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Who

Tony Gotto is the dean and medical provost of Weill Cornell Medical College. He's also a world-renowned researcher and a leading authority on cardiovascular disease.

Backstory

Although Gotto says he wanted to be a lawyer as a kid, his father convinced him to pursue medicine instead. After studying biochemistry at Vanderbilt, he headed off to Oxford on a Rhodes scholarship, returning to Vanderbilt to earn his medical degree. He went on to spend two decades at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, teaching and building his scholarly reputation thanks to groundbreaking research on atherosclerosis and the effects of cholesterol-lowering drugs. In 1997, Gotto moved to New York to join Cornell as provost and dean. He was reappointed for another five-year term in 2006.

On the job

Gotto has proven himself a top-notch fundraiser since taking over as dean. In October 2006, he launched a $1.3 billion capital campaign, reeling in a record $250 million gift from Sandy and Joan Weill, who have long been big donors to the school (the institution is named after them, of course) as well as Hank Greenberg and his wife Corinne, who contributed $50 million; later, he helped secure a $50 million gift from Ron Perelman to establish the Ronald O. Perelman Heart Institute in conjunction New York-Presbyterian. Over his tenure, Gotto has been credited with investing in new research programs and creating the school's first international medicine program—more than a third of Cornell's med students now study abroad in places like Italy, Istanbul and Qatar during their fourth year. But his record isn't unblemished. In 2008, he came under fire after it surfaced that a foundation behind a 2006 lung cancer study—whose board he'd served on—had been financed by Howard Lorber and Bennett LeBow's tobacco company Liggett.

In print

Over his career Gotto has published 400 scholarly articles and authored three health-conscious books: The Living Heart, The New Living Heart Diet (with the legendary Dr. Michael DeBakey), and The Living Heart Cookbook.

Board game

Gotto has served as president of the American Heart Association, a position once held by Mount Sinai's Valentin Fuster, with whom he's collaborated on research. Gotto has also been on the board of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Advisory Council, and the National Diabetes Advisory Board.

Personal

He's married to Anita Gotto, a church elder and member of the steering committee at the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church. They have three daughters: Gillian, Teresa, and Jennifer, who's a doctor at Cedar-Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles. The Gottos live on the Upper East Side, a block from the hospital.