Georgetown University School of Medicine 2023 Commencement Speaker: Joan Y. Reede, MD, MS, MPH, MBA

Posted in News Releases News Stories  |  Tagged commencement 2023

(May 3, 2023) — Georgetown University School of Medicine is honored to welcome Joan Y. Reede, MD, MS, MPH, MBA, as its commencement speaker for the graduating Class of 2023. For more than 30 years, Reede has created and led programs that encourage individuals from groups underrepresented in science to pursue careers in medicine, research and health care.

Reede graduated from Brown University and Mount Sinai School of Medicine. She completed a pediatric residency at Johns Hopkins Hospital and a fellowship in child psychiatry at Boston Children’s Hospital. She holds an MPH and an MS in health policy management from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and an MBA from Boston University. She began her own career in community health in Boston, working with incarcerated youth and children in public schools.

Appointed in 2002 as the inaugural Dean for Diversity and Community Partnership at Harvard Medical School, Reede is also professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School; professor of society, human development, and health at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health; and assistant in health policy at Massachusetts General Hospital.

She has spent the past three decades creating and developing more than 20 programs to address pipeline and leadership barriers for minorities and women interested in careers in medicine, academic and scientific research, and the health care professions. In addition, she is credited with developing and managing a comprehensive program that provides leadership, guidance and support to promote the increased recruitment, retention and advancement of faculty underrepresented in medicine.

In her additional role as faculty director of community outreach programs, Reede has developed mentoring programs for underrepresented and disadvantaged students from the middle school through graduate and medical school levels. She has designed a training program for middle and high school teachers, developed science curricula for public schools, implemented research and exchange clerkship programs at Harvard, and created innovative fellowships in minority health policy for physicians, dentists and doctoral-level mental health professionals.

Reede is a member of the National Academy of Medicine (part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine) and has received numerous awards reflecting her far-reaching and varied accomplishments. These include: the Boston NAACP Health Award for her contributions to the health of the Boston minority community; the Community Service Award from the Epilepsy Association of Massachusetts for her work on a five-part satellite series on neuroscience for New England high school teachers; the American Association of University Administrators Exemplary Models of Administrative Leadership Award; and the Academic Leadership in Primary Care Award from Morehouse School of Medicine.

Her leadership is frequently sought at the national level. She has served on the Advisory Committee to the Director of the National Institutes of Health; the Board of Governors of the National Institutes of Health Clinical Center, and the External Scientific Panel as part of the NIH-funded Workforce Initiative. She has also served as co-chair of the Bias Review Committee of the National Institutes of Health’s Working Group on Diversity and chair of the Association of American Medical Colleges Group on Diversity and Inclusion.

She serves on the board of directors for the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC), and is the past chair of the National Academy of Medicine Interest Group on Health Populations/Health Disparities. She currently serves on the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine’s Roundtable on Black Men and Black Women in Science, Engineering, and Medicine.

In recognition of her path-breaking innovations in medical training, her compassion for the underserved, and her lifelong dedication to empowering women and underrepresented minorities, Georgetown University will bestow upon Reede the degree of Doctor of Science, Honoris Causa.