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Debi Brooks

CEO and Co-founder, The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson's Research

Deborah W. Brooks is Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and Co-Founder of The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson's Research (MJFF). Ms. Brooks launched MJFF with Michael J. Fox in 2000 and served as founding CEO until 2007. Since then, she served as Co-Founder and Executive Vice Chairman, overseeing the fundraising and marketing functions of the organization. Ms. Brooks stepped back into the role of CEO in May 2021 to lead the Foundation to an even stronger and more influential position in the Parkinson’s community. She is supported in this effort by MJFF’s executive team, who works together to articulate and realize the vision of MJFF as an unprecedented stakeholder in drug development — a nimble, resourceful, patient-focused problem-solver whose efforts are demonstrably accelerating progress toward treatment breakthroughs and a cure. Ms. Brooks started her career at Goldman, Sachs & Co., where she spent nine years as vice president in the Fixed Income and Asset Management Divisions. She holds an AB in Economics from the College of William and Mary, an MBA from the Tuck School at Dartmouth College and an MS in Marital and Family Therapy from Northwestern University. Ms. Brooks currently serves on the Board of Advisors of the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth, the FasterCures Advisory Board, the Advisory Board for Women in Business at Tuck, and the Delaware Parkinson’s Disease Task Force. She is a past member of the Tuck School MBA Council, the Board of Overseers of the School of Social Policy and Practice at the University of Pennsylvania, Pfizer's U.S. Health Advisory Board, the National Advisory Environmental Health Sciences Council of the National Institutes of Health, and External Advisory Board for Emory University's Collaborative Center for Parkinson's Disease Environmental Research. Ms. Brooks has been a keynote speaker at several media and industry events throughout the world and is the recipient for several achievement awards recognizing her leadership, including Forbes’ “50 Women Over 50: Impact List”, NonProfit PRO “2020 Executive of the Year”, and White House “Champion of Change” honoree.