Ethics Forum Speaker Bios

2025 Annual Meeting Ethics Forum — Physician Unions: Exploring Ethics and Professionalism

Tuesday, May 20, 2025, 7:00-8:00 p.m. EST

Virtual Live Webinar

Rebecca Brendel, MD, JD

Rebecca Weintraub Brendel, MD, JD, is Director of the Center for Bioethics, Frances Glessner Lee Associate Professor of Global Health and Social Medicine in the Field of Legal Medicine, and Associate Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Brendel practices clinical and forensic psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital, where she is Director of Law and Ethics at the Center for Law, Brain, and Behavior. She previously served as the Founding Director of the Master of Science in Bioethics (MBE) program at HMS, Medical Director of the One Fund Center for Boston Marathon bombing survivors at MGH, and Clinical Director of the Red Sox Foundation and MGH Home Base Program for returning veterans and their families. Dr. Brendel is admitted to the Massachusetts Bar.

Dr. Brendel received her BA in philosophy with distinction from Yale and medical and law degrees with honors from the University of Chicago.  She completed psychiatry and forensic psychiatry training at MGH-McLean.

Dr. Brendel works at the intersection of psychiatry, medicine, law, and ethics and is a past president of the Academy of Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry (2018-2019) and the American Psychiatric Association (2022-2023). She has served on ethics committees of the Massachusetts Psychiatric Society, the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law, and the Academy of Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry (ACLP), and chaired the American Psychiatric Association (APA) Ethics Committee and Massachusetts Medical Society Committee on Ethics, Grievances, and Professional Standards.  She is currently Vice-Chair of the American College of Psychiatrists Ethics Committee, co-opted consultant to the World Psychiatric Association (WPA) Ethics Committee, and in her sixth of a seven-year appointment to the American Medical Association Council on Ethical and Judicial Affairs (CEJA), of which she serves as Vice-Chair.

Matthew Wynia, MD

Matthew Wynia, MD, is a clinician-researcher and leader in bioethics with a history of exploring some of the most contentious ethical issues in health care, focusing on those related to the social roles of health professionals. He is a professor of medicine and of public health at the University of Colorado, where he directs the CU Center for Bioethics and Humanities.

Prior to his current role, he spent 18 years at the American Medical Association, where he led the AMA’s Institute for Ethics and Center for Patient Safety, and he was the Director of Patient and Physician Engagement for the Improving Health Outcomes team. While there, he co-founded the Commission to End Health Care Disparities and he led the Project on the History of African-Americans and the Medical Profession that, in 2008, prompted the AMA’s public apology for a legacy of racial discrimination and exclusion in organized medicine. He has served on advisory boards for the US DHHS Office of Minority, the Joint Commission, the American Board of Medical Specialties, American Board of Internal Medicine, and other national medical, public health and bioethics professional organizations. At the National Academies, he currently serves on the Board on Health Sciences Policy and has served on multiple consensus committees and chaired special projects on team-based care, transdisciplinary professionalism, and public health approaches to preventing ideologically-motivated violence.

Dr. Wynia has delivered more than 2 dozen named lectures and visiting professorships and he is an author of over 250 academic publications. He is a Fellow of the Hastings Center, past president of the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities (ASBH), and past-chair of the Ethics Forum of the American Public Health Association (APHA) and the Ethics Committee of the Society for General Internal Medicine (SGIM).