A physician and health care executive, Dr. Jean G. Ford earned a doctor of medicine from Columbia University and is board certified in internal medicine. He is also board eligible in pulmonary medicine. Over the course of his career, Dr. Jean G. Ford led the development of an academic pulmonary medicine program at Harlem Hospital/Columbia University in New York City, and then directed community-based programs and applied research at the Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland.

Dr. Jean Ford served 3 years as Chair of Medicine at Brooklyn Hospital Center in Brooklyn, New York, and as chair of medicine at Einstein Healthcare Network in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, from 2015 to 2020. During his tenure at both institutions, he developed successful programs to improve healthcare quality and safety, and improve operations, including reductions in length of stay and readmissions. He recruited diverse division chiefs and implemented initiatives to increase recruitment of underrepresented minorities in training program. At both institutions, he developed and implemented innovative initiatives to improve population health, and he was successful in securing grant funding to support programs to address the social determinants of health(philanthropic, etc.) and increasing scholarship, including peer-reviewed publications.