Michelle G. Ries, MPH

Interim President & CEO

Michelle G. Ries, MPH, is Interim President & CEO of the North Carolina Institute of Medicine, and also currently serves as Associate Director. Ries has been on the NCIOM team for over a decade, serving the Institute and the state across many roles within the organization. During her tenure with NCIOM, Ries has provided strategic leadership to the Institute in its work providing advisory support to state stakeholders across many integral health policy issues. Ries led much of NCIOM’s work over the first two years of the COVID-19 pandemic, including providing facilitation and drafting support for the North Carolina Scarce Resource Allocation Protocol (in partnership with the North Carolina Healthcare Association and the North Carolina Medical Society) and the Vaccine Advisory Committee (in partnership with the NC Department of Health and Human Services); launching statewide task forces on pandemic preparedness and local public health; and providing analysis of state- and federal-level COVID policy response and subsequent impact on North Carolinians.

In her tenure at the NCIOM, Ries has directed task forces and served as primary author on task force reports including Improving Serious Illness Care in North Carolina, the Task Force on Health Care Analytics, tasked with developing a concise set of metrics to improve population health and quality of care under Medicaid reform; Dementia-Capable North Carolina, the state plan for addressing the needs of people with dementia and their caregivers; and the Task Force on Essentials for Childhood, a statewide collective plan to prevent child maltreatment and ensure child and family well-being. Ries also spearheaded NCIOM’s pioneering Legislative Health Policy Fellows program, which provides state lawmakers and their staff with the data and resources needed to make effective decisions about the health of our state. Prior to her work at NCIOM, Ries worked as senior program associate in the International Health Policy and Practice Innovations program at the Commonwealth Fund, a nonprofit foundation dedicated to achieving a high-performing health care system. Previously, Ries also completed the Health Research Training Program at the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, Office of Health Media and Marketing, where she managed citywide health media campaigns on various health issues, including cardiovascular disease, childhood obesity, and adolescent mental health. Ries received her MPH from Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health and a B.A. with honors in dramatic art and anthropology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she graduated Phi Beta Kappa. She is a 2019 graduate of Leadership North Carolina.