Julio Frenk: Leading UCLA into a Future of Impact and Innovation - Salary and Benefits
Dr. Julio Frenk will assume the role of UCLA’s new chancellor on January 1, 2025, succeeding Chancellor Gene Block, who announced in 2023 his intent to return to his teaching and research. The board approved Dr. Frenk’s base salary at $978,904. Darnell Hunt, UCLA’s executive vice chancellor and provost, will assume the role of interim chancellor when Chancellor Block steps down on July 31, 2024. Having served as UCLA’s chief academic and operating officer since 2022, Hunt is uniquely positioned to lead the campus through this period of transition.
A Transformative Leader and Visionary
Dr. Frenk has demonstrated a powerful commitment to the health and well-being of people, institutions, and systems around the world,” said President Drake. A transformative global leader and pragmatic consensus-builder, Dr. Frenk will advance UCLA’s tradition of excellence and global impact. He is widely respected across academia and well-known as an exceptional thinker, an administrator of considerable ability and a brilliant public health leader. He will become the next chancellor of UCLA and first Latino tapped to lead the nation’s top public research university as the campus faces a dark time of divisive protests.
Extensive Background in Education and Health
Richard Leib, chair of the UC Board of Regents, stated, “Dr. Frenk’s strategic and inspirational leadership, along with his extensive background in education and health, including his time as the Federal Secretary of Health of Mexico, uniquely positions him to guide UCLA into a future of impact and innovation. Dr. Frenk also makes history as the first Latino chancellor of UCLA, and I believe that his values of equity and access will help UC continue to serve the diverse Los Angeles community.
Accomplishments and Leadership
During his tenure at the University of Miami, Dr. Frenk led the institution through the COVID-19 pandemic and achieved a dramatic turnaround of its academic health system, drawing on the strengths of its Miller School of Medicine. During his tenure, the university made strategic investments in educational innovation and interdisciplinary research, as well as Miami Hurricanes athletics. He successfully orchestrated a $2.5 billion fundraising campaign toward the university’s centennial in 2025. Dr. Frenk championed a culture of belonging across the institution, where everyone is valued and has the opportunity to add value.
From 2009-2015, Dr. Frenk served as the dean of faculty at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Through leadership and scholarship, Dr. Frenk has made substantial contributions to the field of global health, impacting millions of lives. As Federal Secretary of Health of Mexico from 2000 to 2006, he reformed the nation’s health system and expanded access to health care for more than 55 million previously uninsured persons. He also founded the National Institute of Public Health in Mexico, a pioneering institution in the developing world.
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Scholarly Contributions
In addition to serving as a highly regarded higher education administrator and distinguished global health scholar, Dr. Frenk is a professor of public health and sociology whose scholarship centers on health systems. His work spans public policy implications of health transitions, health professions education, and global health governance. He co-chaired the influential Lancet Commission on the Education of Health Professionals for the 21st Century, which catalyzed major reforms around the world. Dr. Frenk has authored 196 papers in academic journals, 182 articles in cultural magazines and newspapers, and 29 books, including two best-selling novels for young adults, explaining the functions of the human body. His scholarly work has been cited more than 35,000 times.
Personal Background and Family
Dr. Frenk obtained a medical degree from the National University of Mexico, as well as a Master of Public Health and a joint Ph.D. He was born in Mexico City in 1953. His father, who was 6 years old at the time, fled Nazi Germany in the 1930s along with his parents and sister. He is married to Felicia Marie Knaul, Ph.D., the director of the Institute for Advanced Study of the Americas and of the Office for Hemispheric and Global Affairs at the University of Miami, where she continues to serve in that capacity and as a tenured member of the faculty. She also directs the Secretariat of the Hemispheric University Consortium, supporting the presidents of 14 leading universities in the Americas. Dr. Knaul previously served as an associate professor at Harvard Medical School and the director of the Harvard Global Equity Initiative. As a globally recognized health economist and advocate who has authored over 300 high-impact journal papers and books, she has leveraged research to catalyze policy change in Mexico and across the globe on health system strengthening, cancer control, and ending violence against women and children. As a result of her breast cancer journey, Dr. Knaul founded Cáncer de Mama: Tómatelo a Pecho, a Mexican non-profit that champions research, advocacy and awareness on key issues for the health of women.
