Charles Stokes
President & CEO
National Foundation for the
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Inc.
Charles Stokes joined the CDC Foundation as executive director when the Foundation began operating in 1995. The mission of the CDC Foundation is to help CDC do more, faster by forging effective partnerships between CDC and others to fight threats to health and safety. Under his leadership, the CDC Foundation has grown from a staff of two to a staff of more than 40 professionals managing approximately 200 public health programs in partnership with CDC. He is currently president and CEO of the Foundation. Prior to joining the CDC Foundation, Mr. Stokes worked for 22 years with the Missouri Department of Health, serving as deputy director for the Department from 1983 through 1995.
Mr. Stokes has been active for many years in the fields of public health and public administration, filling leadership roles at both the state and national levels. He has served as president of the Missouri Public Health Association and the Missouri Institute of Public Administration. He currently serves as vice chairman of the Atlanta-based Raoul Foundation Board.
At the national level, he chaired the American Public Health Association’s expert panel that developed Healthy Communities 2000, a set of model standards used by many state and local health departments throughout the U.S. He also served on the Staff Advisory Council to the National Governors Association’s Task Force on Universal Health Care, the board of the Public Health Foundation, and the editorial board of the Journal of Public Health Management and Practice. He is currently a member of the Advisory Committee on Public Issues for the Ad Council.
In 1989 Mr. Stokes received the Noble J. Swearingen Award, bestowed once each year by the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials for excellence in administrative management. He also received the 1995 Public Health Leadership Award from St. Louis University. Mr. Stokes is a graduate of St. Louis University and obtained his master’s degree in education from Lincoln University.
