Appendix E
Commissioner and Staff Biographies
LINDA P. FRIED (Co-Chair) is the dean of Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health and a leader in the fields of epidemiology and geriatric medicine. Since 2006, she has served as a member of the Aging Society Network, an international MacArthur Foundation think tank whose purpose is to create a roadmap to a successful society of longer lives. She has proposed the concept of a Third Demographic Dividend that enables society and individuals of all ages to experience the benefits of now longer lives, based on innovation in design of society’s environments and roles for older adults. She has served as the principal investigator (PI) for major longitudinal cohort studies, including the Cardiovascular Health Study (1989–2008; National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute [NHLBI]) and the Women’s Health and Aging Studies I (1990–2008; National Institute on Aging [NIA]) and II (1993–2008; NIA). She received the National Institutes of Health (NIH) MERIT Award to determine the pathophysiology of frailty (1998–2008; NIA) and served as the director of the Johns Hopkins Functional Status Laboratory (1987–1995). She has also served as the PI of NIH-funded randomized controlled trials, including the Goals for Eating and Moving trial of gingko biloba (NHLBI). She is the codesigner of AARP’s Experience Corps and coled the initial national and Baltimore-based implementation and evaluation. At Johns Hopkins, she served as the director of the Center on Aging and Health, the director of the Division of Geriatric Medicine, and the director of the Training Program in the Epidemiology and Biostatistics of Aging. She was also founding PI of the Johns Hopkins Older Americans Independence Center (Pepper Center; NIA) and co-PI of the NIA-funded Demography of Aging Center. She chaired the Johns Hopkins University President’s Task Force on the Status of Women in Academic Medicine.
JOHN EU-LI WONG (Co-Chair) is the Isabel Chan Professor in Medical Sciences and the senior vice president of health innovation and translation at the National University of Singapore. A medical oncologist-hematologist, he is actively involved in the development of biomedical sciences as a key pillar of Singapore’s economy and in the development of Singapore’s first academic health system linking the National University Hospital and its medical, public health, dental, and nursing schools under one unified governance. He represents Singapore in the M8 Alliance of Academic Health Centers and the Association of Academic Health Centers International. He is a member of the World Economic Forum Global Agenda Council on Personalized and Precision Medicine, the Nature Index Panel of Senior Medical Advisors, the international editorial board of the American Journal of Medicine, and the editorial board of the Journal of the American Medical Association. He cofounded the Cancer Therapeutics Research Group, a multinational consortium of nine academic institutions, and has served as a member of the International Education Council for Molecular Targeted Therapy for Cancer, the American Society of Clinical Oncology International Affairs Committee, and the International Oncology Foundation Advisory Board. His research interests are in the development of new drugs, new treatment strategies, and the differences between Asian and Caucasian cancers. He received the degree of doctor philosophiae honoris causa from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 2019, the Public Administration Medal (Gold) from Singapore National Day Awards in 2016, and Singapore’s President’s Science & Technology Medal in 2014, among many other awards. He is a fellow of the Academy of Medicine Singapore, the Royal College of Physicians in Edinburgh and London, and the American College of Physicians. He was elected as an international member of the U.S. National Academy of Medicine in 2019.
ISABELLA ABODERIN is a professor of gerontology and the Perivoli Chair in Africa Research and Partnerships at the University of Bristol. Previously, she was an associate professor in gerontology at the University of Southampton. She joined the Centre for Research on Ageing in October 2013 and concurrently held a position as a senior research scientist at the African Population and Health Research Center in Nairobi, Kenya, where she led a program on aging and development in sub-Saharan Africa. From 2007 to 2013, she worked at the Oxford Institute of Population Ageing as a senior research fellow and between 2004 and 2007 as a research fellow. Prior to joining the Oxford Institute, she worked as a technical officer in the World Health Organization Unit on Ageing and the Lifecourse and as a research associate at the International Institute on Health and Ageing at the University of Bristol. Her professional roles include serving as the Africa regional chair of the International Association of Gerontology and Geriatrics, the technical adviser for the Global Commission on Ageing in Developing Countries, and a member of the World Economic Forum Global Agenda Council on Ageing. She completed a Ph.D. in social policy studies at the University of
Bristol, an M.Sc. in health promotion sciences at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, and a B.Sc. in cellular and molecular pathology at the University of Bristol.
