Sheila Leatherman has broad experience in health management, public policy, and academic research. She has held positions in federal and state healthcare agencies and served as CEO of a large HMO and as an executive of one of the largest managed care companies in the United States. Ms. Leatherman's time is currently devoted to healthcare research, both in the United States and the United Kingdom. In the United States, she is founder and chair of the Center for Health Care Policy Evaluation, an independent private-sector research institute, and adjunct professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management, School of Public Health at the University of North Carolina. In the United Kingdom, she is a senior adviser to The Nuffield Trust, which commissioned her to evaluate the National Health Service strategy for quality of care management (1997-1998 and 2002-2003), and in which she is involved in an ongoing policy and research program in quality evaluation. She is a Senior Associate at the Judge Institute of Management Studies and Distinguished Associate at Darwin College, both at Cambridge University. Her areas of research are quality of care, health policy, and managed care, and she has written more than 25 articles, which have been published in such prestigious journals as the Journal of the American Medical Association, Health Affairs, Medical Care, and the International Journal of Quality.