Jill Biden Takes on New Role After Serving as First Lady

After her four years in the White House, Jill Biden has stepped into a new leadership role focused on advancing women’s health.

She will now chair the Women’s Health Network at the Milken Institute, a California-based economic think tank known for addressing global issues related to finance, health, and the environment. The organization announced her appointment in an April 29 press release.

“From endometriosis to healthy aging, the White House Initiative on Women’s Health Research made important investments in research and development, while making clear it will take collaboration across industries to bring these innovations to scale,” Biden said in the announcement. “I am honored to join the Milken Institute as we unite leaders around a shared mission: for women everywhere to benefit from the lifesaving, world-changing research we know is possible.”

The Milken Institute, headquartered in Santa Monica, describes itself as nonpartisan and committed to shaping policy solutions through collaboration.

During her time as First Lady, Biden emphasized several causes including the Biden Cancer Moonshot, the Joining Forces initiative for military families, and the White House Initiative on Women’s Health Research—launched by then-President Joe Biden in 2023 to address longstanding disparities in women’s medical research.

Speaking at the Milken Institute’s 28th annual Global Conference in Beverly Hills, California, on Monday, Biden emphasized the scale of investment the initiative received under her husband’s administration.

“Joe said, ‘You know, let’s infuse – really, the federal government with money.’ In one year, we put in $1 billion to advance women’s research,” she told attendees.

She explained that funding was funneled through the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which revised its approach to disaggregate data and distinguish between male and female research findings. The Department of Defense also contributed funding, according to Biden.

“We worked with (the Department of Defense) DOD – they put a lot of money into women’s research – and then we put a lot of money in to de-risk the investment,” she said. “So there were a lot of things that, really, private equity wasn’t willing to take on because it was too risky, and we thought, let’s push this forward, and let’s try to find answers more quickly.”

Biden had served as a professor at Northern Virginia Community College since 2009 but stepped away from the classroom in December 2024, shortly before President Donald Trump returned to the Oval Office.

Her new position comes as several books evaluating the previous administration begin to hit the shelves. Some reports detail internal concerns over President Joe Biden’s age and mental sharpness during his time in office, adding context to her transition into the think tank world.