Dr. Brandon Talley is chief program and innovation officer, leading a team to develop and promote the CDC Foundation’s state of the art program strategies and innovations. In addition to driving bold innovations, he is charged with promoting strong cohesion among both internal and external teams to increase scale and deepen the Foundation’s impact and support the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) mission. In this role, he also leads several of the Foundation’s strategic imperatives, including health data modernization, health security, climate and health, and population health. He previously served as vice president for noninfectious disease programs, and he serves on the CDC Foundation’s C-Suite and Executive Teams.
Talley joined the CDC Foundation in 2007 as an intern. He has led a range of impactful programs throughout his tenure. He spent nearly a decade helping build a global tobacco control monitoring system that aims to improve tobacco control policies around the world, protecting billions of lives from the disease and death attributable to tobacco. During the Zika epidemic of 2016–2017, he also launched the CDC Foundation’s first standalone emergency response unit, which was key to the success of various responses like overdose response and COVID-19.
More recently, his team has implemented programs across the United States and world that protect and improve the public’s health: reducing maternal mortality; preventing veteran suicides; reducing noninfectious diseases, often the leading causes of death in the United States and abroad; and addressing issues around clean water as well as prevention of deadly infectious diseases like meningitis, malaria and tuberculosis. He also leads the Foundation’s efforts to modernize public health data through scalable systems change that supports communities, businesses and government in their efforts to achieve real-time, on-demand and actionable health insights.
In addition to his work at the CDC Foundation, Talley was the inaugural board chair for the Georgia State University School of Public Health Alumni Board of Directors and currently serves on both the Alumni Board and school’s Board of Advisors. Talley is a 2018 honoree for Georgia State University’s inaugural 40 under 40 alumni. He also serves on various national committees, taskforces and workgroups that work to advance public health modernization in the United States and world.
Talley has a Bachelor of Science degree from the Georgia Institute of Technology and a Master of Public and Doctor of Philosophy in Public Health from Georgia State University. His current research focuses on the typologies of nicotine, tobacco and marijuana use among lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender youth and young adults.