Lia Haskin Fernald

Lia Haskin Fernald ’94 is the Brian and Jennifer Maxwell Endowed Professor in Public Health at the School of Public Health at the University of California-Berkeley. Her research focuses on using systemic and strategic approaches to address health disparities and inequalities. She has been at UC-Berkeley since 2005, in her current role since 2014, and also served as associate dean for research from 2014 to 2016. She has worked in Kenya, Malawi, Zimbabwe, Nepal, India, Bangladesh, Mexico, Ecuador, Chile, and Peru.

Fernald graduated with distinction from Swarthmore College with a B.A. in biological anthropology, and was then a Fulbright Scholar in Jamaica. She went on to complete a Ph.D. in nutrition and public health at the University of London in 1999 and an M.B.A at UC-Berkeley in 2000 with a focus on health economics.