Cybele Bjorklund

Cybele Bjorklund is the inaugural executive director of the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg Center and the vice president of federal strategy for Johns Hopkins University & Medicine. In these roles, she works across the Johns Hopkins enterprise to support evidence-based policymaking, advocacy and engagement in order to advance the University’s commitment to research, teaching, patient care and service.

At the Bloomberg Center, Cybele and her team work with internal and external stakeholders to bring people together across disciplines and differences in order to create opportunities for collaboration, conversation and action on key policy issues and challenges. The team at the Office of Federal Strategy drives University and Johns Hopkins Health System engagement with Congress, Executive Branch agencies, trade associations and other thought leaders and partners.

Cybele returned to Johns Hopkins after serving from 2021-2023 as senior vice president for policy and government strategy at Virta Health, a late-stage metabolic health start-up that uses remote care to help patients adopt and adhere to dietary changes that reverse type 2 diabetes, prediabetes and obesity.

From 2019-2021, she led the federal affairs team at Johns Hopkins and, prior to that, she was vice president and head of global policy at Sanofi. From 1995-2015, Cybele worked in Congress, serving 14 years as the Democratic staff director for the Ways & Means Health Subcommittee, four years as Senator Ted Kennedy’s deputy staff director for health on the HELP Committee and two years as a legislative assistant to then-Senate Democratic Leader Tom Daschle. During this time, Cybele helped write and advance the Affordable Care Act, Medicare legislation (including the creation of Part D and numerous changes to benefits and payments across the program) and many other laws affecting private health insurance, health tax law, health information technology and other key federal health programs. Before moving to Congress, she was a social science research analyst focused on Medicare at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

Cybele is a Fellow of the second class of the Aspen Institute’s Health Innovators Fellowship and a member of the Aspen Global Leadership Network. She serves on the board of directors for the Medicare Rights Center and the David A. Winston Health Policy Fellowship, and is a member of the National Academy of Social Insurance. Cybele holds an associate faculty appointment at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, from which she also graduated with a master’s degree in health policy and a concentration in law, ethics, and policy. She received a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Oregon.