Meet the Dean
Colleen L. Barry is a public policy scholar and educator and the Inaugural Dean of the Cornell Jeb E. Brooks School of Public Policy. As founding Dean, Dr. Barry has had an influential role in building Cornell’s newest school into one of international prominence, launching academic programs and partnerships across campuses, and developing a long-term vision and strategic priorities to position the Cornell Brooks School to be a leading force in improving lives through policy. She was reappointed for a second five-year term as dean in March 2026.
Dean Barry holds faculty appointments at the Cornell Brooks School of Public Policy and at Weill Cornell Medicine and she is founding co-Director of the Cornell Health Policy Center (CHPC), a partnership between Weill Cornell Medicine and the Brooks School. She is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine and the National Academy of Social Insurance. She has authored over 250 peer-reviewed articles in leading in medicine, public health, and public policy journals, including the New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA, and American Journal of Public Health, and has led numerous large-scale research studies funded by the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, and health-oriented foundations.
At Cornell, Dean Barry has led several university-wide initiatives including chairing a 19-member Cornell Committee on Expressive Activity in 2024 to develop a university-wide policy on expressive activity and protest through a highly deliberative, inclusive process. She currently serves on the Cornell Cross Campus Collaboration Committee to increase strategic alignment and improve financial and systems integration across Cornell’s multiple campuses in Ithaca, New York and Weill Cornell Medicine and Cornell Tech in New York City. Dean Barry co-teaches a one-credit course for Cornell undergraduates – Pathways to Purpose: Civic Leadership in Health, Law, Tech, and Business – with an pilot year enrollment of over 350 students focused on informed dialogue across difference and civic leadership.
Prior to Cornell, Dean Barry was the Fred and Julie Soper Professor and Chair of the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health, the academic home to 80 full-time faculty and over 200 adjunct faculty, five graduate degree programs, and 16 research centers. While at Johns Hopkins, she directed the NIMH funded pre- and post-doctoral mental health services and systems training grant and was the founding Director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Mental Health and Addiction Policy (CMAP). Dr. Barry began her academic career as a faculty member at the Yale School of Public Health. She received her Ph.D. in health policy from Harvard University (2004), her Master of Public Policy from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University (1999), and graduated summa cum laude with a BA in political science and Russian language and literature from Drew University (1992). She is a graduate of Baltimore Friends School (1988).
Dean Barry currently serves as vice chair of the board of directors of Sandy Hook Promise, an organization that seeks to protect children from gun violence. She served on the board and was vice president of the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management and co-chaired the Forum on Mental Health and Substance Use Disorders of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. She served on the board of directors of Congregation Rodeph Shalom in Philadelphia, PA. She grew up in Bethlehem, PA and currently lives with her husband, son, and dog Tilly in Ithaca, NY.