Joan provides a lifelong passion for and experience with mentoring and supporting diversity in the biosciences. She is Harvard Medical School’s first Dean for Diversity and Community Partnership, responsible for the development and management of a comprehensive program that provides leadership, guidance, and support to promote the increased recruitment, retention, and advancement of underrepresented minority faculty. She also serves in a number of other positions, including Faculty Director of Community Outreach at HMS, Professor at HMS and at Harvard’s Chan School of Public Health, and Assistant in Health Policy at Massachusetts General Hospital.
While at HMS, Joan created more than 20 diversity and leadership-focused programs, including founding the HMS Minority Faculty Development Program and the Biomedical Careers Program. Before joining Harvard, she served as the medical director of a Boston community health center and worked as a pediatrician in community and academic health centers, juvenile prisons, and public schools. She has held a number of advisory roles including serving on the Health and Human Services Advisory Committee on Minority Health and the Secretary’s Advisory Committee to the Director of NIH. Joan graduated from Brown University and Mount Sinai School of Medicine. She holds an MPH and an MS in Health Policy Management from Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health, and an MBA from Boston University.