Lainie Rutkow, a public health policy expert who plays lead roles in the oversight of Johns Hopkins University's globally influential Coronavirus Resource Center and in ongoing efforts to strategically elevate JHU's profile in Washington, D.C., has been appointed to a new leadership position in the university's provost's office.
Image caption: Lainie Rutkow
As the inaugural vice provost for interdisciplinary initiatives, Rutkow will expand on her previous work as senior adviser to the president for strategic initiatives. In that role, she worked closely with JHU President Ron Daniels and others in senior leadership to develop and implement the launch of a universitywide academic and operational strategy to raise Johns Hopkins' national engagement and policy profile with the opening of the new building at 555 Pennsylvania Ave. in Washington, D.C.
Rutkow is also a professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management in the Bloomberg School of Public Health, with a joint appointment in the School of Medicine. She works at the intersection of public policy, law, and health, using legal, qualitative, and quantitative methods to determine how law influences public health outcomes.
As vice provost, her key responsibilities will include working closely with deans to provide programmatic and operational oversight of the university's national engagement strategy and the new building in Washington, D.C. at 555 Pennsylvania Ave.; building out and strengthening the university's policy footprint in the nation's capital; and coordinating and supporting emerging One University initiatives across the schools and centers.
"Lainie will serve as a key member of my leadership team," JHU Provost Sunil Kumar wrote in a message to the deans and members of the provost's office today. "Based on Lainie's career of outstanding academic and professional accomplishments, her deep institutional knowledge of the university, and her collaborative leadership style, I am confident she is the ideal person for this critical new position."
Rutkow earned both an MPH and a PhD from the Bloomberg School and previously served as a Provost's Fellow in 2018-19, with a focus on PhD program career development and exposing PhD students to a variety of career options.
"I'm thrilled to have the opportunity to enhance interdisciplinary initiatives throughout the university, and especially to develop programming that brings together different perspectives and expertise at 555 Pennsylvania Avenue, the university's new D.C.-based home," Rutkow said. "I greatly value the collaborative and synergistic nature of interdisciplinary work, and the innovation that can arise when experts from varied disciplines bring their collective focus to a shared challenge."
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