Dr. Julie Gerberding is an executive vice president and the chief patient officer at Merck & Co., Inc., where she is responsible for global public policy, communications, patient engagement, corporate social responsibility, and other functions. She joined Merck in 2010 as president of vaccines and was instrumental in increasing access to the company’s vaccines to people around the world.

Previously, Dr. Gerberding was director of the U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), where she led the agency through SARS and over 40 emergency responses to public health crises. She serves on the Boards of Cerner Corporation and MSD Wellcome Trust Hilleman Laboratories, a nonprofit that develops new technologies for developing countries.

Dr. Gerberding received her undergraduate and M.D. degrees from Case Western Reserve University and a master of Public Health at the University of California, Berkeley. She completed her internship and residency in internal medicine and fellowship in clinical pharmacology and infectious diseases at the University of California, San Francisco, where she is currently an adjunct associate professor of medicine.