Elizabeth H. Bradley

Elizabeth H. Bradley, PhD has served as President of Vassar College since July 2017. In that time, she has led the College to establish new programs and partnerships in India, Rwanda, and China to bring the model of liberal arts higher education to these settings. In addition, Vassar has collaborated with Columbia University to create a 5-year BA/Masters of Public Health program for Vassar students. Bradley has most recently served on Governor Cuomo’s NY Forward Re-Opening Advisory Committee and helped draft the guidelines for NY higher education re-opening in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.

She serves on the Poughkeepsie Children’s Cabinet and the Board of Trustees at Vassar Brothers Medical Center. Bradley, a noted public health expert, created the first Masters of Health Administration on the African continent with the Clinton Health Access Initiative and pioneered a model of scale-up with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. She continues to be a strong advocate for education and public health, publishing opinion pieces in Forbes, Bloomberg News, and other national outlets regularly, as well as peer-reviewed research.

Prior to becoming the President of Vassar, Bradley was on the faculty at Yale for more than twenty years and was most recently the Brady-Johnson Professor of Grand Strategy and Faculty Director of the Yale Global Health Leadership Institute. Bradley’s research has focused on quality of hospital care and large-scale health system strengthening efforts within the US and abroad including in China, India, Ethiopia, Liberia, Ghana, Rwanda, and the United Kingdom. Bradley has published more than 320 peer-reviewed papers and has co-authored three books including The American Healthcare Paradox: Why Spending More Is Getting Us Less. She is the 2018 recipient of the William B. Graham Prize for Health Services Research and was elected to the National Academy of Medicine in 2017. She is a member of the Council of Foreign Affairs.

Bradley graduated phi beta kappa from Harvard in economics magna cum laude, earned an MBA from the University of Chicago, and a PhD in health economics from Yale University. While at Harvard, Bradley was captain of the Women’s Squash team.