Dr. Wendy Sue Swanson is a pediatrician, physician executive, digital health expert, and bioethicist. She is the founder of two companies: Skin Metal and Wild Health Media. An Adjunct Professor at Stanford University and public health communicator, she is an experienced executive and national public health spokesperson. She has worked in the hospital, community pediatrics, with start-ups, for media, and on behalf of numerous Dept. of Health and US national academies.
She is focused on disrupting health communication to increase community understanding via democratizing health advice, health information, and transforming the practice of medicine. She is building companies and partnering with others on efforts that improve public health and opportunities for prevention.
As a pediatrician, author, and a prominent advocate of evidence-based medicine and prevention, she has been a leading voice in health care, working to revolutionize health communications by using social and digital media, as well as mass media, to bridge the gap between parents and doctors. She practiced primary care pediatrics for 12 years. For 10 years Dr. Swanson wrote the first US hospital blog, Seattle Mama Doc for Seattle Children’s Hospital and founded the Digital Health department in 2013, later named Chief of Digital Innovation leading a team in innovation inside the hospital testing and creating new digital tools.
She spent six years as Chief Medical Officer for a start-up company building solutions to prevent pediatric food allergies. Before her career in medicine she was a middle school science teacher in Oakland, CA with Teach for America.
Swanson is a mom of two boys and lives in Madison, WI. She studied psychology (Kenyon College), medicine and bioethics (University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine), and completed her residency in pediatrics (University of Washington).