ANN AERTS is the head of the Novartis Foundation, an organization committed to transforming the health of low-income populations, working with partners on in-country programs and research to identify the health care solutions that work best, supporting partners in scaling up proven solutions, and using the new evidence to inform national and global health policy. She has led initiatives to improve cardiovascular health in urban populations, co-chaired a Broadband Commission working group that developed recommendations for using digital health to tackle noncommunicable diseases and achieve universal health coverage, and led a leprosy prevention program that influenced World Health Organization guidelines. Her career has focused on patient-centered care, spanning the international humanitarian sector, nonprofits, and the pharmaceutical industry. She was previously the franchise medical director for critical care at Novartis Pharma in Basel and the therapeutic area head of cardiovascular and metabolism for Novartis Pharma in Belgium. Prior to joining Novartis, she served as the director of the Lung and Tuberculosis Association in Belgium, the head of the Health Services Department of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Geneva, and the health coordinator for ICRC in several countries. In 2014, PharmaVOICE nominated her as one of the 100 Most Inspiring People in the life science industry. She has authored numerous publications and is a member of the Broadband Commission, the Governing Council of the United Nations Technology Bank for Least Developed Countries, and the International Advisory Board of the Commonwealth Centre for Digital Health. She holds a degree in medicine and a master’s in public health from the University of Leuven, Belgium, and a degree in tropical medicine from the Institute of Tropical Medicine in Antwerp, Belgium.
JOHN BEARD works globally with academia, policy makers, and the private sector to reimagine the second half of life. He is a professor with the University of New South Wales, the chief advisor for the European Institute of Innovation and Technology Health consortium, and a visiting professor at Toulouse and Peking universities. He also has a number of private-sector appointments. From 2009 to 2019, he was the director of aging and life course with the World Health Organization (WHO) in Geneva, serving as the editor and the author for the World Report on Ageing and Health, which formed the basis for the 2016 Global Strategy and Action Plan on Ageing and Health that provides a political mandate for global action. In 2012, he established the WHO Global Network of Age-friendly Cities and Communities, which now comprises more than 1,000 cities and countries covering more than 250 million people. Other projects developed by his team include the Integrated Care for Older People program, a global campaign
to combat ageism and reframe the way we think about aging and older age, and to work with research partners to identify and fill the many knowledge gaps in the field of aging. He was the coeditor of the 2014 Lancet series on aging. Prior to joining WHO, he held a range of senior public health and academic roles in Australia and the United States. He remains actively involved in several large international research projects on healthy aging.
LISA BERKMAN is the director of the Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies (HCPDS) and the Thomas D. Cabot Professor of Public Policy, Epidemiology, and Global Health and Population at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. She is an internationally recognized social epidemiologist whose work focuses extensively on social and policy influences on health outcomes. Her research orients toward understanding inequalities in health related to socioeconomic status; different racial and ethnic groups; and social networks, support, and isolation. She is the principal investigator of Health and Aging in Africa: A Longitudinal Study of an INDEPTH Community in South Africa (HAALSI), a program funded by the National Institute on Aging. HAALSI aims to study the drivers and consequences of HIV and noncommunicable diseases in an aging population in Agincourt, South Africa. Prior to becoming the director of HCPDS, she was the chair of the Department of Society, Human Development and Health at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health (1995–2008) and the head of the Division of Chronic Disease Epidemiology at Yale University.
