Rosenthal to chair Advanced Leadership Initiative

Meredith B. Rosenthal, the C. Boyden Gray Professor of Health Economics and Policy at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, will become the next faculty chair of the Harvard Advanced Leadership Initiative (ALI) in January 2019.

In her new position, Rosenthal will succeed Rosabeth Moss Kanter, ALI’s leader since its founding in 2009. In collaboration with faculty across Harvard, Rosenthal will advance ALI’s mission to prepare experienced leaders to take on new challenges in the social sector. She will continue her affiliation with the Harvard Chan School, where she teaches and leads research in health policy and management. 

“Meredith brings to ALI deep experience training and inspiring leaders who are dedicated to social good,” said University Provost Alan Garber. “With her passion for social impact, as well as her insight into cross-sector solutions to important problems, she is the right person to take ALI forward.

“We are indebted to Rosabeth Moss Kanter for her visionary leadership as founding faculty chair and director of ALI for the past 10 years,” Garber said. “The audacious goals of ALI — to launch a new stage of higher education and to deploy a force of experienced leaders dedicated to social impact — have come to fruition, thanks to her thoughtful guidance and boundless energy. Her pioneering work at ALI exemplifies the power of One Harvard to support pathbreaking educational innovation.”

Garber added that Kanter will continue to serve as the Ernest L. Arbuckle Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School (HBS), focusing on research, writing, and teaching.

At the Harvard Chan School, Rosenthal’s research focuses primarily on policies that will help slow the growth in health care spending and improve value. Her research has influenced the design of provider payment systems in both the public and private sectors.

As the former associate dean for diversity at the Chan School, she worked closely with the Dean’s Advisory Committee on Diversity and Inclusion on strategic planning and issues related to equity, diversity, and inclusion affecting all members of the School community.

Rosenthal has advised federal and state policymakers in health care payment policy and implementation. She has also testified in Congressional hearings on direct-to-consumer advertising of prescription drugs and pay-for-performance measures, and in legislative hearings in California and Massachusetts concerning health care provider payment and benefit design policies.

Rosenthal’s work has been published in the New England Journal of Medicine, the Journal of the American Medical Association, Health Affairs, and numerous other peer-reviewed journals. In 2014, she was elected to the Institute of Medicine, recently renamed the National Academy of Medicine. Rosenthal received her B.A. in international relations from Brown University in 1990 and her Ph.D. in health policy from Harvard University in 1998.

Rosenthal is also a member of the Committee on Higher Degrees in Health Policy and the Massachusetts Health Information and Analysis Oversight Council, and board chair of Massachusetts Health Quality Partners, a multi-stakeholder quality-improvement organization.

“Harvard’s Advanced Leadership Initiative has had a tremendous impact in its first 10 years thanks to the passion of its fellows and Rosabeth’s strong leadership,” said Rosenthal. “I am excited and honored to direct ALI and to work with faculty across the University to advance its mission to change the world for the better.”

As faculty chair for ALI, Rosenthal will work with its faculty executive committee to set the program’s strategy, empowering past and present ALI Fellows committed to making a social impact and helping shape and contribute to a new movement in higher education.

Members of the faculty executive committee include: Frank Dobbin, professor of sociology in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences; James P. Honan, senior lecturer on education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education; Howard K. Koh, Harvey V. Fineberg Professor of the Practice of Public Health Leadership at the Chan School; and Forest L. Reinhardt, John D. Black Professor of Business Administration at HBS.

“Working with colleagues over the past 14 years to conceive and build ALI has been an enormous privilege, enabling service to Harvard and the world,” said Kanter. “It is wonderful that ALI has many dedicated faculty leaders like Meredith, and that they are willing to accept this major responsibility to guide ALI to its next phase of sustainability. I will applaud them enthusiastically as I continue my duties at Harvard Business School.”