Tom Cotter, MPH

Executive Director, Healthcare Ready

Tom Cotter, MPH, serves as executive director of Healthcare Ready, bringing more than a decade of global health readiness and response expertise to expand nonprofit’s mission-driven work addressing health equity. Healthcare Ready is a nonprofit organization established in 2007 to help strengthen the US healthcare system and assist all communities in planning for, responding to, and recovering from disasters and disease pandemics. Cotter assumed this role in June 2022.

Over his 15-year career as a public health and emergency management professional, Cotter has piloted and launched innovative international strategies to localize emergency response operations and build sustainable response functions worldwide. Most recently, Cotter served as the director of emergency response and preparedness for Project HOPE, a renowned global health and humanitarian relief organization. Prior to that role, he developed and managed public health and emergency response programs in several countries for non-profit organizations.

Cotter’s educational background is heavily focused on public health and emergency response. He has a Master of Public Health degree from Boston University School of Public Health and a certificate from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Cotter received his Bachelor of Arts in Public and Community Service Studies at Providence College in Rhode Island and attended the University of the Philippines as part of an international research team focused on the socioeconomic determinants of health. Cotter has also served as an emergency response coordinator for the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services since 2013.

Tom Cotter Bio June 22, 2023