CDC Director

Role at CDC

As director of CDC, Dr. Schwartz leads the agency in its mission to protect the health and safety of the American people through evidence-based guidance, operational excellence, and partnership-driven solutions to address twenty-first century public health challenges.

In this role, Dr. Schwartz prioritizes modernizing CDC's data infrastructure for real-time threat detection; empowering states, tribes, local communities, and territorial partners; and supporting the agency's dedicated workforce.

Previous experience

Prior to joining CDC, Dr. Schwartz served as the United States Deputy Surgeon General. During her tenure, she played a pivotal role in the COVID-19 pandemic, designing and operationalizing scalable drive-through testing sites across all 50 states, Puerto Rico, and the District of Columbia. This effort resulted in the testing of nearly 11.5 million Americans and expanded access to care while preserving critical hospital capacity.

Dr. Schwartz's early career includes service as an occupational medicine physician in the US Navy. Her assignments included serving as the Chief of the Occupational Medicine Clinic and the Immunization Clinic and serving as the Preventive Medicine Department Head at the Naval Medical Clinic in Annapolis, MD. She also served as an occupational medicine physician and clinical epidemiologist at the Navy and Marine Corps Public Health Center in Portsmouth, VA.

In 2005, Dr. Schwartz transferred from the Navy to the United States Public Health Service (USPHS) and was detailed to the US Coast Guard. She focused on developing force health protection guidance for responders during major national and global crises such as Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, the 2009 H1N1 pandemic, the 2010 Haiti earthquake, Deepwater Horizon, and the West Africa Ebola outbreak.

In 2015, Dr. Schwartz was appointed to the rank of rear admiral in the USPHS and became Chief Medical Officer for the US Coast Guard, where she oversaw the Coast Guard's healthcare system, safety program, and work-life initiatives.

Education

Dr. Schwartz holds a Bachelor of Science in biomedical engineering and a Doctor of Medicine from Brown University. She also earned a Master of Public Health in epidemiology from the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, and a Juris Doctorate from the University of Maryland. Her academic and professional training reflects a lifelong commitment to public health, scientific rigor, and operational excellence.