About

Senator William Frist, M.D. is a nationally-acclaimed heart and lung transplant surgeon, former U.S. Senate Majority Leader, founding partner of Frist Cressey Ventures and chairman of the Executives Council of the health service investment firm Cressey & Company. He serves as Chair of the Global Board of The Nature Conservancy, the largest conservation organization in the world.  He is actively engaged in the business as well as the medical, humanitarian, and philanthropic communities.

As a U.S. Senator representing Tennessee from 1994 -2006 (the first practicing physician elected to the Senate since 1928), Senator Frist served on both the Health (HELP) and the Finance Committees responsible for writing all health legislation. He was elected Majority Leader of the Senate, having served fewer total years in Congress than any person chosen to lead that body in history. His leadership was instrumental in the passage of the 2003 Medicare Modernization Act and the historic PEPFAR legislation that provided life-saving treatment globally to over 12 million people and reversed the spread of HIV/AIDS worldwide.  He also held seats on the Foreign Relations Committee where he chaired the Subcommittee on Africa, the Commerce Committee, and the Banking Committee. He served six years with President Clinton and six years with President Bush. Honoring his pledge to serve just two terms, he left the Senate and his position as Majority Leader in 2006.

As a leading authority on healthcare, Senator Frist speaks nationally on health reform, government policy, global health, education reform, and volunteerism. In 2019 he launched “A Second Opinion” podcast, which addresses challenging healthcare issues of today from three distinct vantage points: policy, medicine, and innovation.

He is Co-Chair of the Health Project at the Bipartisan Policy Center, and co-founder of Aspire Health. His current non-profit board service includes the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and private and publicly-traded companies: Devoted Health, Digital Diagnostics, MDsave, Monogram Health, OneOncology, Select Medical, Aegis Science Corporation, and Teladoc Health. He is also chairman of both Hope Through Healing Hands, which focuses on maternal and child health and global poverty, and SCORE, a statewide collaborative education reform organization that has helped propel Tennessee to prominence as a K12 education reform state.

Aviation is one of Frist’s passions, and has proved to be essential in all aspects of his life. Read more.

For a more extended biography and board service, click here. Please visit our Connect page to request Senator Frist for a keynote speaker appearance.