Julie Gerberding

Julie Louise Gerberding is an American infectious disease expert who was the first woman to serve as the director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). As of May 2022, she is the CEO of the Foundation for the National Institutes of Health (FNIH). Gerberding grew up in Estelline, South Dakota, attended Brookings High School, and earned undergraduate and graduate degrees from Case Western Reserve University. She was the chief medical resident at the University of California, San Francisco where she treated hospitalized AIDS patients in the first years of the epidemic. Gerberding became a nationally-recognized figure during the 2001 anthrax attacks in the United States during her tenure as the acting deputy director of the National Center for Infectious Diseases, where she was a prominent spokeswoman for the CDC during daily briefings regarding the attacks and aftermath. Gerberding then served as CDC director from 2002 to 2009, and was then hired as an administrator at Merck.