Profiles in Leadership is a series of interviews with leaders in fields such as health care, community organizing, international development, and homelessness prevention. The series, which aims to help health professions students reflect on their own leadership journeys, is a project of the IHI Open School for Health Professions and was made possible with the support of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
Diana Chapman Walsh
President Emerita
Wellesley College
Diana Chapman Walsh is the chair of the inaugural board of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, a director of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation and the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, and a member of the MIT Corporation. Walsh was the twelfth President of Wellesley College from 1993 to 2007 and the fourth alumna to head Wellesley, a leading college for women and one of the nation’s top liberal arts colleges. Before assuming the Wellesley presidency, Dr. Walsh was Florence Sprague Norman and Laura Smart Norman Professor at the Harvard School of Public Health, where she chaired the Department of Health and Social Behavior. Prior to joining the Harvard faculty, she was a University Professor at Boston University and Professor of Social and Behavioral Sciences in the School of Public Health. A member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and of Phi Beta Kappa, she writes, speaks, and consults regularly on a range of issues related to higher education.