LAURA L. CARSTENSEN is a professor of psychology at Stanford University, where she is also the Fairleigh S. Dickinson Jr. Professor in Public Policy and the founding director of the Stanford Center on Longevity. For more than 25 years, her research has been supported by the National Institute on Aging (NIA), and she has been honored with two MERIT awards. Her most recent empirical research focuses on ways in which motivational changes influence cognitive processing. She is a fellow of the Association for Psychological Science, the American Psychological Association, and the Gerontological Society of America. She was a member of the MacArthur Foundation’s Research Network on an Aging Society and served on NIA’s National Advisory Council on Aging. She has received numerous awards, including the Kleemeier Award, the Richard Kalish Award for Innovative Research, the Distinguished Mentorship Award from the Gerontological Society of America, and the Master Mentor Award from the American Psychological Association. She was selected as a Guggenheim fellow in 2003 and was inducted into the U.S. National Academy of Medicine in 2016. In 2011, she authored A Long Bright Future: Happiness, Health, and Financial Security in an Age of Increased Longevity. She received a B.S. from the University of Rochester and a Ph.D. in clinical psychology from West Virginia University. She holds an honorary doctorate from the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium.
MICHELE J. GRIMM is the Wielenga Creative Engineering Endowed Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Michigan State University. She is a fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, the Biomedical Engineering Society, and the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering. For the past 25 years, a significant portion of her research has involved injury biomechanics, from characterizing important tissue properties to developing appropriate models for the assessment of injury mechanisms. She recently finished a 3-year rotation as a program director at the National Science Foundation, overseeing the Biomechanics and Mechanobiology, Engineering of Biomedical Systems, and Disability & Rehabilitation Engineering programs. During this time, she served as a co-chair of the White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy Task Force on Research and Development for Technology to Support Aging Adults. She completed a B.S. in biomedical engineering and engineering mechanics at Johns Hopkins University and a Ph.D. in bioengineering at the University of Pennsylvania.
PAUL H. IRVING is a senior fellow at the Milken Institute, previously serving as its president and the founding co-chair of its Center for the Future of Aging. He is also a distinguished scholar-in-residence at the University of Southern California (USC) Davis School of Gerontology. He served as an advanced leadership fellow at Harvard University, and as the chair and chief executive officer of Manatt, Phelps & Phillips, LLP, a national law and consulting firm. He is the chair emeritus and a member of the board of Encore.org, and a member of Stanford University’s Distinguished Careers Institute Global Advisory Council, the USC Davis School Board of Councilors, and the WorkingNation Advisory Board. He is the director and chair of the Nomination and Corporate Governance Committee of East West Bancorp, Inc., and a member of the International Strategic Committee of the Quadrivio Group Silver Economy Fund. He served on the Bipartisan Policy Center Senior Health and Housing Task Force and was a participant in the 2015 White House Conference on Aging. He authored The Upside of Aging: How Long Life Is Changing the World of Health, Work, Innovation, Policy, and Purpose; he is also a Wall Street Journal expert panelist and a contributor to the Harvard Business Review, PBS’s NextAvenue, and Forbes. He speaks and writes about health, productivity, and purpose for older adults; investment and innovation in the longevity economy; the future of retirement; and the changing culture of aging in America and the world. He has been recognized as an Influencer by NextAvenue and received the Janet L. Witkin Humanitarian Award by Affordable Living for the Aging, the Life Journey Inspiration Award by Stanford’s Distinguished Careers Institute, and the Board of Governors Award by Loyola Law School, Los Angeles.
MEHMOOD KHAN is the Chief Executive Officer, Hevolution Foundation. He is a sustainability expert and a seasoned leader in research and development
(R&D) for food, pharmaceuticals, and agriculture. He served as the chief executive officer of Life Biosciences, which raised more than USD75 million to pursue the eight pathways of age-related decline. Prior to this appointment, he was the vice chairman and chief scientific officer at PepsiCo, where he oversaw Pepsi’s Performance with Purpose sustainability initiatives, inspired by the fundamental belief that business success is inextricably linked to sustainability; he also served as the chair of Pepsi’s Sustainability Council. In his role leading PepsiCo’s R&D efforts, he developed novel technologies in food and beverage products, nutrition, manufacturing, packaging, and distribution. Previously, he led Takeda Pharmaceuticals Company’s worldwide R&D efforts as the president of the Takeda Global Research & Development Center. Before moving into industry, he had an extensive medical career as a recognized expert in diabetes, endocrinology, metabolism, and nutrition, having served as a faculty member at the Mayo Clinic and the Mayo Medical School, and as the director of the Diabetes, Endocrine, and Nutritional Trials Unit in Mayo’s endocrinology division.
