APA names trailblazer Wills next CEO, medical director
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The American Psychiatric Association has selected Marketa Wills, MD, MBA, as its new CEO and medical director, effective June 1.
According to an APA press release, Wills will become the organization’s eighth medical director and its first woman and Black American to fill the role. She will succeed Saul Levin, MD, MPA, who has led the organization since July 2013 and will officially step down on May 31.
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Wills currently is senior vice president and chief medical officer at Johns Hopkins Health Plans, has a clinical practice at University of South Florida Student Health Services in Tampa and serves as chair of the standards committee of the National Committee for Quality Assurance. She also sits on several profit and nonprofit boards.
“Dr. Wills has a unique combination of health care financing, innovation, business acumen and front-line experience as a physician that made her an ideal candidate for the leadership of the APA administration,” APA President Petros Levounis, MD, MA, said in the release. “We are delighted to welcome her, and we look forward to a bright future for APA and psychiatry under her leadership.”
Wills has been a member of the APA Board of Trustees as an APA SAMHSA Minority Fellow and recently served on the Future of Psychiatry Presidential Task Force. She currently is a member of APA’s Council on Health Care Systems and Finance.
Wills earned her doctorate from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, her MBA from the Wharton School of Business and her bachelor’s degree from Brown University. She completed her medical training at Harvard’s Massachusetts General Hospital/McLean Hospital Adult Psychiatry Residency Program.
In 2022, Wills was included on Maryland’s Top 100 Women List by the Daily Record and was honored as a Woman of Influence by I-95 Business. She also was selected as chair of the Medical Alumni Advisory Council at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. This April, Wills will be inducted into the university’s medical honor society, Alpha Omega Alpha. She coauthored a book in 2019 entitled “Understanding Mental Illness.”
“As a longtime mental health advocate, I am honored to take the reins of the APA at this time in our history,” Wills said in the release. “Given where we are, with the explosion of AI, innovation and the changing landscape of technology, I look forward to working with APA’s membership and the administration to accelerate psychiatry into the future.”