2019 Commencement Speakers
February 21, 2019
To:Faculty, Students, and Staff
From:J. Larry Jameson, MD, PhD
Suzanne Rose, MD, MSEd
It is our pleasure to invite you to join us as we celebrate Commencement on May 19, 2019, at the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts and recognize the outstanding achievements of our graduating medical class. We are privileged this year to have two exceptional speakers – Reed V. Tuckson, MD, who will deliver the Commencement Address, and Edward T. Anderson, MD, who will serve as the Class of 1969 50th reunion speaker.
Dr. Tuckson, who is an alumnus of our Internal Medicine Residency and General Medicine Fellowship, the Leonard Davis Institute and the Wharton School of Business, has a long history of leadership roles across the health care landscape. Among his many professional interests, as the Managing Director of Tuckson Health Connections, LLC, Dr. Tuckson is active in championing the use of data and analytics to improve health promotion, quality and cost-effective care outcomes, and enhancing optimal person-centered care and decision making. Previously, he enjoyed a long tenure as Executive Vice President and Chief of Medical Affairs for UnitedHealth Group; Senior Vice President for Professional Standards of the AMA; President of the Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science; Senior Vice President of the March of Dimes Birth Defects Foundation; and Commissioner of Public Health for the District of Columbia.
Dr. Tuckson serves as the Chair of the Board of The Alliance For Health Reform; Chair of the Advisory Committee for the Alphabet company ‘Verily’s’ Project Baseline health analytic and research initiative; and is a member of Boards or Advisory Committees that include Cell Therapeutics, Academy Health, the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics, the People-Centered Research Foundation, the NIH Clinical Center; MITRE, and Howard University. An active member of the National Academy of Science, Dr. Tuckson sits on several of the Academy’s Advisory Committees and has led several of its initiatives.
Previously, Dr. Tuckson has served as the President of the American Telemedicine Association; a member of the Advisory Committee to the Director of the NIH; Chairman of the Secretary of Health’s Advisory Committee on Genetics, Health and Society; and on U.S. Government cabinet level health advisory committees concerned with health reform, infant mortality, children’s health, violence, and radiation testing.
Dr. Anderson, C’65, M’69, is an interventional cardiologist, who has been a distinguished member of the staff of Sequoia Hospital in Redwood City, CA, for more than four decades. Raised in Philadelphia, Dr. Anderson was the point guard on the men’s basketball team as a Penn undergraduate. After graduating from the School of Medicine, he completed his internship, residency and cardiology fellowship at Stanford University School of Medicine.
Upon completing his fellowship, Dr. Anderson settled in Palo Alto and began private practice at Sequoia Hospital, where he is esteemed as a master clinician by patients and colleagues. His career spans the modern era of cardiology, and he has played a significant role in moving the field forward.
Dr. Anderson has been an outstanding University citizen, serving as a member of the University Board of Trustees for a decade. He also served on the University Committee for Undergraduate Financial Aid and the Medical School’s National Alumni Council and is a former member of the Athletic Board of Overseers, the Agenda for Excellence Council, and the Penn Alumni Board of Directors. With his wife, Lois, PT’65, Dr. Anderson established the Edward and Lois Anderson Endowed Scholarship and has supported our 21st Century Scholars Fund, the Track Fund, and The Penn Fund. In 2011 he was honored with the University’s Alumni Award of Merit and in 2014 received PSOM’s Alumni Service Award.
We look forward to hearing the messages Drs. Tuckson and Anderson have for our talented graduating medical students. We hope you will join us.