Joan Kaufman, Sc.D., is the Senior Director for Academic Programs at Schwarzman Scholars, Lecturer in Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School, Visiting Professor at Schwarzman College, Tsinghua University, and Non-Resident Honorary Senior Fellow on Public Health at the Center for China Analysis at Asia Society. A public health and China expert, she has lived and worked in China since 1980 for the United Nations, the Ford Foundation, the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative, Columbia University, and Schwarzman Scholars, much of it in residence in Beijing.
Prior to joining Schwarzman Scholars, Kaufman was the Director of Columbia University’s Global Center for East Asia (Beijing) and Associate Professor of Health Policy and Management at Columbia’s Mailman School of Public Health. In 2002, she founded and directed (for a decade) the AIDS Public Policy Project at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, working in both China and Vietnam. She was a Distinguished Scientist at Brandeis University’s Heller School for Social Policy and Management from 2003-2012, Radcliffe Fellow at Harvard from 2001-2002, and a Soros Reproductive Health and Rights Fellow in 2005. Her publications cover global health policy, HIV/AIDS, women’s rights, reproductive health, population, emerging infectious diseases, and civil society with a focus on China. She is a life member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
