Leigh Taylor Graham

Leigh Graham, PhD, MBA, is a Senior Advisor and Core Faculty at Ariadne Labs, a joint innovation center for healthcare delivery at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and The Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston. She is also a Research Scientist at Chan and a Design Critic at Harvard's Graduate School of Design.

Dr. Graham is a qualitative social scientist and expert on urban policy and social equity. At Ariadne, she focuses on building community health equity across a range of clinical disciplines and in cities around the U.S. As the Scientific Lead for the Delivery Decisions Initiative's Maternal Wellbeing City Dashboard, she developed its conceptual framework of livable communities for birthing people, which integrates urban planning and public health praxis to improve community-based wellbeing for mothers and their families through a focus on measurable social determinants of health that impact maternal mortality and morbidity. She also developed the dashboard's testing strategy for geographic and demographic diversity, and advised on its application for policy advocacy. More recently, Leigh co-led research and human-centered design for the New York City Health Department on ameliorating loneliness and fostering a culture of belonging, and is now leading qualitative research on incorporating race dialogues in serious illness care with Dr. Justin Sanders, a palliative care physician at McGill.

Dr. Graham's scholarship and writing has appeared in peer-reviewed policy journals as well as local and national media. Prior to joining Ariadne Labs, Leigh was a professor at The CUNY Graduate Center and John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City, where she also served as the Faculty Director for the Tow Policy Advocacy Fellowship, mentoring graduate students in careers in criminal justice policy change. She has been a consultant to local governments, philanthropic foundations, and community organizations to generate more equitable development outcomes in cities and regions impacted by climate change and wealth inequality.