Tom Frieden

Dr. Tom Frieden is a physician trained in internal medicine, infectious diseases, public health, and epidemiology. Dr. Frieden is now the President and Chief Executive Officer of Resolve to Save Lives, a $225 million, 5-year initiative housed at Vital Strategies, which aims to save millions of lives from cardiovascular disease and make the world safer from epidemics.

Dr. Frieden was the Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) from 2009 – 2017. At the CDC, Dr. Frieden oversaw the work that helped end the 2014 West Africa Ebola epidemic.

He began his public health career in New York City confronting the largest outbreak of multi-drug resistant tuberculosis to occur in the US. He was then assigned to India, on loan from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, where he helped scale up a program for effective tuberculosis diagnosis, treatment, and monitoring. Asked to return to New York City to become Mayor Mike Bloomberg’s Health Commissioner, he directed efforts to reduce smoking and other leading causes of death that increased life expectancy by 3 years.