In Conversation with Dr. Lauren Smith

Lauren Smith, MD, MPH, serves as the vice president of Strategic Portfolios at the RWJF. In this role, Smith serves as a member of the Foundation’s senior leadership team and oversees strategy development, implementation, and management of RWJF’s key focus areas, or strategic portfolios, which include Healthy Children and Families, Healthy Communities, Leadership for Better Health, and Transforming Health and Healthcare Systems programs.

Smith comes from the CDC Foundation, where she served as the chief health equity and strategy officer, bringing more than 25 years of extensive experience at the intersection of healthcare delivery, management, public policy, and public health. In this role, Smith was pivotal in developing and driving strategic efforts to embed health equity across the organization’s activities. She focused on addressing structural inequities affecting marginalized populations’ health, wellbeing, and resiliency.
Smith’s career includes leadership positions at FSG, a leading social impact consulting firm, where she served as co-CEO and led the U.S. health practice. Her visionary leadership contributed to the firm’s growth and mission of achieving lasting and equitable social impact. Before FSG, Smith was senior strategic advisor for the National Institute for Children’s Health Quality. She has also served as medical director and interim commissioner for the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, as the national medical director of the Medical Legal Partnership for Children, and as the medical director of the pediatric inpatient service at Boston Medical Center.

Smith is a graduate of Harvard College where she earned a degree in biology, before earning her MD from the University of California, San Francisco School of Medicine, and an MPH from the University of California, Berkeley School of Public Health.