On February 9, 2003, LDI alumnus Raynard Kington, MD, PhD was appointed Deputy Director of the National Institutes of Health, bringing his skills in leadership, policy direction, and coordination to the nation’s biomedical research enterprise. Dr. Kington came to Penn in 1985 as a Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholar, earning his MBA and PhD from the Wharton School in 1991, and built a career as an expert on the role of social factors as determinants of health. We can hardly take full credit for accomplishments that began as a 21-year-old medical school graduate, but we’d like to think we had a role in Dr. Raynard’s success at the CDC, RAND, the NIH, and since 2010, as President of Grinnell College. He was elected to the National Academy of Medicine in 2006, and now sits on the NAM's Leadership Council.

Here’s an excerpt of a straight-talk talk he gave on diversity in the health professions at LDI in 2013.