foundation. Forbes, who was installed as the fifth senior minister of Riverside on June 1, 1989, and retired on June 1, 2007, was the first African-American to serve as senior minister of this multicultural congregation. He is an ordained minister in the American Baptist Churches and the Original United Holy Church of America. He earned a doctor of ministry degree from Colgate-Rochester Divinity School, a master of divinity degree from Union Theological Seminary, and a BA from Howard University, and has received numerous honorary degrees.

Dr. David Harris has had a long-standing career in the medical field. He was the vice president of medical affairs for the Visiting Nurse Service of New York, the commissioner of the Suffolk County Department of Health, the associate director of Mount Sinai Hospital, and deputy commissioner of NYC Department of Health. He attended Cornell University, where he was selected to Phi Beta Kappa, and received his MD from New York University. Dr. Harris is a 1965 alumnus of the Columbia Mailman School and a recipient of Columbia’s Alumni Federation Medal for Conspicuous Service. In addition to his 40 years on the board of Public Health Solutions, Dr. Harris serves on the boards of several organizations that address issues of medicine, health, home health and hospice care, disposal of low-level radioactive waste, and protection of community water supplies. As a member of the New York State Board for Medicine and the New York State Board of Professional Medical Conduct, Dr. Harris now focuses his professional interests on physician licensure and discipline.

Frank R. Jimenez leads the Office of General Counsel of Raytheon Technologies, where he oversees a variety of legal and regulatory affairs, including corporate governance and transactions, ethics and compliance, litigation, contracts, and intellectual property. His career includes legal leadership positions in military agencies, civil government, and public companies in the private sector. Most recently he was vice president, general counsel, and corporate secretary of Raytheon Company prior to its merger with United Technologies Corporation in 2020. Jimenez previously served as general counsel of three S&P 500 Companies: ITT Corp., Xylem Inc., and Bunge Ltd. Before that, he served as the 21st General Counsel of the Navy, where he was one of seven U.S. Senate–confirmed Pentagon civilians of four-star equivalent rank overseeing the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps. He was also the deputy general counsel for the U.S. Department of Defense, chief of staff at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, and deputy chief of staff and acting general counsel to the governor of Florida. He holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Miami, a juris doctorate degree from Yale Law School, an MBA from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, and a master’s degree in national security and strategic studies from the U.S. Naval War College. 

Leonard Tow is the founder and chairman of The Tow Foundation and chief executive officer of New Century Holdings, LLC. Dr. Tow was previously chairman and chief executive officer of Citizens Utilities Company and founder, chairman, and chief executive officer of Century Communications Corp., a cable television company. Dr. Tow was also the founder and director of Centennial Cellular Corp. He graduated from Brooklyn College and holds doctoral and master’s degrees from Columbia University, and has taught economics and economics geography at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Business, Brooklyn College, and Hunter College. Dr. Tow also served for several years as distinguished adjunct professor at New York University’s School of Business. Brooklyn College, City University of New York, and the University of New Haven have awarded Dr. Tow Doctorates of Humane Letters. Dr. Tow serves on the boards of several organizations, including Lincoln Center Theater, Educational Broadcasting Corp., and The Tow Foundation. He is a trustee of Brooklyn College Foundation, a senior advisor of the Board of the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, and is also a director of AMC Networks.