Stanford Center for Clinical Research Welcomes Toni Nunes as Division Manager

Toni Nunes was born in San Francisco and grew up in the Bay Area, but she’s been away from “home” for a long time, including an eight-year stint on the East Coast at Johns Hopkins and most recently nearly eight years in Seattle. Accepting the Stanford Center for Clinical Research division manager position in the Department of Medicine means that she is once again living close not only to family but also to a sense of herself that she attributes to this part of the country. She says, “I feel like I was raised by Silicon Valley entrepreneurs from a career perspective, and California's just in my blood.”

Toni’s entrepreneurial spirit is evident in the number of projects she tackles and also in their scope: she’s been creating and nurturing public health and global health partnerships for years. “I've always been the type of person who's been passionate about my work,” says Toni. “I'm very mission-driven.”

With graduate degrees in public policy and public health, past positions at both Johns Hopkins and Seattle Children’s Hospital and Research Institute, along with her own consulting business, Toni has extensive expertise and experience partnering with academic hospitals, NGOs, foundations, research institutes and for-profit institutions. When she was at Seattle Children’s Hospital and Research Institute for example, she worked on its first global health initiative: an alliance aimed at preventing prematurity and stillbirth. In addition, Toni has worked with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and with a multi-national health policy firm that assessed 85 countries’ barriers to clinical trials, manufacturing and distribution so that vulnerable populations could receive vaccines and other medical devices once those innovations were available.

Interest in Stanford

Toni’s interest in Stanford began as an undergrad at San Jose State University. She says, “When I was in my undergraduate program, I worked with one of the most brilliant innovators, and she had me conduct some research for her in the Stanford School of Engineering. And at that time, when I conducted this little bit of research, I thought, ‘I want to work here one day.’ That was about 25 years ago. So, it was always my dream to work at Stanford. And this opportunity came up that seemed to really embrace my diverse skills and background.”

Living in her dream home in Belmont with her husband and two children, Toni reflects on the career move, “This is where I should have been all along. This is just a fantastic team. I've been very fortunate to work with organizations with outstanding missions, but this is even better because the icing on this cake is the team is so driven and so focused on the mission.”