JEANETTE VEGA MORALES is the minister of Social Development and Family in Chile. Previously, she served as the chief medical and innovation officer at Red de Salud UC-Christus, the main private health care provider in Chile. With more than 20 years of experience in international health, her areas of expertise include social determinants of health, health equity, and health systems. She is the former director of FONASA, the national Chilean public health insurance agency (2014–2018), and the former vice minister of health (2008–2010). She has also served as the managing director of health at The Rockefeller Foundation (2011–2014). Previously she was a director at the World Health Organization, where she led the equity in health agenda and the Commission on Social Determinants of Health, established in March 2005 to support countries and global health partners in addressing the social factors leading to ill health and health inequities. She is a member of many international commissions and boards, and has served as the chair of the Strategic Advisory Board of the Alliance for Health Policy and Systems Research and as a board member of the Harvard Ministerial Leadership Program. She is a regular speaker, chair, and moderator at global health meetings, and has helped organize major international conferences. She has published extensively in peer-reviewed journals, including The Lancet and the Bulletin of the World Health Organization. She also led the Lancet series on universal health coverage in Latin America.
MOSA MOSHABELA is currently an associate professor and the dean in the School of Nursing and Public Health, University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. A qualified physician in family medicine and primary health care, he works as a chief medical specialist in rural health medicine, and as a public health scientist in health services, systems, and policy, with the aim of improving ac-
cess, quality, and equity in health care. His current research on implementation science and people-centered approaches seeks to design, implement, and evaluate complex interventions in public health care services and programs in ways appropriate for resource-poor settings in sub-Saharan Africa. He is adjunct faculty and a Wellcome Trust research fellow at the Africa Health Research Institute in South Africa. He collaborates with the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and conducts research in several countries in sub-Saharan Africa. His current research is funded by the National Research Foundation in South Africa, the Medical Research Council and the Wellcome Trust in the United Kingdom, and the National Institutes of Health in the United States. He was a member of the Lancet Commission on Synergies between Health Promotion, Universal Health Coverage and Global Health Security (2018–2020); a member of the U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine’s Committee on Human Resources for Health in Rwanda (2018–2020); and the national chairperson of the Rural Doctors Association of South Africa (2016–2019). Previously, he was the regional health systems advisor for the Millennium Villages in West and Central Africa, based at the MDG Centre in Mali/Senegal, and worked with the Earth Institute at Columbia University in the United States. He also served as the senior lecturer in the School of Public Health at the University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, where he was the director of the Rural AIDS and Development Action Research Programme.
HIROKI NAKATANI is currently a visiting professor at the Keio University School of Medicine. He has also served as an invited professor at the Osaka University Graduate School of Medicine and in various national and international organizations, including as the chair of the board of directors, Global Health Innovative Technology Fund; as a senior advisor, Economic Research Institute for the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and East Asia; and as the hub director of population aging, Association of Pacific Rim Universities. He has been a public health specialist for more than 40 years, having started his career at the Ministry of Health, Labour, and Welfare in Japan. He has worked extensively in health policy, public health, international health, and health science and technology. His national career includes serving as the director-general of health and welfare services in Hiroshima Prefecture, where he was in charge of integrating health and welfare services in preparation for the arrival of a rapidly aging society. He joined the World Health Organization (WHO) headquarters as policy analyst in the Department of Human Resources for Health. In March 2007, he was appointed as the assistant director-general of WHO, leading the largest technical cluster on HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis, Malaria, and Neglected Tropical Diseases. During his tenure, the morbidity and mortality of the three significant infections showed decline trends, and a few tropical diseases (dracunculiasis or guinea worm disease) were on track toward elimination and even eradication. After his retirement from WHO in May 2015, he has continued to serve the organization
as a member of the WHO Executive Board, serving as the chair of the board from 2019 to 2020, and as a member of various oversight and advisory committees.
