Elizabeth Howe Bradley, ’86, got her first real experience in healthcare in ninth grade. Growing up in New Britain, Connecticut, she volunteered as an orderly at a local hospital, rinsing tools in the operating room while watching surgical procedures in progress. The stint at the hospital taught Bradley she has a strong stomach. It also presaged a remarkable career in health-care administration and education.
In 2017, Bradley was elected unanimously as the 11th president of Vassar College, holding joint appointments as professor of political science and professor of science, technology, and society. “It’s an all-encompassing role,” Bradley said. “One is responsible for a vast array of activities from finances, to the academics, to faculty. It takes using every skill I ever learned to be able to do this job.”
Before arriving at Vassar, Bradley spent more than 20 years at Yale University, first as a doctoral student, and later as a professor in public health. She was also the founder and faculty director of the Yale Global Health Leadership Institute, and director of Yale’s Brady-Johnson Program in Grand Strategy. She was appointed head of Yale’s residential Branford College in 2011; she and her husband, fellow Booth graduate John Bradley, ’86, lived on campus with their three children as she developed programs to foster its community.
While an undergraduate majoring in economics at Harvard University, Bradley took a sociology course that focused on the ambiguity between public and private ownership in industries such as healthcare. The experience steered her toward studying in the Full-Time MBA Program at Chicago Booth, with a focus on health-care administration. “The quality and intensiveness of the classes [at Booth] I will never forget,” Bradley said. “They’d never let you go easy on yourself. You had to really work. I almost failed accounting. But that process of challenging yourself to the nth degree taught me how much I could do, and what others could do around me. It stayed with me my whole life.”
Focusing throughout her career on enhancing healthcare globally, Bradley has led revolutionary innovations in the delivery of cardiovascular care, long-term and end-of-life care, and health-care management. “Chicago Booth gives you a way of thinking,” Bradley said. “It gives you a mindset that is, ‘We could be visionary and bold, and achieve things that haven’t been achieved before.’”
Upon earning her degree, Bradley accepted the administrative fellowship at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. She stayed on as an administrator, and helped lead the first generation of quality improvement efforts as part of the National Demonstration Project on Quality Improvement in Health Care.
Bradley next pursued a PhD in epidemiology and public health at Yale, graduating in 1996. After finishing her degree, she remained in New Haven, Connecticut, to join the faculty of the Yale School of Public Health. On sabbatical in 2005-2006, Bradley worked for the William J. Clinton Foundation on a project in Ethiopia, training hospital heads to ensure better treatment for patients. She went on to develop similar programs in Liberia, South Africa, and the United Kingdom. Her work abroad led to her becoming founder and faculty director in 2009 of the Yale Global Health Leadership.
“The Chicago Approach, where you learn not what to think but how to think, has fully influenced my career,” Bradley said. “It is the root of liberal arts. It’s exactly what Vassar College is all about as well. I am enjoying leading here with that same approach.”
Bradley has earned several Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and National Institutes of Health grants, the Teacher of the Year award from the Yale School of Public Health, the John D. Thompson Prize for Young Investigators, and the Donaghue Investigator award from the Patrick and Catherine Weldon Donaghue Medical Research Foundation, and is a member of the National Academy of Medicine.
“Being recognized by Chicago Booth is a thrill,” she said. “To be honored in this way makes me feel good, and I really enjoy being a representative of the school.”
Elizabeth Howe Bradley:
Being recognized by Chicago Booth is a thrill. It means a lot to me. I remember working so hard there and never thinking that I would be able to be successful with all those skills. And so to be honored in this way makes me feel good, and I really enjoy being a representative of the school.
I started as President of Vassar six months ago, and it's an all-encompassing role. One is in charge obviously of all the finances, the academic, the faculty. Thinking about advancement over the future of where Vassar College is going, takes every skill I ever learned to be able to do this job.
The Chicago Approach, where you learn not what to think, but how to think, has fully influenced my career. It is the root of liberal arts. It's exactly what Vassar College is all about as well, and it's tremendous to be able to spread that and really lead in that exact same approach here.
One of the things Chicago Booth did for me is just recognize how much you can actually work. I mean, the quality and the intensiveness of the classes there, I will never forget. They'd never let you take the low road there. You had to really work. I almost failed accounting, but that process of really challenging yourself to the finest degree taught me just how excellent I could be and what others could do around me. So it stayed with me my whole life.
A moment of truth I've had, even in the last six months as the president of Vassar, is recognizing here how many expansive ideas and goals and visions we have for Vassar College, and yet limited resources. Well, how do you do that? How do you achieve what you want to, which is infinite, with the resources that exist, which are always finite?
I've really been able to draw on my Chicago Booth trained skills to address those problems. The economic thinking, the really trade-offs between equity and efficiency and how you think about that. The ethical underpinnings of business problems and business dilemmas. All of that, I feel, I was primed for by Chicago Booth, and now get to really use to solve the problems I'm looking at at Vassar College.
Chicago Booth is much more than a set of classes, a particular curriculum, specific skills. It gives you all that, but it really gives you a way of thinking. Gives you confidence. Gives you a mindset that is, we could actually be visionary and bold and achieve things that haven't been achieved before.
