Margaret Hamburg

Biography

Hamburg graduated from Harvard College in 1977 and earned her M.D. from Harvard Medical School in 1983. She completed her medical residency training at the New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center and is Board Certified in Internal Medicine. In April 2015 she was appointed Foreign Secretary of the National Academy of Medicine. In December 2016, Hamburg was named president-elect for the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). She will serve a three-year term as an officer and member of the Executive Committee of the AAAS Board of Directors beginning in February 2017.

Following her medical training, Hamburg moved to Washington, D.C., to begin her career in public service. She served in several roles, including Assistant Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health. In 1991 Hamburg was appointed Commissioner of the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, where she served for six years, working first for Mayor David Dinkins and then Mayor Rudy Giuliani. During her tenure, she implemented important public health initiatives to tackle the city's health challenges, including improved services for women and children, a needle-exchange program to reduce HIV transmission, an internationally-recognized program to curtail the resurgence and spread of tuberculosis, and the nation's first public health bioterrorism preparedness program.

In 1997, President Bill Clinton appointed Hamburg as Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. She served in this policy role until 2001 when she became the founding Vice President for Biological Programs and later the Senior Scientist for the Nuclear Threat Initiative, a foundation dedicated to reducing the threat to public safety from nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons. In that role, Hamburg spearheaded efforts to prevent, detect, and respond to both naturally occurring and deliberately caused biological threats.

FDA

Hamburg was nominated by President Barack Obama in March 2009 to become Commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, and was unanimously confirmed in May 2009. As FDA Commissioner she was known for advancing regulatory science, streamlining and modernizing FDA's regulatory pathways, and globalization of the agency, as well as the implementation of the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act (2009), the Food Safety Modernization Act (2011), and a review of the system for the evaluation and approval of medical devices.

Hamburg was the longest-serving FDA commissioner since David A. Kessler, and was the second woman to hold the position.

Awards and recognition

Hamburg is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American College of Physicians, as well as a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the National Academy of Medicine, where she now serves as Foreign Secretary.

Hamburg has received numerous awards, among them the National Consumers League's Trumpeter Award in 2011 and the National Center for Health Research's 2011 Health Research Policy Hero Award. She has also received the American College of Clinical Pharmacology's (ACCP) Nathaniel T. Kwit Memorial Distinguished Service Award, the New York Academy of Medicine Medal for Distinguished Contributions in Health Policy, the Radcliffe Alumnae Award and the American Lung Association's Breath of Life Award. Hamburg was the 2017 recipient of the FDAAA's Harvey W. Wiley Lecture Award for Outstanding Leadership in Advancing Public Health.

She is a distinguished senior fellow with the Center for Strategic and International Studies and holds several Honorary Degrees.

Forbes named her as one of the world's 100 most powerful women multiple times, most recently in 2014 (#51).

Boards and Affiliations

Hamburg currently sits on a number of Boards, including for the GAVI Alliance, Commonwealth Fund, the Simons Foundation, the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy, the Urban Institute, and the American Museum of Natural History. She is also a member of the Harvard University Global Advisory Council, the Harvard Medical School Board of Fellows, the World Dementia Council and the Global Health Scientific Advisory Committee for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. She is also the Chair of the Joint Coordinating Group for the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Initiative (CEPI). Hamburg formerly served on the Boards of the Rockefeller Foundation, the Rockefeller University, the Nathan Cummings Foundation, Conservation International and Henry Schein Inc.

Personal life

Hamburg is the daughter of Beatrix Hamburg and David A. Hamburg, both physicians. Her mother was the first self-identified African-American woman to be accepted at Vassar College and to earn a degree from the Yale University School of Medicine. Her father is President Emeritus of the Carnegie Corporation of New York. She is married to Peter Fitzhugh Brown, a computer scientist and artificial intelligence expert who currently works in finance. They have two children.