Salem College will host a prominent member of the medical community, Freda C. Lewis-Hall, MD, as the 2015 Commencement speaker.

Dr. Lewis-Hall is the Executive Vice President and Chief Medical Officer of Pfizer, Inc. She has held leadership roles in academia, in medical research, in front-line patient care, and at global biopharmaceutical companies including Vertex, Bristol-Myers Squibb, and Eli Lilly.

“We are preparing the next generation of scientific researchers and health-care professionals, and we have made it a priority in our capital campaign to provide state-of-the-art facilities for scientific study,” says D. E. Lorraine Sterritt, President of Salem Academy and College. “We are thrilled to welcome such a prominent scientific researcher to campus at the very time when we are placing a strong emphasis on education and research in the sciences and in mathematics.”

In 2010, Dr. Lewis-Hall was appointed by the Obama Administration to the inaugural Board of Governors for the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI), and in 2012 she was appointed as chair of the Cures Acceleration Network Review Board and as a member of the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS) Advisory Council of the National Institute of Health. She also serves on the Executive Committee of the Clinical Trials Transformation Initiative and on several boards, including those of Harvard Medical School, The Institute of Medicine’s Forum on Drug Discovery, Development, and Translation, and Save the Children.

Dr. Lewis-Hall was named as one of Savoy’s Top Influential Women in Corporate America in 2012 and has been a Healthcare Businesswomen’s Association “Woman of the Year.” Dr. Lewis-Hall has delivered addresses in venues from TEDMED to the Essence Music Festival and appears regularly on the Emmy-winning daytime syndicated show, The Doctors.

Dr. Lewis-Hall was selected by the 2015 student-led Commencement Committee upon the recommendation of Salem alumna and trustee Lucy Rose, class of 1976, who is founder and president of the global pharmaceutical consulting company, Lucy Rose & Associates.

Commencement exercises will be held on Saturday, May 23, 2015, at 10:00 am in the May Dell (rain location in Hanes Auditorium at the Elberson Fine Arts Center).