Kaiser Permanente: Reinventing Medical Education

Speaker

Walter Harris

Walter Harris, MBA, joins the Kaiser Permanente Bernard J. Tyson School of Medicine as Senior Vice President for Administration and Finance. He leads the planning and implementation of all operational and financial aspects of the school, including finance and human resources. He also acts as a primary executive liaison to the school’s information technology and capital planning partners. Previously, he was the principal business and financial advisor at the School of Medicine and Health Sciences at George Washington University. Harris has provided executive leadership in the areas of public health operations, healthcare operations, information technology, and organizational development for nearly three decades in the private sector and the federal government. He served for six years in the U.S. Air Force and was selected to serve as a liaison to U.S. Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger. He was recalled to active service during Operation Desert Storm. Later, as Chief Operating Officer of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, he had oversight of a $4.5 billion operating budget, 16,000 federal staff, and 5,000 contract staff. Additionally, he was responsible for delivering a range of enterprise business services for the agency worldwide, including information technology, ethics and conflict of interest, equal employment opportunity, human resources, safety, security, facilities and engineering, library services, acquisition, and financial management programs.