Kimberlyn Leary

Associate Professor of Department of Health Policy and Management

Department of Health Policy and Management

Steering Committee

Harvard Chan School DrPH Program

Associate Professor of Psychology, Harvard Medical School, McLean Hospital

Harvard Medical School Department of Psychiatry

Lecturer in Public Policy, Harvard Kennedy School
Co-faculty Director, Curriculum and Research, Bloomberg Harvard City Leadership Initiative

Harvard Kennedy School

Kimberlyn Leary is an associate professor of psychology at the Harvard Medical School and an associate professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and a lecturer in public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School. She teaches degree program and executive education classes in adaptive leadership, negotiation and collaborative problem-solving, and leading teams.

Dr. Leary is a Senior Advisor and past Executive Director of the Center of Excellence in Women’s Mental Health at McLean Hospital. She is a faculty affiliate at the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School, the Women and Public Program at the Harvard Kennedy School, and the Bloomberg Harvard City Leadership Initiative. She currently serves as senior vice president at the Urban Institute and is on Intergovernmental Personnel Agreement working as a Senior Fellow in Equity in the White House Office of Management and Budget.

Dr. Leary’s current research and scholarly work is centered on leadership, negotiation capacity, equity focused change management and large-scale systemic change. She is also engaged in several policy initiatives pertaining to enhancing life outcomes for women and girls of color.

For almost 12 years, she served as chief psychologist at the Cambridge Health Alliance/Harvard Medical School, directing the division of psychology and its training programs to deliver culturally sensitive care supporting the hospital’s primary care centers, specialty mental health, and acute emergency services. She has a Ph.D. in clinical psychology from the University of Michigan, an MPA from the Harvard Kennedy School, and an AB from Amherst College, where she is also on the Board of Trustees. She is also on the Board of Trustees at the Austen Riggs Center, the Boston Psychoanalytic Institute, and the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls.