Risa Lavizzo-Mourey

Current Company

Robert Wood Johnson Foundation — Former President & CEO

Leading America's Largest Health Philanthropy

Risa Lavizzo-Mourey was trained as a physician and geriatrician at Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania before joining the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. As president and CEO from 2003 to 2017, she led the nation's largest philanthropy dedicated exclusively to health, directing over $10 billion in grants and program investments that reshaped how America thinks about what makes communities healthy.

Under Lavizzo-Mourey, RWJF broadened its focus from healthcare delivery to the social determinants of health — the housing, nutrition, education, economic opportunity, and environmental conditions that account for the majority of health outcomes. This was a paradigm shift: rather than funding more hospitals and clinics, RWJF invested in sidewalks, farmers' markets, school nutrition programs, and community development.

Building a Culture of Health

Lavizzo-Mourey's signature initiative was the 'Culture of Health' framework — the idea that health should be a shared value embedded in every community decision, from urban planning to school design to corporate policy. The framework influenced public health departments, hospital systems, and municipal governments across the country, providing a common language for thinking about health beyond the clinical setting.

After stepping down from RWJF, Lavizzo-Mourey joined the University of Pennsylvania as the inaugural Penn Integrates Knowledge professor, continuing to bridge the worlds of medicine, public health, and social policy. Her career demonstrated that philanthropic leadership at sufficient scale could change not just individual outcomes but the entire framework through which a society understands health.