Woodrow “Woody” Myers, Jr. earned his MD from Harvard Medical School in 1977 and his MBA from Stanford University in 1982. He was the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Clinical Scholar at the Stanford University Medical Center and an Assistant Professor of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. In 1985, Governor of Indiana Robert Orr appointed him as the new Health Commissioner of Indiana, his home state. Dr. Myers was one of the first African-Americans to lead a major state agency in Indiana. As Health Commissioner, he introduced one of the earliest AIDS awareness programs in the country. In 1987, Dr. Myers was appointed to a commission to form a national strategy to combat the AIDS crisis. Dr. Myers was appointed as New York City’s Health Commissioner in 1990. In 2008, he was a candidate in the Democratic primary election for Indiana’s 7th Congressional District and, in 2020, the Democratic candidate for Governor of Indiana.
Dr. Myers has served on the Harvard Board of Overseers and as Chairman of the Visiting Committee for the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. He was a trustee of Stanford University and the Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science. Dr. Myers has won multiple accolades over the course of his career, including being named a Master of the American College of Physicians and a Fellow of the American College of Physician Executives. Additionally, he is a recipient of the U.S. Public Health Service Award from the United States Surgeon General and the National Medical Association’s Scroll of Merit. Currently, Dr. Myers is Chairman of the Board of Directors at the Mozambique Healthcare Consortium.