Michelle Williams

Public & Population Health Leader, Renowned Epidemiologist. Author, The Cure for Everything, Professor, Stanford University School of Medicine

Michelle Williams

Public & Population Health Leader, Renowned Epidemiologist. Author, The Cure for Everything, Professor, Stanford University School of Medicine

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Biography

Michelle A. Williams has spent more than three decades proving a deceptively simple idea: that health is created less in hospitals than in the places where people live, work, learn, and play — and that a society can choose to build those places well. She is Professor of Epidemiology and Population Health at Stanford University School of Medicine, an adjunct professor of epidemiology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and, for seven years, its Dean of the Faculty. She led one of the world’s premier public health institutions from 2016 through 2023 — a tenure that spanned the entire arc of COVID-19, when the school’s faculty became a primary source of evidence and counsel for governments, employers, school systems, and the public. She also held the Angelopoulos Professorship in Public Health and International Development, jointly at the Chan School and the Harvard Kennedy School.

In February 2026, One World/Random House published her first book for a general audience, The Cure for Everything: The Epic Struggle for Public Health and a Radical Vision for Human Thriving, written with award-winning investigative journalist Linda Marsa. It recovers the dramatic and largely hidden history of American public health — from W.E.B. Du Bois to Alice Hamilton to the activists of ACT UP — and argues that our greatest gains in longevity came not from miracle drugs but from clean water, safe workplaces, vaccines, and hard-won political will. Former U.S. Surgeon General Richard Carmona called it “a must-read for all”; Arianna Huffington praised its insistence that individual wellness and collective well-being cannot be separated.

Dr. Williams is an internationally recognized epidemiologist whose research — more than 560 peer-reviewed publications — spans reproductive, perinatal, pediatric, and molecular epidemiology, with a sustained focus on why health outcomes diverge so sharply along lines of race, income, and geography. She is a co-principal investigator of the Apple Women’s Health Study, a decades-long collaboration with Apple and the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and the largest study of its kind ever undertaken. Her fieldwork began as a graduate student in the Dominican Republic and Haiti, and her research training programs have placed students at research sites across South America, Southeast Asia, Africa, and Europe.

She has delivered more than 150 invited lectures worldwide, including the Alexander Langmuir Lecture, the CDC’s Charles C. Shepard Science Award Lecture, and keynote addresses to the National Academies and at forums convened by JPMorgan, Fortune, and the World Economic Forum. She is a member of the Board of Directors of ICF, and serves on the boards of Americares and the Seattle Biomedical Research Institute.

Born in Jamaica and raised in Queens, New York, she is the daughter of a master tailor and grew up in a family whose foothold in America was made possible by the very workplace-safety and public-health protections she now defends. That story — of a tailor’s daughter who became dean of Harvard’s school of public health — anchors a speaking style that is rigorous, warm, and unsparing in equal measure. She is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine and holds a bachelor’s degree in biology and genetics from Princeton, a master’s in civil engineering from Tufts, and master’s and doctoral degrees in epidemiology from Harvard.

Speech Topics

The Cure for Everything: Building a Healthier Future Through Prevention, Public Health, and Human Thriving

Modern medicine has transformed how we treat disease, yet many of the greatest improvements in human health have come long before patients enter a hospital or doctor's office. In this compelling keynote, internationally renowned epidemiologist and public health leader Dr. Michelle A. Williams explores the remarkable history of public health—from clean water and vaccines to environmental protections and disease prevention—and why these foundational investments remain essential to the future of society. Drawing from her acclaimed book The Cure for Everything, Dr. Williams examines how the environments we build, the policies we enact, and the choices we make collectively determine whether people merely survive or truly thrive. She challenges leaders to think beyond healthcare systems alone and embrace a broader vision of health that strengthens communities, expands opportunity, and prepares us for the public health challenges of the twenty-first century.

Audiences will learn:

Why prevention and public health have delivered some of history's greatest advances in health and longevity.
How policy, environment, education, and community investments shape health outcomes as much as medical care.
What leaders across healthcare, business, government, and education can do to build healthier, more resilient communities for generations to come