Dr. Katherine Hajjar retired from Weill Cornell Medicine (WCM) in October 2024 after serving on the faculty for 40 years as a physician-scientist, educator and faculty leader. She held many different leadership roles, including Division Chief, vice chair in the Department of Pediatrics; and Chair of the Department of Cell and Developmental Biology. In all, she was committed to the advancement and empowerment of WCM faculty and dedicated to the institution.
In January 2020, Dr. Hajjar was appointed as Weill Cornell's first Senior Associate Dean of Faculty, unifying the offices of Faculty Affairs (OFA) and Faculty Development (OFD). Under her leadership, the Office of Faculty established the Mentoring Academy Council which provided a mentoring champion in each department at WCM, the Mastercard Diversity-Mentorship Collaborative to support and advance the career of scientists underrepresented in medicine and the K-Early Career Academic Training (KECAT) Program to provide grant writing training for faculty apply for career development awards. To address some of the challenges that faculty face in preparing for promotion, during her tenure, OFD and OFA created a dedicated website (https://faculty.weill.cornell.edu/) to house a library of diverse video learning modules. Dr. Hajjar was an advocate for improving OFA’s processes around appointment, promotion, recruitment, and retention and preserving the high quality of our faculty. Staff in OFA and OFD valued her support, Solomonic wisdom, and friendship.
Dr. Hajjar was a transformational leader for our teams, and every one of us will miss her.
Jane Salmon, MD
Associate Dean, Faculty Affairs
Judy Tung, MD
Associate Dean, Faculty Development
Genevieve "Giny" Fouda, MD, PhD
Assistant Dean, Faculty Development