Dick Levy has spent over 50 years involved in health care on the supplier/business side, the provider/oversight side, and the academic/reformer side. He was former Chairman and CEO of Varian, the world leader in cancer management equipment and services. He led the introduction of linear accelerators which established radiation therapy as a major tool in the fight against cancer, and helped build the company from a small engineering project with about 30 employees to a $4.5 billion public company with over 4000 employees.
As an advisor to the Dartmouth Institute, academic programs at Stanford, and national think tanks, he has focused on the need for reform in US healthcare. As a former Board Chair of Sutter Health, a $13 billion healthcare system comprising 24 hospitals in Northern California, and current Board Chair of the School of Public Health at Berkeley, he has focused on mechanisms to achieve improvements in cost, quality, and access in healthcare.
He also has served as Chair of the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University, where he focuses on business and healthcare ethics. Levy holds a bachelor’s degree from Dartmouth College and a Ph.D. in nuclear chemistry for the University of California at Berkeley.
He was married to his wife Sue from 1964 to 2023, when she passed away. He has two sons, three grandchildren and one great grandchild. He umpired Little League baseball in Palo Alto for 30 years and enjoys snorkeling in Hawaii, hiking with his dog, and mentoring students and employees.