Heather Pierce, JD, MPH

Senior Director and Regulatory Counsel, AAMC, Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC)

Heather Pierce is Senior Director for Science Policy and Regulatory Counsel at the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) and the Director of Policy for the AAMC’s Center for Health Justice. She serves as AAMC’s leader for scientific regulatory issues including human subject protections, clinical research, conflicts of interest, research data sharing, evidence-based regulation, diagnostic test development, and collaborations between industry, government, and academia in biomedical research. She is the subject matter expert for the AAMC’s Forum on Conflict of Interest in Academe and for Convey, the AAMC’s global financial interest disclosure system. During the COVID-19 pandemic, she has led the organization on issues related to COVID-19 testing and regulatory aspects of vaccine and treatment development.

Ms. Pierce currently serves as Vice Chair of the Board of Directors for the Association for the Accreditation of Human Research Protection Programs (AAHRPP) and was previously the Chair of the Board of Directors of Public Responsibility in Medicine and Research (PRIM&R). She regularly speaks at national forums on issues related to the protection of human subjects, regulatory burden, research security, research ethics, biospecimens, scientific misconduct, and legislation and policymaking related to research, and has published articles and commentaries on these topics in Nature, Science, The New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA, the Journal of Public Health Management and Practice, and The American Journal of Bioethics. She has served on committees, working groups and task forces of organizations including the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, The Pew Charitable Trusts, and the National Dialogue on Healthcare Innovation.

Prior to joining AAMC, she was an attorney in the Health Care Group of the law firm of Ropes & Gray LLP in New York. Her regulatory practice focused on medical research and clinical care. She received her law degree from NYU School of Law and her MPH in Health Law from Boston University.

Back to Speakers