Vanessa Briggs

woman smiling in cream suit

Vanessa B. Briggs, MBA, RD serves as the president and CEO of The Alliance for Health Equity, formerly Brandywine Health Foundation located in Chester County, Pennsylvania, responsible for guiding the overall organizational vision, strategic direction, and operations. Since joining The Alliance four years ago she has realigned its philanthropic mission with community needs, to advance racial justice, tackle economic, social, and health inequalities and use its assets towards impact investing. Under her leadership she has adopted new strategies that embrace community power building and trust-based philanthropy approaches to get at the root causes of poor community health. Ms. Briggs’ lifelong passion remains consistent, and she approaches her work through an equity lens for communities left behind from years of disinvestment.

She has over twenty-five years’ experience in health-related C-Suite senior management and leadership. She grew large-scale public health and healthcare organizations. A result driven systems-thinker and strategic leader, with proven business and organizational effectiveness expertise. Expert in social determinates of health within the philanthropy health and human service fields. A transformational experienced leader in creating direct and indirect linkages to key organizational strategic priorities through long-term cross sector partnerships to advance population health.

She is highly skilled and humble with tremendous business acumen. Prior to joining the philanthropic sector, Ms. Briggs served as the Vice President of Community Health for Holy Cross Health’s regional health system in Montgomery County, Maryland and prior to that she served as Managing Director and Executive Director from more than fifteen years at the Public Health Management Corporation and its affiliate non-profit, Health Promotion Council. She actively serves on a host of boards and advisory committees.