Brian Alexander

Dr. Brian Alexander was named Chief Executive Officer of Foundation Medicine in March 2021. He previously served as the company’s Chief Medical Officer since 2019, and is a practicing radiation oncologist specializing in neuro-oncology at Dana-Farber/Brigham and Women’s Cancer Center, and a Senior Lecturer at Harvard Medical School.

Since joining the company in September 2018 as a Senior Vice President of Clinical Development, Dr. Alexander has played a pivotal leadership role in Foundation Medicine’s decision insights strategy, helping oncologists, both in community and academic settings, determine the right treatment, at the right time, for each unique patient. Under his leadership, Foundation Medicine’s medical team has expanded its molecular tumor board program to include over 90 leading oncology centers globally, launched a cross-functional genomics and health disparities effort, and has developed hundreds of studies and publications to advance the clinical utility of genomic profiling.

Dr. Alexander was the founding director of the Program in Regulatory Science at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and the Harvard/MIT Center for Regulatory Science. He also co-founded the Global Coalition for Adaptive Research, a non-profit organization focused on clinical trial innovations to accelerate the discovery and development of cures for patients with rare and deadly diseases, and served as chair of the FDA/Project Datasphere task force on external control arms. Dr. Alexander is an affiliated researcher at the MIT Laboratory for Financial Engineering and affiliated faculty of the Harvard Kennedy School Healthcare Policy Program. He was named to Boston Magazine’s “Top Doctors List” in 2019, 2020, and 2021.

Previously, Dr. Alexander served as a White House fellow and Special Assistant to the Secretary of Veterans Affairs, where he helped prepare the VA for the transition of administrations, worked to develop a public reporting system for quality, and served as a health policy advisor to the Secretary. Dr. Alexander organized the standup of the VA’s Coordinating Council on National Health Reform and directed the activities of its multi-team Health Reform Working Group. He was also a member of the Institute of Medicine’s Committee on the Governance and Financing of Graduate Medical Education.