Cheryl Anne Boyce, PhD

Cheryl Anne Boyce, PhD, is a director at Milken Institute Strategic Philanthropy, where she leads the Science Philanthropy Accelerator for Research and Collaboration and the Philanthropy Leadership Collective. In this role, she guides a learning community of family principals and executive-level science funders dedicated to accelerating biomedical research and enhancing the impact of philanthropy.

Before joining the Milken Institute, Boyce served as an associate commissioner at the United States Food and Drug Administration, overseeing programs that advanced clinical research, therapeutic development, and scientific engagement to inform regulatory decision-making. She previously served as the inaugural assistant director for Re-engineering the Research Enterprise in the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Common Fund, where she led high-risk, high-reward initiatives and landmark clinical and translational research programs. Her NIH career also included leadership roles at the National Institute of Mental Health, National Institute on Drug Abuse, and National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, with a focus on developmental neuroscience, preventive interventions, and implementation science.

Her federal service also includes work in the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy and a fellowship with the Society for Research in Child Development/American Association for the Advancement of Science (SRCD/AAAS) in Science and Technology Policy, focused on national initiatives related to children, trauma, drug abuse, and mental health. Boyce is a coauthor of a widely used handbook on writing research grants, which has been downloaded more than 100,000 times.

She earned her PhD in clinical psychology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and completed clinical and research fellowships at Children’s National Medical Center and the University of Maryland School of Medicine. She works at the Institute’s Washington office.