Senator William Frist, M.D., is a nationally-acclaimed heart and lung transplant surgeon, former U.S. Senator and Senate Majority Leader, and chairman of the executive board of the private equity firm Cressey & Company.
Senator Frist served two terms as a United States Senator representing Tennessee, serving as Majority Leader from 2003 until his retirement in 2007. His leadership was instrumental in the passage of the 2003 Medicare Modernization Act and the historic PEPFAR legislation that provided life-saving treatment globally to over 12 million people and reversed the spread of HIV/AIDS worldwide. A graduate of Princeton University, Harvard Medical School, and MGH and Stanford Surgical Residency programs, Dr. Frist is the founder of the Vanderbilt Multi-Organ Transplant Center and has performed more than 150 heart and lung transplant operations. He has written 6 books and has authored over 100 peer-reviewed articles on transplantation and medical science.
His current board service includes the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, The Nature Conservancy, Kaiser Family Foundation, Smithsonian Museum of the American Indian, Bipartisan Policy Center, and Nashville Health Care Council. Past board service includes Princeton University and the Smithsonian Institution. He is a member of the advisory committees for global health at Duke, Harvard and the Massachusetts General Hospital.
In the private sector, he serves on three public (NYSE) company boards, Select Medical, Teladoc and AECOM. In addition he is a board member of Unitek (nursing), Aegis (lab), Aspire (palliative care), MDSave (health consumerism), Cognosante (health IT), Accolade (patient navigation), and Hope Through Healing Hands.
Currently, Dr. Frist serves as adjunct professor of Cardiac Surgery at Vanderbilt and clinical professor of surgery at Meharry Medical College. Most recently, he launched NashvilleHealth, a community-wide, population health initiative. As a leading authority on healthcare, Senator Frist speaks nationally on health reform, FDA policy, global health, and education reform.