Dr. Erica Schwartz Is the First Black Woman to Lead the CDC

Let me tell you about Dr. Erica Schwartz.

There’s a physician who spent her whole career in uniform — Navy, Coast Guard, Public Health Service — protecting the health of people she’d never meet. In August 2026, she became the first Black woman to lead the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Her name is Dr. Erica Schwartz, and she’s now the nation’s top public health officer.

The Work

Dr. Schwartz is the Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. She walked into an agency that had gone almost a year without a confirmed leader — and took the job anyway. That tells you everything about her.

Her résumé reads like a career built for exactly this moment: Chief Medical Officer of the U.S. Coast Guard. Deputy Surgeon General of the United States. A retired rear admiral in the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps. She is board-certified in preventive medicine, and she has spent more than two decades on pandemic preparedness, vaccination programs, and infectious-disease response.

She holds degrees in medicine, public health, and law — a full arsenal for an agency that has to answer to science, to Congress, and to the public all at once.

The Roots

Dr. Schwartz grew up in a military family — her father was a career Navy master chief petty officer stationed in San Diego, and three of her siblings served too. That sense of duty is the through-line of her life.

She enrolled at Brown University on an eight-year path that carried her straight from undergraduate engineering into medical school, earning a biomedical engineering degree in 1994 and her M.D. in 1998. She went on to earn a master’s in public health from the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences and a law degree from the University of Maryland.

She was commissioned by the Navy the very same year she graduated — and never stopped serving.

Why You Should Know Her

Here’s why Dr. Erica Schwartz matters right now: the CDC is the agency that tells America how to stay well — vaccines, outbreaks, the science we build our lives around. And for the first time in its history, a Black woman is the one holding that responsibility.

She didn’t get there by shortcut. She got there through military medicine, through crisis after crisis, through a career spent earning the trust of the people she leads. That’s not just a first. That’s a foundation.

Quick facts:

• Director, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
• First Black woman to lead the CDC
• Retired rear admiral, U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps
• Former Deputy Surgeon General & Coast Guard Chief Medical Officer
• Brown University (B.S., M.D.) · MPH, USU · J.D., University of Maryland

Photo: U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (public domain)