Julie Gerberding Biography and Net Worth

Dr. Julie Gerberding is the executive vice president and chief patient officer at Merck, a multinational pharmaceutical company. 

In 2010, Dr. Gerberding joined Merck as the company’s president of vaccines, where she played a significant role in increasing worldwide access to the company’s vaccines. During her time with Merck Dr. Gerberding has built on her passions for addressing disparities within the medical community and advocating for gender parity and advancement of women in the life sciences. She is an executive sponsor of the Merck Women’s Network, mentoring dozens of women inside and outside the company. Additionally, she’s working to improve the rates of maternal mortality through the Merck for Mothers program. 

Prior to joining Merck, Dr. Gerberding worked for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), serving as its director from 2002 to 2009. She was the first woman to hold the position. While there, Dr. Gerberding notably led the country through the anthrax crisis, SARS, bird flu, and 40 other emergency responses. From 1998 to 2002, she worked as the CDC’s divisional director for healthcare quality promotion. 

Before her time at the CDC, Dr. Gerberding was a tenured faculty member in infectious diseases at the University of California, San Francisco—an institution she continues to serve to this day as an adjunct associate clinical professor of medicine. During her time in San Francisco, Dr. Gerberding served on the front lines of the city’s emerging AIDS/HIV crisis. She directed the Prevention Epicenter, which focused on preventing infection in patients and their healthcare providers. 

Dr. Gerberding serves on a number of committees and boards, including the boards of Cerner Corporation, MSD, CWRU, Wellcome Trust Hilleman Laboratories, and the BIO Executive Committee.

She has received numerous awards and honors for her contributions to the medical community, from being named on Time’s list of “100 Most Influential People” in 2004, to receiving the Healthcare Businesswomen Association’s Woman of the Year award in 2018. 

Dr. Gerberding earned both her undergraduate degree and her M.D. at Case Western Reserve University. She also holds her master’s of public health from the University of California, Berkeley, and completed her internship and residency in internal medicine as well as a fellowship in clinical pharmacology and infectious diseases at the University of California, San Francisco.