Born in Boston, Linda Emanuel moved with her family at the age of two to England. Educated there,she attended New Hall College at the University of Cambridge, in Cambridge, England for her undergraduate and Master's degrees, and moved on to University College, London, for her PhD in physiology which she took in 1980. After some time as a bench scientist in neurophysiology, Professor Emanuel began medical school at Oxford, and switched to Harvard Medical School, when she married and graduated with her MD degree in 1984.

Her decision, she related, "to become a general internist and to avoid specialization, was a kind of 'personal stand.' I tried to help make scientific progress work to keep people 'whole' rather than let them fall into reduced states of being as if they were merely an illness or an organ system." Following her residency, Emanuel did a residency in General Medicine at Massachusetts General, and then a Fellowship in public health research methodology. Finally she completed a Fellowship in Ethics and the Professions at Harvard's Kennedy School.

Linda Emanuel, M.D., Ph.D.

"Simultaneously end-of-life and medical ethics issues were becoming active areas of new inquiry," she noted, "and I took a position as Assistant Director of Harvard's new Division of Ethics." That position led her, several years later, to join the American Medical Association to develop its Ethics Institute and to augment its Division of Ethical Standards. After four years her task had been completed at AMA, and she enjoyed a sabbatical at Northwestern.

While she was at the AMA, she related, "she became much more aware of the organizational importance of ethics." It was also while there that she developed two key programs. E-Force focuses on ethical fundamental obligations report cards and was designed to form valid measures for ethical behavior in healthcare situations - a program, she notes, still operating at the Ethics Institute.

The second program is called EPEC, which are seminars in which physicians are educated in appropriate techniques for end-of-life care. The program is a train-the-trainer program in which physicians are taught to train other physicians regarding cutting-edge palliative care. The EPEC program has been supported by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and has come to Northwestern with her.

Her new position as Director of the Buehler Center on Aging and as A.C. Buehler Professor of Geriatric Medicine at Northwestern's Medical School connects two of her passions - - ethics and palliative care - and led easily to aging and healthy aging. Prior to her appointment as Buehler's director, during her sabbatical year there, she met with Kellogg's Alicia Löffler, David Messick and Joel Shalowitz, MD. This meeting led to her 'Kellogg Connection' to conduct research with the new Ford Center for Global Citizenship at Kellogg and, in turn, to her appointment as a Professor of Health Industry Management at Kellogg.

Initially Professor Emanuel will focus on her research for the Ford Center. She will be examining, she said, "corporate interest in and corporate responsibility for health care internationally, and what the implications for those companies are." The issue first addressed will focus on HIV/AIDS. Professor Emanuel says this Ford Center research will end up with several products, such as conferences on the topic, academic/research papers, and case studies. She notes that she and Ford Center colleagues are interested in developing "a conceptual map for a brand new area of academic inquiry." Indeed Dr. Emanuel is already a prolific author, having written or co-written seventy-five articles and fifteen book chapters. As part of her activities at the Ford Center, Professor Emanuel will become co-editor-in-chief of a new journal, The Journal of Organizational Ethics, working with Professor Patricia Werhane at the Darden School of Business.

Emanuel is married to Ezekiel J. Emanuel, M.D., a Professor at the Harvard Medical School. She is also "an enthusiastic parent of three." And Emanuel confesses (perhaps it's a result of so many years in Britain) to being an avid gardener. Finally, she reports, the Emanuels are very frequent travelers, with recent trips to such diverse spots as Eastern Europe, China and Uganda.