Jessica Halem, Pfeiffer Visiting Scholar Winter Lecture

Jessica Halem, MBA, is the invited speaker for the Pfeiffer Visiting Scholars series and her talk is titled "Transforming Medicine: One Difficult Moment at a Time." She is the founding LGBT Program Director at Harvard Medical School and remains alone in her role among medical schools in the United States. Under her leadership, the first-year class has grown from 4% to 11% self-identified LGBTQ and the faculty and resident OutList has quadrupled in size. Most recently, she secured a major grant to overhaul the curriculum to integrate sexual and gender minority health equity. Prior to joining Harvard, Jessica ran the Lesbian Community Cancer Project in Chicago where she implemented the nation’s first cultural competency trainings for the CDC, served on then-candidate Barack Obama’s first LGBT Advisory Committee, and has fought for the inclusion of transgender health on the national agenda since 2001.