McCosh Hall
50

Sponsored by the Alumni Association of Princeton University

Moderator

Heather Howard
Director, State Health and Value Strategies, Princeton School of Public and International Affairs; Co-Director, Global Health and Health Policy

Panelists

William Dean Crano ’64
Director, Health Psychology and Prevention Science Institute, and Stuart Oskamp Distinguished Professor of Psychology, Claremont Graduate University

William Harrison Frist ’74
Founder, Frist Cressey Ventures

Michelle A. Williams ’84
Joan and Julius Jacobson Professor of Epidemiology and Public Health, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health

Alinor Sterling ’89
Partner, Koskoff Koskoff & Bieder, PC

Lindsey Jeanne Leininger ’99
Faculty Director, Center for Health Care, Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College

Moderator

Heather Howard
Director, State Health and Value Strategies, Princeton School of Public and International Affairs; Co-Director, Global Health and Health Policy

Heather Howard is a professor of the practice at the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs, where she co-directs the Global Health Program. She is also director of the State Health and Value Strategies Program, a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation-funded program focused on assisting state health care systems to become more affordable, equitable and innovative. She served as New Jersey’s commissioner of Health and Senior Services from 2008 to 2010. She also has significant federal experience, having worked as Sen. Jon Corzine’s chief of staff, as associate director of the White House Domestic Policy Council and senior policy adviser for First Lady Hillary Clinton, as an Honors Program attorney in the U.S. Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division Healthcare Task Force and for U.S. Rep. Nita Lowey, D-N.Y. She received her B.A. from Duke University and her J.D. from NYU School of Law

Panelists

William Dean Crano ’64
Director, Health Psychology and Prevention Science Institute, and Stuart Oskamp Distinguished Professor of Psychology, Claremont Graduate University

William Crano is a distinguished professor of psychology in Claremont Graduate University’s Division of Behavioral and Organizational Sciences. His basic research is concerned with social influence, especially the impact of minorities on the beliefs and actions of the majority, and on the effects of self-interest on attitudes and actions. His applied research is focused on the development of persuasive and instructional information to prevent substance use in children and adolescents and to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS. He has been a NATO senior scientist, a Fulbright fellow and director of the program in social psychology at the National Science Foundation. His research on the effects of drugs and disease on communities has been published in academic journals, encyclopedias and books for more than 50 years. Crano is an adviser to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime and to the U.S. Department of State. 

William Harrison Frist ’74
Founder, Frist Cressey Ventures

Sen. Bill Frist is a heart transplant surgeon, former U.S. Senate majority leader and current global board chair of The Nature Conservancy. A partner at Frist Cressey Ventures, he co-founded CareBridge, No. 1 on the latest Inc. 5000 list of fastest-growing companies in the U.S. He started the multi-organ Vanderbilt Transplant Center, which is the nation’s busiest heart transplant center. His leadership in the U.S. Senate was instrumental in passage of the 2003 PEPFAR legislation, which has provided life-saving HIV treatment globally to 25 million people. Frist served twice as a Princeton University trustee (1974-1978, 1991-2001) and in 2003, he received the Woodrow Wilson Award, the University’s top honor for undergraduate alumni whose careers embody a call to public service. He and his wife, Tracy, live on their historic farm, Old Town, in Franklin, Tennessee.

Michelle Williams ’84
Joan and Julius Jacobson Professor of Epidemiology and Public Health, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health

Michelle Williams is a renowned epidemiologist, an award-winning educator and a widely recognized academic leader. She recently stepped down as dean of the faculty at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health after seven years and is currently spending a sabbatical year as a visiting professor at Stanford University. Prior to becoming dean, she was chair of the Department of Epidemiology at the Harvard Chan School and program leader of the Population Health and Health Disparities Research Programs at Harvard’s Clinical and Translational Sciences Center. Her research places special emphasis in the areas of reproductive, perinatal, pediatric and molecular epidemiology. She has published more than 520 scientific articles and was elected to the National Academy of Medicine in 2016. In 2020, she was awarded the Ellis Island Medal of Honor and recognized by PR Week as one of the top 50 health influencers of the year.

Alinor Sterling ’89
Partner, Koskoff Koskoff & Bieder, PC

Alinor Sterling devotes her legal career to demonstrating that the law is a powerful weapon in the fight against injustice. She represented nine families of victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in their landmark victory over Remington Arms Company, the manufacturer of the assault rifle used to carry out the attack. This win enabled the families to expose Remington’s internal marketing documents, including its contracts to market AR-15 style assault rifles through first-person shooter video games. For this work, the Koskoff firm received the 2022 Steven J. Sharp Public Service Award from the American Association of Justice. Sterling and her partners also represented Sandy Hook families who were falsely called actors and frauds by internet “newsman” Alex Jones. That case resulted in a $1.4 billion judgment against Jones. For this work, Sterling and her colleagues received the 2023 Trial Lawyer of the Year Award from Public Justice.

Lindsey Leininger ’99
Faculty Director, Center for Health Care, Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College

Lindsey Leininger is a health policy researcher specializing in the health care safety net and community health. Her community health experience has spanned multiple high-profile public health issues, including: leading an award-winning public education campaign during the COVID-19 pandemic; designing and delivering a curriculum for health insurance navigators supporting the rollout of President Barack Obama’s health care law; and leading data and research efforts for home-visiting programs designed to reduce maternal and infant mortality. At Tuck, she teaches health analytics to current and future health care executives and directs the school’s Center for Health Care. Prior to Tuck, Leininger spent a decade designing and leading analytics projects for public sector health insurance agencies, both as an academic and think-tank researcher. She majored in economics at Princeton and completed her Ph.D. in health policy at the University of Chicago.