LA JOLLA, CA – The La Jolla Institute for Immunology is pleased to announce that J. Mark Waxman, one of the nation’s leading health care attorneys, has been elected to its Board of Directors.
“We’re delighted to welcome Mark Waxman to our board,” said Mitchell Kronenberg, Ph.D., La Jolla Institute president and chief scientific officer. “For the past four decades, Mark has been one of the most respected and effective leaders in health care law at one of the nation’s oldest and most prestigious firms. The depth of his legal experience in both private health care settings as well as academic medicine will be invaluable to the Institute as our research increasingly emerges from the lab and enters the clinical realm.”
Waxman, who is based in San Diego, was born in Denver and raised in Los Angeles’ San Fernando Valley where his father was an engineer and his mother a homemaker. Waxman majored in economics at UC San Diego where he graduated summa cum laude, and received his J.D. from the Boalt Hall School of Law at the University of California, Berkeley. His first job out of school was with Wells Fargo Realty Advisors where he was assistant general counsel. Waxman then spent three years as an assistant U.S. Attorney in Los Angeles.
In 1977 Waxman joined the L.A.-based law firm Weissburg & Aronson, which specialized in health care law and representing hospitals. He chaired Weissburg’s litigation practice and served as a board member of the firm, which merged with Foley & Lardner in 1996. In addition to being a partner and business lawyer, Waxman has served Foley & Lardner as chair of the firm’s health care industry team and was a member of the government enforcement defense and investigations and antitrust practices. During a period in which Waxman went on leave from the firm he became the President and General Counsel of the CareGroup health care system in Boston, the Chair of the Picker Institute, a Board member of the Harvard captive insurer, CRICO, and became involved in a number of other organizations. He helped create the Louisiana Children’s Medical Center health care system, and has represented for profit and non-profit insurers and health care systems such as HCA, United Health, Trinity Health, Anthem, and Children’s National Medical Center. He has served as Chair of the Venice Family Clinic and on the Board of Bet Tzedek legal services and Alternative Living for the Aged, all in Los Angeles.
Waxman has served as general counsel or special counsel to numerous trade associations, including the California Association of Health Facilities, the Federation of American Hospitals, the Association of Clinical Research Professionals, and the Synthetic Biology Trade Association. He served as board member of the American Health Lawyers Association; and a member of the American Hospital Association’s Task Force on Antitrust and Business Coalitions.
His involvement in education includes teaching health law at California State University Northridge’s graduate school, serving as a mentor with the MIT Venture Mentoring Service that assists startups in the health care and technology area; serving on Chancellor’s Health Advisory Board UC San Diego, and becoming a founding member of the UC San Diego Rady School of Business Mentoring Initiative.
Waxman said he looking forward serving what he says is one of the world’s leading immunology institutes.
“I’m excited to have an opportunity to help La Jolla Institute achieve its extremely ambitious and important mission of ‘Life Without Disease,’” Waxman says. “I’m particularly fascinated with the incredible progress the Institute is making in understanding and coming up with treatments for infectious disease. Beyond the spike in headlines when something like SARS or the coronavirus arises, our planet has a much larger and more serious problems with a host of infectious diseases that don’t get as much publicity but that infect and kill millions every year. I really believe that the brilliance and commitment of the Institute’s researchers will soon lead to a number of groundbreaking treatments and vaccines that will save many of those lives.”
About La Jolla Institute for Immunology
The La Jolla Institute for Immunology is dedicated to understanding the intricacies and power of the immune system so that we may apply that knowledge to promote human health and prevent a wide range of diseases. Since its founding in 1988 as an independent, nonprofit research organization, the Institute has made numerous advances leading toward its goal: life without disease.
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