President Joseph R. Biden, Jr. has appointed Dr. Rochelle Walensky as director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, succeeding Dr. Robert Redfield, who served from March 26, 2018 to Jan. 20, 2021. Dr. Walensky will lead the CDC’s response to the coronavirus pandemic. 

Before her appointment to the CDC, Dr. Walensky was chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases at Massachusetts General Hospital and professor of medicine at Harvard. Medical School.

She told The Forward, “I’m motivated by the Jewish teachings of tikkun olam. Tikkun olam for me has been giving at the individual patient level — not to judge, not to react, but to give, to heal and to repair.”