Phyllis M. Wise

Phyllis M. Wise, PhD, was elected to the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Board of Trustees in January 2014.

Phyllis is the chief executive officer and president of the Colorado Longitudinal Study. She is the former chancellor of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where she served as the chief executive officer for the flagship campus from 2011 to 2015. From 2010 to 2011, Phyllis was interim president of the University of Washington. Before that she served as provost and executive vice president at the University of Washington for five years.

Phyllis has been nationally recognized for her administrative leadership as well as her accomplishments as a researcher in women’s health and gender-based biology. A physiologist by training, Phyllis is best known for her work investigating the influence that hormones have on the brains of women and men during their development, adulthood, and aging.

Earlier in her higher education career, Phyllis was dean of the College of Biological Sciences at the University of California, Davis, for three years. Prior to that, she was professor and chair of the Department of Physiology at the University of Kentucky in Lexington from 1993 to 2001. Phyllis also was a faculty member at the University of Maryland, Baltimore, from 1976 to 1993, promoted through the ranks to full professor of physiology in 1987.

Phyllis is a member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences and the National Academy of Medicine. She also is a fellow in the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Additionally, Phyllis serves on the governing boards of RAND Health, the Carle Health Foundation, and the Children’s Hospital of Colorado. She has served on the NIKE and First Busey Corporation boards.

She earned a bachelor’s degree from Swarthmore College in Biology and a doctorate degree in Zoology from the University of Michigan. Phyllis also holds honorary doctorates from Swarthmore College and the University of Birmingham (England).