Joon Lee, MD

Executive Vice President for Health Affairs

Emory University

Vice Chair

Emory Healthcare Board of Directors

Chief Executive Officer

Emory Healthcare

Joon Lee, MD is the executive vice president for health affairs (EVPHA) of Emory University, vice chair of the Emory Healthcare Board of Directors, and chief executive officer of Emory Healthcare

As EVPHA, Lee oversees Emory's renowned academic health sciences enterprise focused on advancing research, training, and health-care delivery innovation. The Woodruff Health Sciences Center includes Emory's schools of medicine, public health and nursing; Winship Cancer Institute; Emory National Primate Research Center; Emory Global Health Institute; Goizueta Institute @ Emory Brain Health; Emory Global Diabetes Research Center; and Emory Healthcare.

As vice chair of the Emory Healthcare Board, Lee provides oversight of Emory Healthcare's CEO and leadership team, ensuring the delivery of high-quality, patient-centered care focused on supporting the health and well-being of patients around the state. 

Lee will continue to lead Emory Healthcare, Georgia’s most comprehensive academic health system, with 29,500 employees and 11 hospitals.

With a mission of improving lives and providing hope to individuals seeking care at Emory, Dr. Lee is focused on ensuring equitable, compassionate care and access to all members of the community and beyond. In doing so, he continues to build a collaborative and empowered work environment where all team members can advance patient care.

Since joining Emory Healthcare in 2023, Dr. Lee has focused on helping the system recover from a major financial downturn during the COVID-19 pandemic, as experienced by many health care systems nationwide. As a result of diligent organizational focus on operations, finance and culture, Emory Healthcare has experienced a significant financial turnaround, expanded primary care access throughout Georgia, increased staff retention, decreased reliance on contract labor, continued leadership development and made a $150 million investment in employee compensation that positively impacted more than 21,000 employees. Additionally, Dr. Lee has championed greater use of data and technology to decrease provider burden and improve the patient experience. In June 2025, Dr. Lee was appointed to the Board of Directors for Medtronic.

Prior to joining Emory Healthcare, Dr. Lee had a 27-year career at University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC), where he served as an interventional cardiologist, clinical researcher, academic leader and physician executive.

Lee earned his doctor of medicine degree from Duke University in 1988. He completed his fellowship and residency at Harvard Medical School's Massachusetts General Hospital in both cardiology and internal medicine.