Samantha Meltzer-Brody promoted to executive dean of UNC School of Medicine

Dr. Samantha Meltzer-Brody was no stranger to North Carolina when she first arrived for a clinical fellowship in 2000. She had driven down from her hometown in Ohio for summers at the beaches and witnessed Michael Jordan’s peak on the Chicago Bulls all while attending medical school at Northwestern University. 

What she didn’t know was that almost 25 years later, she would become executive dean of the UNC School of Medicine, a job she began this January. 

The executive dean reports to the Dean of the Medical School Dr. Wesley Burks, and Chief Academic Officer Dr. Christy Page, co-leading the medical school's 2,221 faculty members, 813 medical students, 562 doctoral candidates and 497 health sciences students, while also managing the medical school’s $648 million in research grants. Meltzer-Brody also seeks to execute UNC’s tripartite mission: education, research and clinical enterprise. 

“It's a really unique position that we get to be in, to be important to the success of both the University and the health system,” Dr. Page, former executive dean, said about the role. 

During her psychiatry residency at Duke University, Meltzer-Brody became interested in the vulnerability of women's mental health during pregnancy. She came to UNC for a fellowship as a Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholar, a national leadership development program for health practitioners centered on equity. 

She started the perinatal psychiatry program at the University, which joined the UNC Center for Women’s Mood Disorders in 2006. With support from the medical school and UNC Hospitals, the program inaugurated the nation’s first perinatal psychiatry inpatient unit, which allowed for clinical trials to develop the first FDA-approved postpartum depression medication.

“It's always about the partners, your colleagues and the team,” Meltzer-Brody said. “None of us can do anything without all of those people, and so it really is a terrific story of collaboration, and I think the best of what we do at UNC.”

Meltzer-Brody is the former director of the Center for Women’s Mood Disorders. Along with Dr. David Rubinow, founder of the Center, she co-mentored Crystal Schiller when she joined UNC as a postdoctoral fellow in 2011. 

Schiller, who is currently associate director of the Center, will be its new director. 

“[Rubinow] said to me: learn everything you can from Samantha [Meltzer-Brody], because she knows how to build teams and how to lead people,” Schiller said. “And so that's what I did—and it has worked out very well for me.”

Dr. Roberto Blanco, clinical associate professor of child and adolescent psychiatry, first met Meltzer-Brody when he was a psychiatry resident. He said when she became the chair of the UNC Department of Psychiatry in 2019, she successfully navigated the faculty through the COVID-19 pandemic, dealing with challenges such as telemedicine, supply chain disruption and increased costs.

“[We’re] really sad to see her leave psychiatry,” he said. “But we're really fortunate to be able to keep her as an executive dean.”

Meltzer-Brody began her new position in January 2025 after an application process that took place when Dr. Page was promoted to president of UNC Health Enterprises and chief academic officer.

Meltzer-Brody said she aims to foster collaboration across the medical school's departments and institutions in her new role. She said her psychiatric background will allow her to better support faculty through stressful challenges, like recent NIH funding cuts.

“I'm hoping that we will be able to get on more stable ground sooner rather than later," she said. "But we'll get through this together by figuring out how to collaborate most effectively and synergize efforts.”

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