She was the only woman in the room for most of her career.
Dr. Catharine Young is a scientist who has spent her career moving between the lab, government, and the global stage. At the White House, she led policy and international engagement for the Biden Cancer Moonshot, shaping national and international cancer strategy and securing multi-billion-dollar commitments. Before that, she strengthened biosecurity at the Department of Defense during the Ebola response, served as Senior Science Advisor at the British Embassy, directed science policy at the Biden Cancer Initiative, and led the SHEPHERD Foundation's work on rare cancers. Today she is a Senior Fellow at Harvard, building new ways to finance cancer care in the countries that need it most.
She holds a PhD in biomedical sciences and completed postdoctoral work in biomedical engineering at Cornell. She is a TED Fellow, a Presidential Leadership Scholar, and a National Academies New Voices Fellow. Born and raised in South Africa, she is an immigrant, and that journey shapes everything she builds.
alpha is her next chapter: telling the stories of the women leading science, and opening the door wider for the ones on their way.