Mark D. Smith, MD, MBA made the most of his time at Penn as a general internal medicine fellow, an RWJF Clinical Scholar, and an MBA student. He brought a commitment to vulnerable and poor patients that he carried with him into leadership positions in medicine, business, and philanthropy.

While at Penn, he led the 1986 Philadelphia Commission on AIDS, housed at LDI. The Commission was funded by Pew to analyze and recommend strategies and resources needed by local agencies and medical centers to respond to the spreading epidemic. He remembered LDI as "a place of intellectual synergy and practical efficiency."

Dr. Smith went on to direct the AIDS clinic at Johns Hopkins, and become Executive Vice-President of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, where he oversaw programs in HIV, Reproductive Health, and the Health Care Marketplace.

From 1996 through 2013 he was the Founding President and Chief Executive Officer of the California HealthCare Foundation, an independent philanthropy dedicated to improving the health of the people of California, particularly the underserved. The Foundation began operations with $500 million in assets, and made $650 million in charitable grants under his leadership.

Dr. Smith is currently a Professor of Clinical Medicine at the University of California at San Francisco and co-chairs the Guiding Committee of the Health Care Payment Learning and Action Network (LAN). Launched by the Department of Health and Human Services in 2015, the LAN provides a forum for generating evidence, sharing best practices, developing common approaches to the design and monitoring of alternative payment models, and removing barriers to health care transformation across the U.S. health care system.

Dr. Smith was elected to the Institute of Medicine in 2001 and chaired the IOM’s Committee that produced the widely-publicized 2012 report Best Care at Lower Cost. We are proud of the small part we played in his early career.