JOHN PIGGOTT is the director of the Australian Research Council’s Centre of Excellence in Population Ageing Research and the Australian Institute for Population Ageing Research at the University of New South Wales (UNSW), where he is the Scientia Professor of Economics. He has held a range of academic management positions at UNSW, including two terms as the head of economics and 7 years as the associate dean of research, and he served for more than 1 year as the interim dean of the Faculty of Commerce and Economics. In 2016, he was reelected as a member of the University’s Council. He has a long-standing interest in retirement and pension economics and finance. His publications include more than 100 journal articles and chapters in books, and he has also coauthored two books, both published by Cambridge University Press. In 2016, he coedited two volumes on aging: Handbook of the Economics of Population Ageing and Population Ageing and Australia’s Future. He serves as the book review editor of the Journal of Pension Economics and Finance, as an associate editor of the Journal of the Economics of Ageing, and as a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Retirement. His Australian policy experience includes membership on both the Henry Tax Review Panel and the Ministerial Superannuation Advisory Committee. Internationally, he has worked with the governments of Japan, Russia, and Indonesia on pension and aging issues, and in 2004, he was tasked with evaluating assistance on pension reform in the Asia region for the World Bank’s Operations Evaluation Department. In 2007, he was appointed as a visiting professor at Zhejiang University, China, and from 2008 to 2010 was a visiting scholar with the Department of Insurance and Risk Management at the University of Pennsylvania Wharton School of Business.
JENNIE POPAY (commission member until July 2021) is a professor of sociology and public health in the Division of Health Research at Lancaster University; she is also the director of the Centre for Health Inequalities and the codirector of the Liverpool and Lancaster Universities Collaboration for Public Health Research. She is the director of engagement and public health lead for the National Institute of Health Research Collaboration for Leadership in Applied Health Research and Care for the Northwest Coast. She is the principal investigator for the Communities in Control Study, an evaluation of a lottery-funded community empowerment initiative, and she leads a program involving the production of an online resource to help researchers design studies that are more equity sensitive. She has completed studies of the health equity and social impact of the New Deal for Communities regeneration initiative and a Medical Research Council study on methods to assess the impact of public involvement in research. She has undertaken a number of innovative systematic reviews of qualitative research evidence and findings from studies, and she led a team that developed guidance
on narrative synthesis—a method for reviewing and synthesizing findings from multiple mixed-methods studies. She served as cocoordinator of the Global Social Exclusion Knowledge Network supporting the World Health Organization (WHO)-sponsored Commission on the Social Determinants of Health (the Marmot Commission), and as the chair of the Disadvantage, Social Exclusion and Vulnerability Task Group, supporting the work of the WHO EURO review of social determinants of health (2010–2012). She has held a number of public appointments including as the vice chair of the Commission on Patient and Public Involvement in Health, a member of the Bevan Commission in Wales, and the commissioner of the Commission on Health Improvement. She was the inaugural chair of the national charity The People’s Health Trust.
JOHN (JACK) W. ROWE is the Julius B. Richmond Professor of Health Policy and Aging at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health. Previously, he served as the chair and chief executive officer (CEO) of Aetna, Inc., and as the president and CEO of Mount Sinai New York University (NYU) Health. Prior to the Mount Sinai-NYU Health merger, he was the president of Mount Sinai Hospital and the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City. Before joining Mount Sinai, he was a professor of medicine and the founding director of the Division on Aging at the Harvard Medical School, as well as the chief of gerontology at Boston’s Beth Israel Hospital. He was the director of the MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Successful Aging, and he coauthored the book Successful Aging. He currently leads the MacArthur Foundation’s Network on an Aging Society. He was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences and a member of the U.S. National Academy of Medicine. He serves on the board of trustees of The Rockefeller Foundation and is the chair of the board of overseers of the Mailman School of Public Health and the board of fellows of Harvard Medical School. He was the founding chair of the advisory council for Stanford University’s Center on Longevity, a founding commissioner of the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission, and the chair of the board of trustees of the University of Connecticut and the Marine Biological Laboratory.
