Research!America President
Mary Woolley is the president of Research!America, the nation's largest not-for-profit, membership supported grassroots public education and advocacy organization committed to making medical and health research, including research to prevent disease and disability and to promote health, a much higher national priority. Under her leadership, Research!America has earned the attention and respect of elected and appointed officials, researchers in the public, private and academic sectors, media, and community leaders with its record of innovation in advocacy for research.
Woolley is an elected member of the Institute of Medicine and a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). She serves on several boards and committees, including the Governing Council of the Institute of Medicine and the National Council for Johns Hopkins Nursing. She is a founding member of the Board of Associates of the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research. Woolley has served as president of the Association of Independent Research Institutes (AIRI), as a reviewer for the National Institutes of Health and National Science Foundation and as a consultant to several research organizations.
Woolley has a 30-year editorial and publication history on science advocacy and research related topics. Her op-eds and letters to the editor are published in newspapers and magazines from coast to coast and she has been published in Science, Nature, Issues in Science and Technology, The New England Journal of Medicine, The Journal of the American Medical Association, The Scientist, and others. She is a sought-after speaker and is frequently interviewed by science, news and policy journalists.
For her work on behalf of medical research, she has been honored as a Woman of Vision by the American Committee for the Weizmann Institute of Science and has received the American Hospital Association Silver Touchstone Award for Public Affairs Programming, the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons Dean's Award for Distinguished Service, the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology Special Award for Science Advocacy, the Friends of the National Institute for Nursing Research Health Advocacy Award and the Awareness and Advocacy Award from the Clinical Research Forum.
A native of Chicago, Woolley received a bachelor of science from Stanford University and a master of arts from San Francisco State University. In her early career, Woolley served as San Francisco project director for the then largest-ever NIH-funded clinical trial, the Multiple Risk Factor Intervention Trial (MRFIT). In 1981, she became administrator of the Medical Research Institute of San Francisco, and in 1986 was named the Institute's executive director and CEO. Woolley has served as president and CEO of Research!America since 1990.