Kimberly McCleary is senior advisor at FasterCures, a center of the Milken Institute determined to remove barriers to medical progress. As a member of the senior management team, Kim helps define, scope and initiate new programmatic activities and strengthen existing programs for the benefit of diverse stakeholders across the biomedical research and health care ecosystem.
Kim created the Patients Count: Science of Patient Input program through which FasterCures aims to improve health by expanding opportunities for patients’ perspectives to shape the processes by which new therapies are discovered, developed and delivered. This includes advancing patient–focused medical product development, expanding patient input into regulatory decision–making and fostering shared definitions of value to improve health care quality, efficiency and effectiveness while rewarding innovation in medical products and services. She works closely with leaders of The Research Acceleration and Innovation Network (TRAIN) representing mission–driven, results–oriented venture philanthropy organizations to define and scale best practices and to improve the performance of the nonprofit sector to advance therapy development and patient access.
Kim has also been involved in FasterCures’ response to recent policy opportunities created by the Food and Drug Administration Safety and Innovation Act, the 21st Century Cures Act and negotiations between industry and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration over programs supported by user fees for drugs and medical devices.
McCleary serves on numerous advisory and planning committees and speaks regularly on topics including patient–centered benefit–risk assessment, patient–focused medical product development, and changing organizational culture to be more patient–centered. Recent speaking engagements have been hosted by the Biotechnology Innovation Organization, National Academies of Sciences, Patient–Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI), DIA, American Heart Association and Milken Institute. Kim is a member of DIA’s Advisory Committee for North America and the steering committee for the Medical Device Innovation Consortium’s Patient–Centered Benefit Risk project.
Prior to joining FasterCures’ staff in 2013, Kim was president and CEO of the CFIDS Association of America (now the Solve ME/CFS Initiative) from 1991 until 2013. She helped found the Chronic Pain Research Alliance and joined with other leaders and Pfizer to establish the Campaign to End Women’s Pain in 2010. Kim led the Partnering to End Pain project selected by Sanofi U.S. as a finalist in the 2012 Collaborate | Activate Innovation Challenge. With leaders in the narcolepsy community, Kim helped design and launch the Unite Narcolepsy initiative to educate, engage and empower narcolepsy patients and their advocates to participate effectively in the PFDDI meeting held in September 2013. Kim is a graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She lives in Arlington, Virginia.