Davis is president of the Commonwealth Fund, New York, a private foundation aimed at advancing a high-performance healthcare system. A nationally recognized economist, Davis, 66, is a widely published expert in healthcare policy and research. She joined the fund in 1992 as executive vice president and became president two years later. Prior to that, she was chairwoman of the Health Policy and Management Department at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, Baltimore. She was the first woman to lead a U.S. public health service agency, as deputy assistant secretary of health policy at HHS from 1977 to 1980