Kathryn Giusti

Kathy Giusti is a Senior Fellow and is Co-Chair of the Kraft Precision Medicine Accelerator at the Harvard Business School as well as the faculty co-chair of HBS’s new Executive Education program, Accelerating Innovation in Precision Medicine.

Giusti, a multiple myeloma patient, is the Founder of the Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation (MMRF) and the Multiple Myeloma Research Consortium (MMRC). She serves on the MMRF Board of Directors. She has more than two decades of experience in the pharmaceutical industry, previously holding senior positions at G.D. Searle and Merck.

Since founding the MMRF in 1998, Giusti has led the Foundation in establishing innovative, collaborative research models in the areas of tissue banking, genomics, and clinical trials. These models are dramatically accelerating the pace at which lifesaving treatments are brought to patients and are building an end-to-end solution in precision medicine. Today, Giusti is widely recognized as a pioneer of precision medicine, a champion of open-access data sharing and a strong advocate for patient engagement.

In 2016, Giusti was named Faculty Co-Chair of the HBS-Kraft Precision Medicine Accelerator, which aims to execute novel business strategies that leverage new and emerging technologies and maximize high-impact collaborations to advance precision medicine.

Giusti’s leadership has earned her several prestigious awards and recognitions. She was named by Fortune Magazine as one of three business leaders who are disrupting medicine. She has also been named one of Fortune Magazine’s Worlds’ 50 Greatest Leaders and one of the TIME 100 world’s most influential people. She has been named an Open Science Champion of Change by the White House and has been awarded the American Association for Cancer Research Centennial Medal for Distinguished Public Service, the Harvard Business School Alumni Achievement Award, and the Healthcare Businesswomen's Association's Woman of the Year Award.

In 2015, she was appointed to President Obama’s 2015 Precision Medicine Initiative Working Group. She currently serves on the Harvard Business School Health Advisory Board and has previously served on the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, National Cancer Advisory Board and the National Cancer Policy Board.

Giusti has been featured on the Today Show, NBC Nightly News, CBS Evening News, Fox News, CNN, and Bloomberg. Her efforts have also been profiled by The Wall Street Journal, The New Yorker, Harvard Business Review, The New York Times, Forbes, WIRED, and Fast Company.

Giusti received her MBA in general management from Harvard Business School. She holds an honorary Doctorate from the University of Vermont.