Graduates

 Alumni Changing the World of Public Health

AT THE FOREFRONT OF BIOTECH

Michael Meyers, MPH ’93

Michael Meyers had planned to go to medical school until an internship at a brokerage firm changed his path. “I loved creating summaries of biotech and pharmaceutical opportunities, and I realized that I wanted to explore the business of medicine,” he says.

After college, Meyers took a job with an investment bank, then joined a company tasked with turning around St. Barnabas Hospital in the Bronx, which was facing insolvency. He also decided to enter the executive MPH program—a decision influenced by his grandfather, a famous labor negotiator and financial advisor to New York City’s unions. “My interest in public health and public service came from him,” he says. “I saw what he did through collective bargaining in terms of supporting workers and their families.”

At Columbia Mailman, Meyers studied health policy and management. Michael S. Sparer, JD, PhD, chair of the department, mentored him. “I think he took a particular interest in my education because I was so young and didn’t really have a clear vision of my path,” Meyers says. Many of his classmates were accomplished professionals, and he says he learned as much from them as from his classes. 

Postgraduation, Meyers joined Cowen and Company, a major firm financing and advising biotechnology companies such as Genentech and Amgen. He started as a third-year analyst. “I think the thought was that I would have different insights or credibility with clients” due to the MPH, he says. Over the past 30 years, Meyers has focused on biotech while working for several firms, including H.C. Wainwright & Co., where he is head of mergers and acquisitions, credit, and royalty finance. He is guided by advice from an early mentor who told him, “Your reputation is everything,” and that integrity, not headlines, makes a career last. While he sometimes wonders about the life he might have had as a doctor, he has aided companies that have developed cures for hepatitis and treatments for HIV, cardiovascular disease, central nervous system disorders, and more. “To have supported this has brought me great career and personal satisfaction,” he says.

CONTINUOUSLY  IMPROVING CARE

Mini Virmani, MPH ’20

Mini Virmani got an early start in healthcare operations as a girl in Dehradun, India. Her physician father ran free clinics, and she helped manage the patients, serve food, and run errands. “We would get over 300 people in line for care,” she recalls. Later, after majoring in engineering, she realized that lean manufacturing, which focuses on cutting waste, and Six Sigma, a data-driven approach to reduce variation and defects, could be applied to healthcare: “The experience I had with my father showed me that when resources are low, efficiency is an edge.”

Virmani moved to the U.S. in 2013 to get her master’s in healthcare management and health IT/analytics, and soon found herself overseeing behavioral health operations for a medical center in San Bernardino, California, an area with high crime and addiction rates. “We were fixing people and sending them home, but they kept getting readmitted because of substance abuse,” she says. This convinced her she needed her MPH. “I needed to understand what happened to patients outside the hospital,” she recalls. At Columbia Mailman, she studied health policy and management. Professor Kai Ruggeri, PhD, “taught us how to bring behavior change into clinical settings,” she says. “This is the challenge every healthcare leader faces because there’s a staff shortage, an infodemic, and everything ultimately falls on our clinical peers. So how do we use psychological and behavioral techniques to bring change?”

She also learned about racial disparities in health outcomes. She thinks about this often in her current role as director of quality–external programs at Emory Healthcare, overseeing safety and quality metrics for eight hospitals. She has created dashboards that go beyond outcome numbers to reveal the specific steps driving them, to make sure vulnerable populations don’t get overlooked. Virmani’s father died a few years ago, and she and her brother created a scholarship in his name. She tries to imbue his passion for helping others into her staff. “I remind people that patients’ healing happens through us,” she says. “Just thinking that way can really help with burnout.”

ACHIEVING OLYMPIC DREAMS

Regina Martínez Lorenzo, MPH ’17, MD

Days before her first Olympic ski race, Regina Martínez Lorenzo fell three times, breaking her poles. “What am I doing here?” she thought. Then she saw top contenders struggling on the difficult course and overcame her self-doubt just in time for the women’s cross-country 10km free. “I tried to be in the moment, even on the hills,” she says. “I heard cheering in Spanish and thought, ‘Those cheers are for me!’”

In the 2026 Winter Olympics, Regina Martínez Lorenzo became the first woman to compete for Mexico in skiing. She trains on roller skis in Miami, where she lives, and on snow in Norway with her coach. Working as a traveling ER physician and saving up her vacation time allows her the flexibility in her schedule to train."> Growing up in both Mexico and the United States, Martínez Lorenzo was always goal oriented. Her childhood bucket list included living in New York City and going to an Ivy League school. Those dreams became reality at Columbia Mailman, where she studied epidemiology and health policy. Her fieldwork included a National Institutes of Health–funded study with Manuela Orjuela-Grimm, MD, associate professor of Epidemiology and Pediatrics, on immigrant families’ diet and infant development.

She took up cross-country skiing while in Minnesota for medical school. After a polar vortex hit the Twin Cities, Martínez Lorenzo was exhausted from her surgery rotation and depressed about the weather. She reminded herself that she’d always dreamed of being an Olympic athlete. She reached out to Germán Madrazo, a cross-country skier who competed for Mexico in the 2018 Winter Olympics. He flew north to teach her how to ski better. Later, she saved up her vacation time and began to travel to Norway to train with a coach there. She qualified for the 2026 Olympics, snagging Mexico’s single women’s spot in cross-country. In February, she crossed the finish line. “It was awesome,” she says. She’s already training with the 2030 Olympic games in the French Alps in her sights.

Follow her journey on Instagram: @doctor_regina.

In the 2026 Winter Olympics, Regina Martínez Lorenzo became the first woman to compete for Mexico in skiing. She trains on roller skis in Miami, where she lives, and on snow in Norway with her coach. Working as a traveling ER physician and saving up her vacation time allows her the flexibility in her schedule to train.

This article was first published in the 2026-2027 issue of Columbia Public Health Magazine.