Lourdes Joely Rodríguez, DrPH

Born in Puerto Rico, Dr. Rodríguez currently serves as Chief Executive Officer for the David Rockefeller Fund and holds an appointment as an Adjunct Faculty with the UTHealth School of Public Health Austin Regional Campus. Her professional career spans academia and philanthropy and includes most recently serving as Senior Program Officer for Women’s Health at the St. David’s Foundation. Prior to that, she served as Associate Professor of Population Health and Director of Community-Driven Initiatives at the Dell Medical School at the University of Texas at Austin.  She is an innovative leader and public health practitioner who, in both academic and philanthropic roles, collaborates, develops, and evaluates initiatives that improve health of people most impacted by a myriad of health issues. 

Prior to her move to Austin in 2016, she served as Program Officer at the New York State Health Foundation. From 2004–2012, she co-directed the Urbanism and the Built Environment track in the Department of Sociomedical Sciences at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. She holds a BS in Industrial Biotechnology from the University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez, an MPH from the University of Connecticut Department of Community Medicine, and a DrPH from Columbia University.

Dr. Rodríguez brings humor and joy to her work and interactions with others. She is a no-nonsense woman, a nurturing mother, and a loyal companion – and she does not shy away from bringing her full self as she analyzes situations, co-creates solutions with partners, and builds relationships with others.

Dr. Rodríguez’ background is interdisciplinary and combines multiple areas of social sciences to inform her work in public health. Her work examines the complex pathways that lead individuals, networks, and communities to health, or not. She rounded her education with a fellowship experience with architect and urbanist Michel Cantal Dupart at the National Conservatory of Arts and Trades in Paris, France, with whom she learned to think about cities and their neighborhoods as places that can build or hinder health. Her dissertation work focused on promoting and documenting collective recovery from trauma post the 9/11 disaster in NYC. Since, she has applied lessons from that work to mobilize communities in response to other natural, man-made, chronic and acute disasters. 

Dr. Rodríguez looks at communities as a source of solutions, not as problems to be solved. That assets-based stance is critical in developing partnerships that put research and philanthropic investments in service of the populations she serves. 

Dr. Rodríguez served as a member of the National Academy of Science, Engineering and Medicine's Roundtable on Population Health Improvement. Dr. Rodríguez brings humor and joy to her work and interactions with others. She is a no-nonsense woman, a nurturing mother, and a loyal companion – and she does not shy away from bringing her full self as she analyzes situations, co-creates solutions with partners, and builds relationships with others.

Her scholarly production includes peer-reviewed publications, book chapters, a co-edited book with Dr. Allan Formicola (Mobilizing the Community for Better Health: What the Rest of America Can Learn from Northern Manhattan, 2010, from Columbia University Press), as well as the use of popular media, and earned press coverage to advance her collaborations.