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As chief operating officer at the Bill & Melinda Gates Medical Research Institute, Debra Weiss, RN, MSN, provides strategic and operational support to achieve business objectives in compliance with Institute and industry standards for data integrity, safety, and quality. She has overseen operations since the Institute was founded in January 2018. Prior to her role as COO, Debra served as the Institute’s head of quality assurance & enterprise operations.

Debra’s diverse background ranges from conducting clinical trials in an academic environment to working in large and small pharmaceutical companies, where she traveled globally auditing clinical trial activities and leading global QA organizations. Prior to joining the Institute, Debra served as president of Compliance Driven Performance LLC, where she provided quality assurance and compliance consulting to facilitate companies in building and sustaining their Quality Management System. From 2004 to 2015, she served as group vice president of R&D quality assurance at Shire Pharmaceuticals and was named Shire’s Healthcare Business Women Association Rising Star in 2008. Before Shire, Debra was manager of worldwide clinical quality assurance at Merck & Co., Inc., where she led a team of quality assurance auditors and participated in a pilot program with the FDA on the use of electronic diaries. A registered nurse by training, Debra held various roles at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania and Hahnemann University Hospital from 1986 to 1996.

Debra is an adjunct professor at Temple University teaching a graduate course in GCPs. She earned her MSN from the University of Pennsylvania and BSN from Hahnemann University (Drexel).