Rochelle Walensky

Rochelle Paula Walensky (née Bersoff; born April 5, 1969) is an American physician-scientist who is the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the administrator of the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry. Prior to her appointment at the CDC, she was the Chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases at Massachusetts General Hospital and a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. Walensky is an expert on HIV/AIDS.

In 1991, Walensky received a B.A. in biochemistry and molecular biology from Washington University in St. Louis. In 1995, she received an M.D. degree from Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. From 1995 to 1998, she trained in internal medicine at Johns Hopkins Hospital. Walensky then became a fellow in the Massachusetts General Hospital/Brigham and Women's Hospital Infectious Diseases Fellowship Program. In 2001, she earned an MPH in clinical effectiveness from the Harvard School of Public Health.

Walensky had been on the faculty of Harvard Medical School since 2001, first as an instructor, then as a professor. Walensky was a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School from 2012-2020, and served as chief of the division of infectious diseases at Massachusetts General Hospital from 2017-2020. She served on the frontline of the COVID-19 pandemic and conducted research on vaccine delivery and strategies to reach underserved communities. Walensky has worked to improve HIV screening and care in South Africa, led health policy initiatives, and researched clinical trial design and evaluation in a variety of settings.

The Biden transition announced Walensky's presumptive appointment as CDC director on December 7, 2020. Doctors and public health experts widely praised the choice. As the position of director of the CDC does not require Senate confirmation to take office, Walensky's tenure at the CDC began on January 20, 2021.

On August 3, 2021, Walensky instituted a 60-day extension of a federal COVID-related ban, which had just expired, on landlords evicting their tenants. The extended ban applied only to "counties experiencing substantial and high levels of community transmission levels", but under the criteria of the ban this covered an area holding 90% of the U.S. population. On August 26, as was widely expected, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the extension as unconstitutional, ruling that only the U.S. Congress had the authority to issue such a moratorium.