Karen Davis is President of The Commonwealth Fund, a national philanthropy engaged in independent research on health and social policy issues. Ms. Davis assumed the presidency of the fourth oldest private foundation in the country on January 1, 1995. Before joining the Fund, Ms. Davis served as Chairman of the Department of Health Policy and Management at the School of Hygiene and Public Health at the Johns Hopkins University, and held an appointment as professor of economics. She served as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation/Health in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services from 1977-1980, and was the first woman to head a U.S. Public Health Service agency.

Prior to her government career, Ms. Davis was a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C., a visiting lecturer at Harvard University and an assistant professor of economics at Rice University.

She is a past president of the Association for Health Services Research (AHSR), a member of the governing Council of the National Academy of Sciences' Institute of Medicine, a fellow of the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufacture & Commerce (RSA) and a member of the Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured. She was selected as a 1996 AHSR distinguished fellow, and serves on the Board of Directors of the Mount Sinai-NYU Medical Center and Health System and the Mount Sinai Medical School.