Wayne J. Riley, MD, MPH, MBA, MACP, is the 17th  president of the State University of New York (SUNY) Health Science Center at Brooklyn, Downstate Medical Center, having assumed leadership of the campus on April 3, 2017.

He also holds the faculty ranks of tenured Professor of Medicine, Department of Medicine, College of Medicine and tenured Professor of Health Policy & Management, School of Public Health.

Dr. Riley’s professional experience includes having served as the 10th president, chief executive officer, and professor of medicine at Meharry Medical College, the nation's largest, private, independent, historically Black academic health center dedicated to educating health professionals from 2007 to 2013. During that time, he was also a tenured professor of internal medicine and Senior Health Policy Associate at the Robert Wood Johnson Health Policy Center at Meharry. In addition he was also jointly appointed as a professor of internal medicine at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine.

Immediately prior to joining SUNY Downstate, Dr. Riley served as the President-Elect and 101st President of the American College of Physicians – the nation’s largest medical specialty organization numbering 150,000 physicians who practice the specialty of Internal Medicine and related sub-specialties. He was a clinical professor of medicine and an adjunct professor of healthcare management at Vanderbilt University’s Owen Graduate School of Management and adjunct professor of health policy at Vanderbilt.

An academic primary care general internist, Dr. Riley has more than a quarter century of leadership experience in academic medicine, patient care, research administration, academic health center administration, healthcare management, health policy, biotechnology, the corporate sector, government service, advocacy, and organized medicine.

Dr. Riley began his career in academic medicine at Baylor College of Medicine, where he completed residency training in internal medicine and rose from instructor of medicine to a corporate officer and member of Baylor’s senior management team as the vice president and vice dean for health affairs and governmental relations, and associate professor of internal medicine. Prior to pursuing a career in medicine, he served in three capacities in the Office of the Mayor, City of New Orleans, rising to executive assistant to the mayor for intergovernmental relations.

He is an elected member of the prestigious National Academy of Medicine, formerly known as the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine; a master of the American College of Physicians; and a member of the Society of Medical Administrators, where he has served as secretary-treasurer. He is also a member of the American Clinical and Climatological Association, and the Sullivan Alliance, which seeks to strengthen the capacity and quality of the nation’s health workforce by increasing the numbers of ethnic and racial minorities within the health professions.

He is the recipient of numerous awards and honors, including election to the Alpha Omega Alpha Honor Medical Society, the Arnold P. Gold Medical Humanism Honor Society, and the Delta Omega Public Health Honor Society, and receipt of the SUNY Downstate Ailanthus Award for outstanding public health leadership. He is the recipient of two honorary degrees. One from SUNY Downstate Medical Center (Doctor of Humane Letters) and the other from Tuskegee University (Doctor of Science).

Dr. Riley earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in anthropology with a concentration in Medical Anthropology from Yale University, a Master of Public Health degree in health systems management from the Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, a Master’s in Business Administration from Rice University, and a Doctor of Medicine degree from the Morehouse School of Medicine.

As president of SUNY Downstate, Dr. Riley leads the only academic medical center in Brooklyn, New York, a borough of more than 2.5 million people. Downstate includes a College of Medicine, College of Nursing, College of Health Related Professions, a School of Graduate Studies, a School of Public Health, University Hospital of Brooklyn, and a multifaceted biotechnology initiative. Downstate is also a major research center, and traces its history to 1860, when it was founded as the teaching division of the Long Island College Hospital.