Judy Feder, an Urban Institute fellow, is a professor of public policy and, from 1999 to 2008, was dean of what is now the McCourt School of Public Policy at Georgetown University. A nationally recognized leader in health policy, she has made her mark on the nation’s health insurance system through both scholarship and public service.

Feder’s health policy research began at the Brookings Institution, continued at Urban, and, since 1984, has flourished at Georgetown University. In the late 1980s, she moved from policy research to policy leadership, promoting effective health reform as staff director of the congressional Pepper Commission. She was principal deputy assistant secretary for planning and evaluation at the Department of Health and Human Services and a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress before returning to Urban.

As dean, Feder built Georgetown’s Public Policy Institute into one of the nation’s leading schools. She is an elected member of the Institute of Medicine, the National Academy of Public Administration, and the National Academy of Social Insurance; a former chair and board member of AcademyHealth; a member of the Center for American Progress Action Fund Board, the Board of the National Academy of Social Insurance, and the Hamilton Project’s Advisory Council; and a senior advisor to the Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured. In 2006 and 2008, she was the Democratic nominee for Congress in Virginia’s 10th congressional district.