Cecilia Gerard is a public health leader with deep experience in health care payment and health system transformation. She is the Managing Director of the Food is Medicine Institute at Tufts University, where she leads strategy and research translation, including the National Network of Excellence for Health Care.

Before joining the Institute, Cecilia was at Tufts Health Plan, where she oversaw the expansion of Medicaid managed care, increasing coverage to 300,000 Massachusetts residents and launching innovative benefits such as medically tailored meals for MassHealth members. Previously, she led community health funding initiatives for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, focused on expanding behavioral health access and strengthening community hospitals.

An early member of the federal implementation team for the Affordable Care Act, she played a key role in designing insurance risk stabilization programs. Cecilia holds an MPH from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and a BA from Wellesley College.