Biography

Elizabeth H. Bradley, PhD, has served as President of Vassar College since July 2017. In that time, she has led Vassar to establish new programs and partnerships in India, Rwanda, and China to bring the model of liberal arts higher education to these settings. In addition, Vassar has collaborated with Columbia University to create a 5-year BA-MPH program for Vassar students. Bradley has most recently served on Governor Cuomo’s NY Forward Reopening Advisory Committee and helped draft the guidelines for New York higher education reopening in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. She serves on the Poughkeepsie Children’s Cabinet and Board of Trustees at Vassar Brothers Hospital. Bradley, a noted public health expert who created the first Masters of Health Administration on the African continent with the Clinton Health Access Initiative and pioneered a model of scale up with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, continues to be a strong advocate for education and public health, regularly publishing opinion pieces in Forbes, Bloomberg News, and other national outlets as well as peer-reviewed research. Prior to becoming the President of Vassar, Bradley was on the faculty at Yale for more than twenty years, and was most recently the Brady-Johnson Professor of Grand Strategy and Faculty Director of the Yale Global Health Leadership Institute. Bradley’s research has focused on quality of hospital care and large-scale health-system-strengthening efforts within the U.S. and abroad, including China, India, Ethiopia, Liberia, Ghana, Rwanda, and the United Kingdom. Bradley has published more than 320 peer-reviewed papers and has co-authored three books, including The American Healthcare Paradox: Why Spending More Is Getting Us Less. She is the 2018 recipient of the William B. Graham Prize for Health Services Research and was elected to the National Academy of Medicine in 2017. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Bradley graduated from Harvard Phi Beta Kappa, magna cum laude, in Economics. She earned an MBA from the University of Chicago and a PhD in Health Economics from Yale University. While at Harvard, Bradley was captain of the women’s squash team. Bradley grew up in New Britain, Connecticut, and is married to John Bradley, with whom she has three adult children.