Our final Feminist Fireside Chat, Leading Through Uncertainty: Public Health, Social Inequity and the Return to School, featured the 14th president of Wellesley College, Dr. Paula A. Johnson.

She is an innovator recognized globally for advancing, promoting, and defending the education, health, and well-being of women. This critically important work is deeply informed by her broad range of experience as a pathbreaking physician-scientist and educator who is an expert in healthcare, public health, and health policy.

President Johnson has dedicated her scientific and medical career to furthering our knowledge of the biological differences between women and men. She has led the way in ensuring that research findings are effectively translated in order to improve health care for women and has used her voice to effect important changes in policy so that sex differences are included in research. By uncovering gender biases in these arenas and advancing science, she has helped transform how medicine is practiced and how research is conducted, touching the lives of countless women.

Currently, President Johnson is serving on Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker’s committee to reopen colleges and universities during COVID-19 and is leading a testing protocols workgroup as part of the committee’s recommended four-phase plan.