Joan Kaufman, MA, MS, ScD, is the Senior Director for Academic Programs for the Schwarzman Scholars Program. She is also a lecturer on global health and social medicine at Harvard Medical School. She was previously the director of Columbia University’s Global Center for East Asia, founder and director of the AIDS Public Policy Program as well as principal and faculty affiliate of the Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations at Harvard’s Kennedy School, and distinguished scientist and senior lecturer at the Heller School for Social Policy and Management at Brandeis University. From 2012-2016 she directed Columbia University’s Global Center for East Asia, one of eight global centers working with the university to lead work on issues of global concern, and was Associate Professor of Health Policy and Management at the Mailman School of Public Health. From 2008-2011, she was the associate director for academics for the masters in science program in international health policy and management, one of two sustainable international development master’s degree programs at the Heller School, Brandeis University. Dr. Kaufman also worked as the China team leader for the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative from 2002 to 2012. Dr. Kaufman was the first UNFPA international program officer in China in the 1980s and from 1996 to 2001, she was the Ford Foundation’s reproductive health program officer for China based in Beijing.
She spent 2001–2002 as a Radcliffe fellow at Harvard and 2005-2006 as a Soros reproductive health and rights fellow. In 2002, she founded the AIDS Public Policy Project at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, a program which trained government officials in China and Vietnam about the multi-sectoral and governance requirements for an effective HIV/AIDS response.
She holds a doctorate in public health from the Harvard School of Public Health, master’s degrees in Asian studies and health and medical sciences from UC Berkeley, and BA cum laude in Chinese studies from Trinity College. She has published widely on AIDS, reproductive health, gender, population and international health policy, emerging infectious diseases, and civil society and health with a focus on China.