Board Members

Elected 2007

Richard Merkin is the founder and chief executive officer of the Heritage Group, one of the largest integrated health care systems in the United States.

Merkin serves on the USC Keck School of Medicine board of overseers, the UCLA Health System, and the XPRIZE Foundation. He co-founded and serves on the board of Fastercures, which works to lessen the time required to get important new medicines from discovery to patients. He founded the Heritage Medical Research Institute, which conducts medical research emphasizing health care quality and outcomes.

He established the Richard Merkin Foundation for Stem Cell Research and the Merkin Institute for Transformative Technologies in Healthcare at the Broad Institute at Harvard/MIT, the Richard Merkin Initiative at the Johns Hopkins Brain Sciences Institute, the Richard Merkin Initiative to Advance Clinical Leadership in Delivery and Payment Reform at the Brookings Institute, the Richard Merkin Foundation for Neural Regeneration at UCLA, and the Keck School of Medicine's Richard N. Merkin Fund for Professorships in Regenerative Medicine and Richard Merkin Distinguished Fellowship in Emergency and Tropical Medicine in the Division of Internal Medicine.

Cal State Los Angeles established the Merkin Honors Scholars Program, providing undergraduate support for talented students. Merkin established professorships in gene therapy and immunology at the City of Hope and established the Heritage Medical Research Institute for the Advancement of Medicine and Science and the Merkin Institute for Translational Research, both at Caltech. He supports the Innovative Genomics Initiative at UC Berkeley, the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, and the Prostate Cancer Foundation's Young Investigators. He holds many patents relating to health care systems and quality measures.

In 2006, the Richard Merkin Middle School opened in Los Angeles, bringing college preparatory education to the inner city. Additionally, Merkin is a board member of Los Angeles County Museum of Art, United Friends of the Children, and Los Angeles Music Center board of overseers.

Standing Committees: Student Experience; Technology Transfer and Innovation