Sandra Harmon-Weiss, CLA ’71, MED ’74, a retired family physician, geriatrician and insurance executive who chairs the Lewis Katz School of Medicine’s Board of Visitors, has joined Temple University’s Board of Trustees.

Elected a trustee at the Oct. 11 board meeting, Harmon-Weiss also serves on the Board of Visitors for Temple’s Kornberg School of Dentistry. She was inducted into Temple’s Gallery of Success in 2004–2005 and was awarded the Lewis Katz School of Medicine’s Alumni Service Award in 2009. In 2015, she was awarded the Henry P. Laughlin Alumnus of the Year Award in Recognition of Exceptional Contributions to Medicine.

Harmon-Weiss began her studies at Antioch College in Ohio and then transferred to Ohio Northern University. From there, she returned to Pennsylvania. To support herself financially, she worked as a laboratory technician at Temple’s Skin and Cancer Hospital and attended night classes to finish her bachelor’s degree in the College of Liberal Arts before graduating from Temple’s medical school.

Harmon-Weiss established a private family practice in Conshohocken, Pennsylvania, in 1977. She also served as assistant director of the Family Practice Center at Abington Memorial Hospital from 1977 to 1984 and clinical assistant professor at Temple’s School of Medicine in the Department of Family Medicine and Community Health, where she taught from 1978 to 1984.

She left private practice in the late 1980s to become a medical director for U.S. Healthcare Inc. (now Aetna), eventually becoming vice president, director and head of core government programs. She has testified at Congressional hearings and has served as advisor, member and reviewer for various initiatives of the Department of Health and Human Services, National Institutes of Health, American Geriatrics Society and other government agencies, think tanks, committees and nonprofits.

Harmon-Weiss is married to Richard C. Weiss, a longtime associate professor and associate dean at the Kornberg School of Dentistry. She has served on the board of Atlantic Cape Community College and was a trustee of the Delmarva Foundation. She currently serves on the vestry of St. Mary’s Episcopal Church in Stone Harbor, New Jersey.

Her term as a university trustee extends through October 2018. Temple’s Board of Trustees is comprised of 36 voting members, 24 of whom are elected and 12 of whom are appointed by state officials. Recent additions to the board include Michael H. Reed, CLA ’69, and Tamron Hall, SMC ’92.