Lainie Friedman Ross, M’86, PhD, a pediatrician and philosopher, is the Dean’s Professor and inaugural Chair of the Department of Health Humanities and Bioethics, the Director of the Paul M Schyve, MD Center for Bioethics, and holds secondary appointments in the Departments of Pediatrics and Philosophy at the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry. Prior to joining the University of Rochester in 2023, Dr. Ross spent 28 years at the University of Chicago where she was the Carolyn and Matthew Bucksbaum Professor of Clinical Ethics, Professor in the Departments of Pediatrics, Medicine, Surgery and The College, co-director of the Institute for Translational Medicine, and Associate Director of the MacLean Center for Clinical Medical Ethics.

Dr. Ross’ research portfolio addresses ethical and policy issues in organ and tissue transplantation, pediatrics, genetics, research ethics, and health care disparities. She and colleagues proposed the idea of kidney paired exchanges between incompatible donor-recipient pairs, which then evolved into kidney chains and now accounts for over 1,000 lives saved annually. She co-authored two seminal textbooks on deceased donor and living donor organ transplantation (with Robert M. Veatch, PhD, and J. Richard Thistlethwaite MD, PhD, respectively). In pediatrics, Dr. Ross challenged the “best interest of the child” standard as the appropriate guidance for intimate families. Her model of constrained parental autonomy, published by Oxford University Press, provides a moral approach to the triadic pediatric relationship (doctor, patient, and parents). 
Most of Dr. Ross’ attention toward genetics has been focused on newborn screening policies; in research ethics, she has served on the Secretary’s Advisory Committee on Human Research Protections (SACHRP), the Recombinant DNA Advisory Committee (RAC), and numerous National Institutes of Health (NIH) Data Safety Monitoring committees. Dr. Ross’ work in disparities has explored and proposed solutions to the over-representation of women as living organ donors, the under-representation of women and Blacks as organ recipients, and the racial and ethnic disparities caused by different genetic screening methodologies and policies.

Dr. Ross is a graduate of the School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University (AB), the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania (MD), and Yale University (MPhil and PhD in Philosophy). She trained in pediatrics at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and the Morgan Stanley Children's Hospital of New York-Presbyterian. She is a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellow and a member of the National Academy of Medicine. She and her husband, John Ross, have two children.

Ravi Ishwar Thadhani, M’91, MPH, is the Executive Vice President for Health Affairs (EVPHA) of Emory University, Executive Director of Emory’s Woodruff Health Sciences Center (WHSC), and Vice Chair of the Emory Healthcare Board of Directors. The Woodruff Health Sciences Center includes Emory’s schools of medicine, public health and nursing; Winship Cancer Institute; Emory National Primate Research Center; Emory Global Health Institute; Goizueta Institute @ Emory Brain Health; Emory Global Diabetes Research Center; and Emory Healthcare. Emory Healthcare, with more than 24,000 employees, 11 hospital campuses and 425 locations, is the most comprehensive academic health system in Georgia.

Dr. Thadhani oversees Emory’s renowned academic health sciences enterprise, focused on advancing research, training, and health-care delivery innovation. As vice chair of the Emory Healthcare board, he provides guidance for Emory Healthcare’s CEO and leadership team, ensuring the delivery of high-quality, patient-centered care focused on supporting the health and well-being of patients around the state. 

Dr. Thadhani most recently served as chief academic officer and dean for faculty affairs for Mass General Brigham and professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, both in Boston, Massachusetts. As a member of the executive leadership team, he oversaw graduate medical education, professional development, and a $2.3 billion research enterprise. Previously, Dr. Thadhani served as vice dean of research and graduate research education at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles (2017- 2019), associate director of research at Mass General Brigham (2012-2017), and chief of nephrology at Massachusetts General Hospital (2013-2017).

With more than 30 years as a general and specialized internal medicine physician, Dr. Thadhani has extensive experience in patient care, research, and clinical trials. He led a successful research lab with continuous federal funding for more than 25 years, with a focus on kidney disease and developing diagnostics and therapeutics for patients with preeclampsia. He and his colleagues developed the first FDA approved test for preeclampsia (May 2023), and he is now working on a therapy for this devastating condition. He is the author or co-author of more than 300 scientific manuscripts and has published in top-tier journals, including The New England Journal of Medicine, Lancet, and Journal of the American Medical Association.

A recipient of several distinguished national awards, Dr. Thadhani has been inducted into a number of honor societies, including the American Society for Clinical Investigation, Association of American Physicians, American Epidemiological Society, and the American Clinical and Climatological Association. He has an extensive track record of recruiting and mentoring women and underrepresented staff, trainees, and faculty, and has been honored with the Harold Amos Faculty Diversity Award from Harvard Medical School, the Alumni Award of Merit from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and the John P. Peters Award from the American Society of Nephrology.

Dr. Thadhani received a bachelor’s degree from the University of Notre Dame. He earned his Doctor of Medicine degree from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania in 1991. At Penn, he was awarded the Nathan and Paulin Pincus Prize for Outstanding Achievement as a Clinician and the Alfred Stengel MD Memorial Prize for Academic Excellence in Academic Medicine, and he was inducted into Alpha Omega Alpha in 1990. Dr. Thadhani earned a Master of Public Health degree from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and he also completed the LEAD Innovation Certificate Program in 2020 at the Stanford University Graduate School of Business.

Sankey Williams, MD, RES'77, is Professor Emeritus of General Internal Medicine at the Perelman School of Medicine and of Health Care Management in The Wharton School. He was Chief of the Division of General Internal Medicine from 1992 to 2008 and directed the University of Pennsylvania’s Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Clinical Scholars Program from 1988 to 1996. He is Deputy Editor of the Annals of Internal Medicine.

