A native of Nashville, Tennessee, Bill Frist is a partner at Cressey & Company LP, a private investment firm focused on the healthcare industry as well as the Frederick H. Schultz Class of 1951 Visiting Professor of International Economic Policy at Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, where he teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in health care economics and policy. He served as Majority Leader of the U.S. Senate from 2002 until 2007.
Frist began his undergraduate career at Princeton University knowing he would devote his life to healing. After graduating in 1974, he enrolled in Harvard Medical School and went on to earn his medical degree with honors.
Frist then completed his residency in general and then heart surgery at Massachusetts General Hospital before joining the team of renowned heart transplant surgeon Dr. Norman Shumway at Stanford University in 1985.
Board certified in both general surgery and cardiothoracic surgery and recognized as a pioneer in heart-lung transplantation, Frist returned to his hometown and became Director of Vanderbilt University Medical Center’s heart and lung transplant program in 1986. Three years later he founded and became Director of the Vanderbilt Multi-Organ Transplant Center.
With his 1994 election to the U.S. Senate, Frist became the first practicing physician to be elected to that body since 1928. He rose to Senate Majority Leader just eight years after his election, having served less time in Congress than anyone ever to hold that position. Fulfilling his pledge to serve just 12 years in the Senate, the citizen legislator returned home to Nashville in January 2007.
Frist held numerous committee assignments during his Senate career, including seats on the Finance and Foreign Relations Committees. He championed American leadership in the global fight against HIV/AIDS, successfully fought to ensure access to clean water serves as a cornerstone of U.S. foreign assistance, and was a Congressional representative to the United Nations. He also completed a six-year stint on the National Endowment for Democracy’s board of directors while serving in the Senate.
Frist has traveled to more than a dozen African countries over the last decade to study HIV/AIDS and malaria policy and perform surgery in Sudanese, Kenyan, and Ugandan hospitals. Former U.S. Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle has joined him to act as co-chairman of the ONE Campaign’s presidential initiative, ONE Vote ’08, which engages the public on issues of global health and extreme poverty. Frist also chairs Save the Children’s global Survive to 5 campaign, which seeks to provide basic health interventions that can save more than six million children around the world each year.
Frist currently serves on the following prestigious boards: Africare, the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Committee on Conscience, the Clinton Global Initiative’s Global Health Working Group, the Living Water International Advisory Board, Save the Children, the U.S. Global Leadership Campaign’s Advisory Council, and the Mountain Gorilla Veterinary Project.
Frist has authored more than 100 peer-reviewed articles, chapters, and abstracts in medical science in addition to authoring/editing five books. He and his wife Karyn have three grown sons.