Dr. Elizabeth Coté, M.D., MPA

As Operation Smile’s senior vice president of global medical education, Elizabeth A. Coté, M.D., MPA, steers the organization’s crucial efforts to accessible and sustainable surgical and medical training in communities worldwide. “Talent exists everywhere, but access to essential medical training does not,” says Coté, whose work takes her to Operation Smile facilities in over 30 countries. 

Recent initiatives that Coté and her department have helped steer include launching competency-based, place-based surgical training programs that upskill local providers to reach more children when and where they need care, expanding Women in Medicine which supports women across the globe entering and advancing in medical professions, building preventive and rehabilitative services to delivery care as complete as possible to children who receive surgery, and partnerships with leading educational institutions such as the College of Surgeons of East, Central and Southern Africa (COSECSA) and the World Federation of Societies of Anaesthesiologists(WFSA) that expand the global workforce pipeline.

Prior to joining Operation Smile in 2022, Coté was an Aspen Institute health innovator and the medical director of Catholic Charities in Maine. She was the president and chief equity and inclusion officer at HYKE, a benefits decision support tool. In 2018 to 2019, she was the chief health officer at the National Institute for Children’s Health Quality. Previously, Coté served as the clinical director and primary physician of the Indian Health Service where she served a rural indigenous American community. She has led health system innovations across the globe in post-war Iraq, post-earthquake Haiti, orphanages of southern India and from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and the White House.

Coté’s awards and honors include an Aspen Health Innovator Fellowship, the McNulty Foundation Global Response Fund Award, the U.S. Indian Health Service Clinical Innovation Award, a White House Fellowship, the Dean’s Community Service Award from Harvard Medical School, the Zuckerman Fellowship from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government and the Joint Civilian Service Achievement Award from the U.S. Department of Defense.

Coté earned her bachelor’s degree from Wellesley College, her medical degree from Harvard Medical School and her master’s degree from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. After a pediatric internship at Massachusetts General Hospital, she trained in anesthesia at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. She resides in Portland, Maine.