Addressing Campus Challenges
Frenk will come to UCLA at a particularly fraught time, as protests over the Israel-Hamas war, labor strife, mounting burdens on faculty and lingering pandemic blues have roiled the campus. Despite UCLA’s top academic ranking and status as the most applied-to university in the nation, many campus members report what they say is unprecedented division, acrimony, burnout and malaise. The division was reflected in a close but unsuccessful faculty vote to censure Block and express no confidence in his leadership handling the university’s response to a pro-Palestinian encampment and mob attack against it.
In several recent interviews with UCLA faculty and students about their hopes for the next chancellor, the dominant issue raised was the need to unify the shattered campus. Andrea Kasko, UCLA Academic Senate chair, said, “Historically, I don’t think we’ve seen this much division - it’s difficult to hold the community together. The next chancellor is going to have to rebuild trust with everyone, do a lot of listening. The community needs to heal.”
Frenk’s background may suit him to that task. As the son of a German Jewish father who fled Nazi Germany in the 1930s, he has a personal sensitivity to antisemitism; he also has lauded the power of tolerance, inclusion, generosity and kindness he says Mexicans offered his displaced family, helping them succeed.
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In remarks Wednesday to the regents and, later, the media, Frenk called himself a “boundary spanner” who has bridged various countries and disciplines and would bring that approach to his campus work in celebrating the “richness of differences…. We need to appreciate that against a background of difference there is a commonality, a common humanity that remains everywhere and that’s what we need to build on,” he said.
He added that his first actions would be “purposeful listening” to students, faculty, staff, alumni and other campus constituencies to learn about UCLA and its challenges and opportunities. In response to several questions about how he would handle campus protests and policing, he said he looked forward to learning more about the issues at hand, including the investigations underway.
At UCLA, Frenk also will face controversy over policing and safety practices. While UCLA leadership has been criticized for failing to secure enough law enforcement to stem attacks against pro-Palestinian protesters on April 30 and May 1, others are highly critical of the current level of policing. Carlos Santos, an associate professor of social welfare, said the new chancellor must address rising concerns about what some campus members see as excessive use of police force and punishment against peaceful protesters.
Transitioning to a Large Public University
And how well Frenk will transition from a career at smaller private universities - the University of Miami has 18,000 students - to the much larger public UCLA and the 10-campus UC system remains to be seen. Some UCLA faculty have raised similar questions about the ability of an outsider to grasp and manage UC’s largest campus without experience in the system.
Shane White and Michael Meranze, former UCLA Academic Senate chairs, said faculty numbers have not kept up with expanding student enrollment, leading to larger workloads and burnout. Between 2011 and 2023, UCLA’s student enrollment increased by 18.8% but Academic Senate faculty members grew by less than 2%. In addition, Kasko said, staffing shortages have saddled faculty with more bureaucratic tasks, leading to less time for teaching and research.
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The three faculty leaders also said that graduate students need to be better supported with funding or the campus will have to shrink their numbers and risk losing the young intellectual talent crucial to UC’s powerful research enterprise. White said, “We need more classrooms, faculty and graduate students. We are supposed to be the brain trust for the next inventors and Silicon Valley startups to deliver what society needs.”
James Steintrager, the UC systemwide Academic Senate chair, said Frenk’s ability to straddle the worlds of university research and healthcare delivery made him an excellent fit for UCLA. He stated, “The pool of candidates to lead this premier public university was remarkable, yet Dr. Frenk stood out for his unique combination of scholarly, medical, administrative, and political expertise.”
Among students, many say the cost of housing, food, transportation and other financial needs is an ongoing problem. Adam Tfayli, UCLA student body president, said the next chancellor should be more attentive to those needs and more accessible to students to hear their concerns, such as campus safety and growing feelings of alienation lingering from the pandemic and remote learning. Tfayli added, “The current campus climate is at an all-time low. People are not necessarily as connected.”
Frenk addressed such needs at the University of Miami when he took office in 2015. In his inaugural speech, he announced two major commitments: create 100 new endowed positions to attract and retain the best faculty, and raise support for students to meet 100% of demonstrated financial need.
Passion for Global Health and Universal Access
Frenk’s biggest professional passion is global health. He served as health minister under President Vicente Fox from 2000 to 2006 and is credited with introducing universal health insurance, Seguro Popular, which expanded access to healthcare for millions of uninsured Mexicans. He expanded access to family planning and contraception - which drew criticism from some conservatives. He also worked as a senior fellow for the global health program at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and was a director at the World Health Organization in Geneva.
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