When I photographed Monica Bertagnolli at the National Academies in 2026, she had just been named the next president of the National Academy of Medicine. We found ourselves talking about the cattle ranch where she grew up in southwestern Wyoming. She spoke about the earth and the animals with an affection that made me want to hear more. That part of her life still felt close.
There is a real warmth about Monica. Conversation comes easily, and she brings a deep curiosity to whatever we are discussing. I had known her through her work in medicine. Hearing about the ranch gave me a more personal sense of the woman I was photographing.
She studied engineering at Princeton, earned her medical degree at the University of Utah, and trained as a surgeon at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. She treated gastrointestinal cancers and sarcomas, tumors that arise in tissues such as muscle and fat. In her laboratory, she investigated how genetic changes and inflammation contribute to cancer. Her work connected the beginnings of disease in a cell with the consequences she saw in her patients.
A clinical trial she led brought those responsibilities together. Researchers wanted to know if celecoxib, a drug that blocks an enzyme involved in inflammation, could prevent the return of adenomas, growths in the colon that can become cancerous.
The findings, published in 2006, offered encouragement and a warning. The drug reduced the recurrence of these growths, but it also increased the risk of serious cardiovascular problems. Those risks made it unsuitable for routine use for this purpose. The result mattered precisely because it was complicated. A treatment could do what researchers hoped and still leave a patient worse off. Finding that out was essential.
Monica went on to lead the Alliance for Clinical Trials in Oncology, bringing researchers and hospitals together to answer questions no single institution could settle. She also helped standardize how cancer care is recorded, so that what happens to a patient in one town can help a doctor treating someone else across the country. Details gathered during everyday care could become evidence that improves treatment for others.
She became director of the National Cancer Institute in 2022 and the first surgeon to lead the National Institutes of Health in 2023. In July 2026, she became the first woman to serve as president of the National Academy of Medicine.
Her career had given us plenty to talk about. Yet what stayed with me was the affection in her voice when she spoke about the ranch. The land and animals were still part of how she understood her life. I was glad to know that part of her.
