Dr. Natasha Bagdasarian ’99 is the chief medical executive for the State of Michigan, where she provides overall medical guidance as a cabinet member of the governor. The public is invited to hear from her at 7 p.m. Tuesday, April 12, in the 2022 William Weber Lecture, delivered through Zoom and presented by the Department of Political Science. 

For the past year, Bagdasarian has served the State of Michigan in the role of senior public health physician with the Department of Health and Human Services, where she oversaw the COVID-19 testing strategy for the state and helped bring rapid testing technologies to vulnerable populations. Since early 2020, she has served as a consultant to the World Health Organization (WHO), providing technical guidance on outbreak preparedness and COVID-19. When the pandemic first emerged, Bagdasarian was working as an infectious disease physician and epidemiologist at National University Hospital in Singapore, where her job involved outbreak response, surveilling infections and contact tracing for contagious illnesses. The title of her lecture will be “The Future of Public Health: Regaining Public Trust.” 

The William Weber Lecture in Government and Society was founded by Bill Weber, a 1939 graduate of Kalamazoo College. In addition to this lectureship, Weber founded the William Weber Chair in Political Science at K. Previous speakers in this series have included civil rights activist DeRay Mckesson, Chief U.S. District Judge Gerald Rosen, political commentator Van Jones and author Tamara Draut. 

Attend on Tuesday through this link. Meeting ID: 852 3599 7454, passcode: kzoo.