Mary Woolley is the President and Chief Executive Officer of Research!America, an alliance that advocates for science, discovery, and innovation to achieve better health for all. Under her leadership, Research!America has earned the attention and respect of elected and appointed officials, researchers in the public, private and academic sectors, media, and community leaders with its record of innovation in advocacy for research. She has a 30-year editorial, presentation and publication history on science advocacy and research related topics. Her hundreds of articles, op-eds and letters to the editor have been published in everything from Science and Nature to The New York Times andT he Wall Street Journal. She is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine and has served on its governing Council. Up until recently she served for a decade on the Council for The Division of the Biological Sciences and the Pritzker School of Medicine of the University of Chicago Medical Center. A native of Chicago, Mary received a B.S. from Stanford University, an M.A. from San Francisco State University, and holds two honorary doctoral degrees from the Northeast Ohio Medical University (NEOMED) and Wayne State University. In her early career, Mary served as San Francisco project director for the then largest-ever NIH-funded clinical trial, the Multiple Risk Factor Intervention Trial (MRFIT). In 1981, she became administrator of the Medical Research Institute of San Francisco, and in 1986 was named the Institute’s executive director and CEO. In 1990, Mary began her service as President and CEO of Research!America.