ANDREW J. SCOTT is a professor of economics at the London Business School, having previously held positions at Oxford University, the London School of Economics, and Harvard University. His work focuses on the economics of longevity, and he is the coauthor of The 100-Year Life and The New Long Life. He was the managing editor for the Royal Economic Society’s The Economic Journal and the nonexecutive director for the United Kingdom’s Financial Services Authority. He is currently on the advisory board of the UK Office for Budget Responsibility and is a member of the Cabinet Office Honours Committee (Science and Technology). He is the cofounder of The Longevity Forum, a member of the World Economic Forum Council on Healthy Ageing and Longevity, and a consulting scholar at Stanford University’s Center on Longevity. He received a
grant from the Economic and Social Research Council for researching the economic longevity dividend.
ERIC VERDIN is the president and the chief executive officer of the Buck Institute for Research on Aging. He has held faculty positions at the University of Brussels in Belgium, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Maryland, and the Picower Institute for Medical Research in New York. He studies the molecular virology of HIV and novel approaches to eradicate HIV infection. His laboratory also focuses on a family of proteins called histone deacetylases and their role in the aging process and the immune system. He joined the Gladstone Institute of Virology and Immunology in 1997 and became its associate director in 2004. He is an elected fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and a member of the American Society for Clinical Investigation and the Association of American Physicians. He serves on the National Scientific Advisory Council of the American Federation for Aging Research and on the Advisory Council of the National Institute of Drug Abuse at NIH. He has served as a reviewer on study sections for NIH, as the organizer of international meetings, and as the editor of several books and reviews. He has published more than 200 international papers and is an inventor on 14 published patents. He earned an M.D. from the University of Liege and trained at Harvard Medical School.
YAOHUI ZHAO is a professor of economics at the China Center for Economic Research of Peking University. Her research focuses on labor market issues in China, including determinants and consequences of rural-to-urban labor migration, wage differentials, and returns to education. Recently, she has begun to conduct research in the economics of health and aging, such as the socioeconomic status gradients of health, underdiagnoses of chronic diseases among the older population, and labor supply and living arrangements for older people. Since 2007, she has been the principal investigator of the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study, with a nationally representative sample of Chinese residents aged 45 and older. She received a B.A. and an M.A. from Peking University and a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago.
PROGRAM STAFF
MAUREEN HENRY (Study Director) is a senior program officer with the Global Roadmap for Healthy Longevity at the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. Prior to joining the National Academies, she spent 4 years as a research scientist at the National Committee for Quality Assurance, developing performance measures related to the care of older people, including outcome measures based on people’s care goals. She served as a Health and Aging Policy Fellow in the office of Senator Mark Warner in 2013 and as the executive director of the Utah Commission on Aging from 2005 to 2012, where
she led legislative efforts and public information campaigns on issues including advance health care planning, the geriatrics workforce, and financial security. Before moving into health policy, she was an elder law and commercial litigation attorney. She currently serves on the Medicare Hospice Quality Reporting Program Technical Expert Panel and the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization Ethics Advisory Council. She is a graduate of the University of Utah Hartford Center for Geriatric Excellence (Ph.D.), the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law (J.D.), and the University of Delaware (B.A. in philosophy).
EMMA LOWER-MCSHERRY (Senior Program Assistant) is on the staff of the Healthy Longevity Global Grand Challenge at the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. Prior to joining the National Academies, she interned with the Peace Corps and the U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration, coordinating with relevant agencies and international actors to support global health initiatives. Additionally, she conducted donor outreach to secure funds for migrant youth programs at the Nationalities Services Center in Philadelphia. She holds a B.A. in political science and a minor in global security from Temple University, where she completed research on modern migration trends, refugee crises, and humanitarian affairs. During her time at Temple University Rome, she served as an English teacher at a refugee center where she assisted clients with language development and obtaining health services. Currently, she volunteers as an English Language Partner through the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society to support asylum seekers in the Washington, DC, area.
