Lynn H. Yeakel

Lynn H. Yeakel, MSM, is director of Drexel University College of Medicine’s Institute for Women’s Health and Leadership® (IWHL) and holds the Betty A. Cohen Chair in Women’s Health.

Under Yeakel’s six-year leadership, the IWHL has grown in size and stature, earning a significant institutional commitment in the College of Medicine’s 2007-2012 Strategic Plan as one of the medical school’s top priorities. The Institute is poised to realize its goals of a new Center for Women’s Health Research, an expanded leadership program for women in disciplines beyond the health sciences and internationally, and a multi-disciplinary clinical model for women’s health care. Drexel has also approved funding for a new building on the College of Medicine’s campus in Philadelphia to house the Institute and its core programs. Yeakel is co-chairing a fund-raising campaign to raise an additional $1.8 million for a permanent home for the Archives and Special Collections in the new building. A National Center of Excellence in Women’s Health, the Institute is working with the National Constitution Center (NCC) on plans for VISION 2020: An American Conversation About Women and Leadership® in 2010, which Yeakel will chair. 

Since coming to IWHL in 2002, Yeakel has launched the Woman One Award and Scholarship Fund, raising medical tuition scholarships for minority women. There are currently 11 Woman One Scholars, in all four classes, studying medicine at Drexel, plus two alumnae, and over $1 million has been raised. She is also the creator, convener and moderator of “Conversations About Women’s Health,” a popular community education program.

A founder and former chief executive of the first and largest women’s funding federation in the nation, Women’s Way, Yeakel was a candidate for the U.S. Senate in the “Year of the Woman,” 1992, nearly unseating the incumbent senator in a nationally publicized race. Yeakel served as the Mid-Atlantic regional director for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services from 1994-2000. Her leadership initiatives there included the Freedom From Fear campaign to end family violence and “Envisioning a Healthier Philadelphia,” a coalition of more than 60 public and private organizations dedicated to improving access to health care. She also chaired the region’s Welfare Reform Team, the Child Health Initiative and the Combined Federal Campaign.

A Phi Beta Kappa graduate and former trustee of Randolph-Macon Woman’s College, Yeakel received a master's of science degree in management from the American College. She is a past president of the Family Planning Council and former chair or co-chair of the 21st Century League, the Citizens’ Coalition for Energy Efficiency, the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy, and the board of overseers of the Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts at the University of Pennsylvania. She serves currently as an advisor to the Bryn Mawr College Graduate School of Social Work and Social Research, and on the boards of the Bryn Mawr Film Institute, the Women’s Law Project and the Sunday Breakfast Club.
 
A member of the Pennsylvania Women’s Forum, the Forum of Executive Women and the College of Physicians of Philadelphia, Lynn Yeakel has received numerous honors and awards, including the Pennsylvania Citizen Action Award and the Lucretia Mott Award. She was named a Distinguished Daughter of Pennsylvania in 1989, received the MCP/Gimbel Award for humanitarian contributions in 1987, and was named a “Woman of Distinction” by the Philadelphia Business Journal in 2004. In 2006, she was identified as a Top Connector by LEADERSHIP Philadelphia and in 2008 was honored again by that organization as one of its top 50 alumni during the celebration of its 50th Anniversary.

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