Valerie Montgomery Rice, MD, FACOG
Morehouse School of Medicine
“From pioneering research in women’s health to transformative leadership across multiple institutions, from innovative pipeline programs to nationwide policy advocacy, Dr. Valerie Montgomery Rice has consistently demonstrated exceptional commitment to expanding representation in healthcare and addressing healthcare access differentials,” says Joseph Adrian Tyndall, MD, MPH, FACEP, executive vice president for health affairs and dean of the Morehouse School of Medicine (MSM). But her real genius, he adds, “lies in her ability to forge productive collaboration across professional boundaries.”
Valerie Montgomery Rice, MD, FACOG, president and CEO of MSM, grew up in Macon, Georgia, and started her career at the University of Kansas Medical Center. From 2003 to 2006, she served as chair of obstetrics and gynecology at Meharry Medical College in Nashville, where she expanded residency opportunities and research infrastructure with a focus on benefiting students underrepresented in medicine. She also created the Center for Women’s Health Research at Meharry, which integrates basic science, clinical care, and community outreach to address conditions that disproportionately affect women of color.
In 2011, Dr. Montgomery Rice arrived at MSM, where she has had an outsized impact on medical education both locally and nationally. During her time at MSM, she has doubled the medical student class size from 55 to 110 annually and increased the number of degree programs from eight to 16 and graduate medical education (GME) programs from seven to 14. In 2021, she established the More in Common Alliance partnership between MSM and CommonSpirit Health, which was an opportunity to scale MSM’s models for education and training of next-generation care providers through the establishment of regional medical campuses and GME programs. She also established MSM’s Master of Science in Medical Sciences program, which has produced 233 graduates and become a national model.
Her fundraising efforts have also led to transformational financial support for various initiatives at the institution, with the historic $175 million Bloomberg Philanthropies gift. She also helped secure a $3 million grant from the Kaiser Permanente Foundation for the Undergraduate Health Sciences Academy she created to better prepare undergraduate students for health professions careers.
Leveraging an interprofessional approach to supporting and expanding opportunities to increase representation in the STEM fields, Dr. Montgomery Rice has reshaped medical education and health care delivery nationwide. Her contributions to the AAMC’s landmark publication, Altering the Course: Black Males in Medicine, focused national attention on the declining representation of Black men in medicine and helped spur efforts to address that challenge. And her leadership of the National Academies’ Roundtable on Black Men and Black Women in Science, Engineering, and Medicine is powerful advocacy for comprehensive excellence.
Dr. Montgomery Rice has been named one of Georgia Trend magazine’s 100 Most Influential Georgians five times and has been recognized with dozens of awards, including a distinguished service award from the NAACP. She has also received the Elizabeth Blackwell Award from the American Medical Women’s Association; several honorary doctorates; and the National Medical Association’s highest honor, its Scroll of Merit award.
Dr. Montgomery Rice earned a BS from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 1983 and an MD from Harvard Medical School in 1987. She interned and completed residency at Emory University and completed a fellowship at Hutzel Hospital (now DMC Hutzel Women’s Hospital) through its partnership with Wayne State University.