Dr. Williams has published more than 60 original articles that describe his work as a health services researcher, which has concentrated on physicians’ decisions to use clinical resources, often regarding the use of diagnostic tests. His work also has focused on patient classification systems used by researchers to adjust outcomes for severity of illness.

Dr. Williams he has given invited lectures to numerous professional and scientific audiences here and abroad and received many accolades for his research. He has held various leadership positions, including Commissioner of the U.S. Congress’s Prospective Payment Assessment Commission, which advised Congress about changes in Medicare payments to hospitals. He also has had leadership roles as President of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia, President of The Society for Medical Decision Making, and in the Society of General Internal Medicine, including Editor of the Journal of General Internal Medicine (1995, 1999), President of the Society (2000, 2001), and recipient of the Society’s 2008 Robert J. Glaser Award for exceptional contributions in education and research.

Stacy Lynn Pineles, M’04, FEL’10, is Professor in Ophthalmology at the University of California, Los Angeles. She is an internationally renowned academic pediatric and neuro-ophthalmology specialist with a longstanding interest in clinical trials of strabismus surgical techniques and outcomes, as well as pediatric neuro-ophthalmic conditions. 

Dr. Pineles is currently the Chair of the Pediatric Eye Disease Investigator Group (PEDIG), which is a collaborative network dedicated to facilitating multicenter clinical research in strabismus, amblyopia, and other eye disorders that affect children. There are currently more than 100 participating sites with over 300 pediatric ophthalmologists and pediatric optometrists in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. This group is the key creator of evidence-based treatments for children with serious eye diseases.

After completing her fellowships in 2010, Dr. Pineles took on the role of Associate Residency Program Director at the Stein Eye Institute and then assumed the role of Residency Program Director in 2017. During her tenure as a leader in the UCLA residency program, she mentored over 100 ophthalmologists-in-training. She has served in numerous national leadership roles in ophthalmology education, including the Association of University Professors of Ophthalmology (AUPO) Program Director’s Council, the American Academy of Ophthalmology’s (AAO) Committee for Residency Education, the ACGME Residency Review Committee, and the AUPO Surgical Curriculum for Ophthalmology Residents program.

Dr. Pineles is currently the Chair of the AAO’s Ophthalmic Technology Assessment Committee, the American Association for Pediatric Ophthalmology & Strabismus (AAPOS) Research Committee, and the North American Neuro-Ophthalmology Society (NANOS) Abstract Committee; she serves on other national committees related to pediatric ophthalmology and neuro-ophthalmology. She is the recipient of numerous awards, including the AAPOS Young Investigator Award, AAO Secretariat Award, and the AAPOS Honor Award. Dr. Pineles has published over 170 peer-reviewed articles and 12 book chapters, and she has delivered numerous international and keynote lectures.

Dr. Pineles received her BS from the Duke University School of Engineering and her MD from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. She completed her ophthalmology residency and pediatric ophthalmology fellowship at the Stein Eye Institute of the University of California, Los Angeles. Dr. Pineles was a Society of Heed fellow in 2008-2009. She then completed a second fellowship in neuro-ophthalmology at the University of Pennsylvania and the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. She was awarded a Master’s degree in Clinical Investigation from the UCLA Department of Biomathematics in 2013.

Marketa M. Wills, M’00, WG’06, is the incoming CEO/Medical Director of the American Psychiatric Association (APA). On June 1, 2024, she will assume the helm as the APA’s eighth CEO—and become the first Black American and first woman to occupy this critical role for the 180-year professional society. 

Dr. Wills is passionate about collaboration and innovation in order to deliver patient-centered, high quality, equitable, efficient and affordable care. Most recently, Dr. Wills served as Senior Vice President and Chief Medical Officer for Johns Hopkins Health Plans (JHHP). In her role, Dr. Wills helped JHHP optimize clinical and quality outcomes for health plan members while driving efforts to efficiently manage costs of care. She oversaw the Pharmacy, Utilization Management, Care Management, and Quality Improvement departments, as well as other areas of JHHP’s Health Services division. She also helped set and enforce medical policies and standards for health care services provided to plan members. 

Dr. Wills has worked as a consultant at McKinsey & Company; was the director of physician affairs at The Medical Center campus of Memorial Hermann Hospital System, where she oversaw the Medical Staff Office and physician recruitment, contracting and onboarding; and served as senior medical director for WellCare Health Plans, leading the population health clinical strategy team responsible for optimizing clinical and quality outcomes for patients as well as the NCQA accreditation team.

Dr. Wills earned her medical degree from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and completed a residency in adult psychiatry at Harvard’s Massachusetts General Hospital/McLean Hospital program, serving as chief resident in her last year. She also has a master’s in business administration from The Wharton School at Penn.

Dr. Wills and her family are in the process of relocating to Washington, DC. She enjoys working out, traveling, the arts, and engaging in community services. An avid meditator, she recently became a certified yoga teacher.

Brooks “Brooksie” R. Lanham, M’15, WG’16, is a general pediatrics hospitalist at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and Clinical Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. Clinically, she is passionate about caring for hospitalized children and their families. Her research and administrative interests lie in health care administration, strategy, and business development. 

Dr. Lanham has remained involved with Penn since her graduation in 2016. She became a member of the Council of Recent Graduates in 2018 and became Chair of the Council in 2022. She comes from a very proud Penn family and is committed to giving back to the Perelman School community.

Dr. Lanham graduated with honors from Stanford University with a BA in human biology. She received her medical degree from the Perelman School of Medicine and also completed an MBA at The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. She completed her residency and chief residency at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. 

Dr. Lanham lives in Philadelphia with her husband Jimmy, daughters Charlotte and Elizabeth, and dog Isla. She is an avid golf and squash player, enjoys cooking, and hikes in Wissahickon Valley Park with her family.