Kathy Giusti – Founder and Chief Mission Officer
Co-Chair, Harvard Business School Kraft Precision Medicine Accelerator
Kathy Giusti is a business leader and a healthcare disrupter. She is a multiple myeloma patient and is the Founder and Chief Mission Officer of the Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation (the MMRF). She Co-Chairs the Harvard Business School (HBS) Kraft Precision Medicine Accelerator, which she helped found, as a Senior Fellow at Harvard Business School.
Kathy is recognized as a pioneer in precision medicine, having seen its vast potential in oncology and other diseases. She uses her patient experience and business acumen to drive science faster with innovative models across registries, big data, clinical trials, and venture. Kathy is a champion of patient engagement, encouraging each patient to take initiative to optimize their own care.
Kathy has been named one of Time magazine’s 100 Most Influential People in the World and was ranked #19 on Fortune’s list of the World’s 50 Greatest Leaders. She has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and Fast Company, and on the Today Show, Bloomberg, and CNN.
In 1998, soon after being diagnosed with multiple myeloma and given three years to live, Kathy founded the Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation with her identical twin sister Karen Andrews. At the time, there were no new treatments in the multiple myeloma pipeline. Having worked in leadership positions in the pharmaceutical industry, Kathy understood the industry’s scientific capabilities. But as a patient, Kathy had experienced the broken, dysfunctional healthcare system – and was motivated to use her knowledge and experience to change it.
Under Giusti, the MMRF has raised more than $500 million to fund research and has established partnerships and collaborative research models in precision medicine, including the Multiple Myeloma Research Consortium (MMRC), which has conducted nearly 100 trials, the MMRF CoMMpass™ study, CureCloud, the Right Track, and the Myeloma Investment Fund. Since the MMRF was founded,13 drugs have been approved to treat multiple myeloma and many clinical trials are underway. These efforts have accelerated the pace at which treatments are brought to patients and have more than tripled patients’ survival.
As Co-Chair of the Harvard Business School Kraft Precision Medicine Accelerator, a $20 million program endowed by Robert Kraft and the Kraft Family Foundation, Kathy convened more than 300 leaders from throughout the healthcare ecosystem She identified and published best practices for accelerating cures and created The Kraft Accelerator Playbook for Cures to help organizations across all disease states develop strategies to accelerate cures. Kathy also co-leads the Kraft Accelerator Leadership Forum, a group of CEOs from disease-focused organizations working together to address their most important challenges, share best practices, and accelerate precision medicine models.
Kathy was appointed to President Obama’s Precision Medicine Initiative Working Group and served as an advisor to the Biden Moonshot program. She was named to the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST), the National Cancer Advisory Board (NCAB), and the National Cancer Policy Board (NCPB). She served on the board of IMS Health and is on the advisory boards of Verily and Verily’s Project Baseline. Kathy is a member of the FasterCures Non-Profit Council and the Harvard Business School Health Advisory Board. She is highly published with articles in the Harvard Business Review, Time, Forbes.com, STAT, and Nature.
Kathy received her MBA in general management from Harvard Business School and holds a B.S. and an honorary doctorate from the University of Vermont.