Kimberlyn Leary
Faculty Co-Chair, Research and Curriculum Development
Kimberlyn Leary is an associate professor of psychology at the Harvard Medical School, and an associate professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, where she directs the Enabling Change program. In her role with the DrPH program, she teaches leadership skills to prepare public health professionals for synergistic engagements with complex problems. Increasingly, this work requires the ability to innovate and problem-solve with diverse stakeholders, from diverse backgrounds, toward the goal of making communities healthier. The Enabling Change program is designed to develop leaders with the skills that enable them to sustain collaboration among local and national partners, design interventions that span multiple sectors, and lead change that results in affirmative impact.
Dr. Leary is also the Executive Director of Policy Outreach at McLean Hospital, and a faculty affiliate at the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School.
As a Robert Wood Johnson Health Policy Fellow, Dr. Leary served for one year as an Advisor to the White House Council on Women and Girls, helping to develop and then direct “Advancing Equity,” an initiative focused on cross-sector approaches to improve health, education, and economic outcomes for women and girls of color. This work included extensive stakeholder engagement across federal agencies, as well as with foundations and external organizations. She then completed a five-month fellowship extension at the Office of Management and Budget’s Health Division, where she served as the division lead on the Flint water crisis and worked on the federal response to the opioid crisis, the Zika virus, global health security, and on mental health initiatives.
From 2016 to 2018, Dr. Leary was a research fellow at the Women and Public Policy Program at the Harvard Kennedy School, and with the New America Foundation’s International Security Program. Her research and scholarly work centered on leadership, negotiation capacity, and large-scale systemic change.
She has a PhD in clinical psychology from the University of Michigan, an MPA from the Harvard Kennedy School, and an AB from Amherst College, where she is also on the Board of Trustees
