2022 COMMENCEMENT SPEAKER

DR. KIMBERLYN LEARY

Dr. Kimberlyn Leary is a Senior Vice President at the Urban Institute. She is also 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, and a lecturer in public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School. She teaches degree program and executive education classes in adaptive leadership, negotiation, collaborative problem-solving, and leading teams.

Dr. Leary is also a Senior Advisor and past Executive Director of the Center of Excellence in Women’s Mental Health at McLean Hospital. She is a faculty affiliate at the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School, the Women and Public Program at the Harvard Kennedy School, and the Bloomberg Harvard City Leadership Initiative. She recently served as a Senior Policy Advisor to the White House Domestic Policy Council and as a Senior Equity Fellow in the Office of Management and Budget. In both roles, she worked across Federal agencies to implement President Biden’s executive order on equity.

Dr. Leary’s current research and scholarly work is centered on leadership, negotiation capacity, equity focused change management and large-scale systemic change. She is also engaged in several policy initiatives pertaining to enhancing life outcomes for women and girls of color.

For almost 12 years, she served as chief psychologist at the Cambridge Health Alliance/Harvard Medical School, directing the division of psychology and its training programs to deliver culturally sensitive care supporting the hospital’s primary care centers, specialty mental health, and acute emergency services. She has a Ph.D. 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. She is also on the Board of Trustees at the Austen Riggs Center, the Boston Psychoanalytic Institute, and the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls.