Meet our leadership team | Center for Pediatric Bioethics

Leadership team

Mark R. Mercurio, MD, MA

Executive Director, Center for Pediatric Bioethics, Boston Children's Hospital
Professor in Residence, Harvard Medical School

Mark R. Mercurio became the inaugural executive director of the Center for Pediatric Bioethics at Boston Children's Hospital in 2025. He came to Boston after decades of leadership roles in bioethics and neonatology in New Haven. Dr. Mercurio received an AB in Biochemical Sciences from Princeton University, an MD from the College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia University, and an MA in philosophy from Brown University. He completed his pediatrics residency and neonatology fellowship at Yale New Haven Children's Hospital and Yale School of Medicine, after which he founded the Newborn Intensive Care Unit at Lawrence and Memorial Hospital in New London, Connecticut, while also working as an attending physician in the NICU at Yale New Haven Children's Hospital. He spent many years on faculty at Yale, becoming professor of pediatrics (now emeritus), chief of neonatal-perinatal medicine, and founding director of the Program for Biomedical Ethics. His scholarly work has primarily been in pediatric ethics; areas of interest include end-of-life care, approaches to critical decision-making, and medical education. Dr. Mercurio has published widely, been an invited speaker in most U.S. states and over a dozen countries, and has received numerous awards, including the William G. Bartholome Award for Ethical Excellence from the American Academy of Pediatrics.

Christy Cummings, MD, HEC-C

Director of Education, Center for Pediatric Bioethics, Boston Children's Hospital ; Program Director, Pediatric Ethics Fellowship, Center for Pediatric Bioethics, Boston Children's Hospital
Chair, Fetal Therapy Board, Fetal Care and Surgery Center
Neonatologist, Division of Newborn Medicine
Associate Professor of Pediatrics, Harvard Medical School

Christy Cummings is an NIH-funded physician-scientist-ethicist. She is an attending neonatologist in the Division of Newborn Medicine at Boston Children's Hospital, and associate professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School.

Dr. Cummings graduated from Colby College, received her medical degree from the University of Rochester, and completed her training in pediatrics, neonatology, and ethics at Yale. She completed Yale's Interdisciplinary Center for Bioethics Program in Bioethics and the Fellowship Program in Medical Ethics through the Division of Medical Ethics at HMS. She is also a certified health-care ethics consultant (HEC-C) through the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities.

At Boston Children's, Dr. Cummings serves in several ethics leadership roles. She is an ethics associate and a member of the Ethics Advisory Committee, and she is director of medical ethics and humanities for the Division of Newborn Medicine. She previously served on the hospital's Institutional Review Board and now chairs the Fetal Therapy Board. She is also director of education for the Center for Pediatric Bioethics and program director of the Pediatric Ethics Fellowship.

Dr. Cummings leads the Cummings Lab, which studies medical ethics and humanism in pediatrics and neonatology, and their intersection with medical education, counseling, communication, and decision-making. Her work uses qualitative, quantitative, and decision science methodologies, grounded in ethical principles and frameworks, along with a parent-centered approach. Ultimately, her mission is to advance the moral, human aspect of medicine for the benefit of patients and their families. Dr. Cummings is also passionate about mentorship and career development and is dedicated to fostering the next generation of physician-scientist-ethicists.

Faye Holder-Niles, MD, MPH

Associate Program Director, Pediatric Bioethics Fellowship, Center for Pediatric Bioethics, Boston Children's Hospital
Co-chair of the Ethics Advisory Committee, Boston Children's Hospital
Attending Physician, Division of General Pediatrics, Boston Children’s Hospital
Assistant Professor, Harvard Medical School

Faye Holder-Niles is a primary care pediatrician, bioethicist, co-chair of the Ethics Advisory Committee at Boston Children’s and an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Holder-Niles is a graduate of Wellesley College. She completed her medical degree in the Dartmouth-Brown medical program and pediatric residency training at the University of Michigan. She also completed a master’s degree in public health at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and a bioethics fellowship at the Center for Bioethics at Harvard Medical School.

Dr. Holder-Niles previously served as medical director for both the Primary Care Asthma Program and Community Primary Care in the Office of Community Health at Boston Children’s Hospital. She developed and led an award-winning asthma program recognized for improving health outcomes for asthma patients. Her areas of expertise include community engagement and access, patient family perspectives in shared-medical decisions, and ethical aspects of determinants of health. She has a keen interest in patient-clinical team communications, preventive ethics, and end-of-life decision making. Dr. Holder-Niles serves as a faculty preceptor and mentor for medical students, pediatric residents, and fellows.

Jonathan M. Marron, MD, MPH, HEC-C

Associate Director of Education, Center for Pediatric Bioethics, Boston Children's Hospital
Assistant Professor of Pediatrics, Harvard Medical School
Clinical Ethicist, Boston Children's Hospital
Attending Physician, Pediatric Hematology/Oncology
Member and Teaching Faculty, Harvard Medical School Center for Bioethics

Jonathan Marron is a pediatric oncologist, bioethicist, health services researcher, and educator at Boston Children’s and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. He received his MD at the University of California, Los Angeles David Geffen School of Medicine and completed his residency training in pediatrics at Stanford University, after which he completed fellowships in clinical medical ethics at the University of Chicago's MacLean Center for Clinical Medical Ethics, in pediatric hematology/oncology at Boston Children’s/Dana-Farber, and in pediatric health services research at Boston Children’s/Harvard Medical School. He also received a master’s degree in public health (focus: clinical effectiveness) from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and served as a post-doctoral research scholar at the HMS Center for Bioethics. In addition to his clinical and research work, Jon teaches ethics courses in the Harvard medical school curriculum and Master's in Bioethics program (“Introduction to Clinical Ethics,” “Pediatric Bioethics,” and "Ethics Consultation Practice"). He is also a member of the clinical ethics team at both Boston Children’s and Dana-Farber. Dr. Marron's research focuses on the intersection of ethics and decision-making, with a particular interest in pediatric cancer genomic sequencing and other advanced and emerging technologies. His bioethical areas of interest include pediatric ethics, ethical issues in genomics, informed consent, health care disparities, and research ethics. Dr. Marron serves in various local and national leadership roles, and he has received several teaching awards. His work has been funded by such groups as the American Society of Clinical Oncology and the National Institutes of Health (National Cancer Institute and the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences), and has published in such journals as JAMA Pediatrics, the American Journal of Bioethics, JAMA Oncology, the Journal of Clinical Oncology, and Pediatrics.

Ingrid Holm, MD, MPH

Director of Research and Scholarship, Center for Pediatric Bioethics, Boston Children’s Hospital
Associate in Pediatrics, Division of Genetics and Genomics and Division of Endocrinology
Associate Director, Robert's Program on Sudden Unexpected Death in Pediatrics
Professor of Pediatrics, Harvard Medical School

Dr. Ingrid A. Holm is a pediatric geneticist and endocrinologist at Boston Children’s, professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School, and a member of the Harvard Medical School Center for Bioethics. She received her MD from the University of California, Los Angeles, and she completed her residency in pediatrics and her fellowships in genetics and pediatric endocrinology at Boston Children’s. Dr. Holm’s research focuses on the ethical, legal, and social implications of genomics and in rare disease research.

Dr. Holm studies the impact of integrating genetic sequencing into newborn screening, the impact of implementation of genomic medicine on patients and providers, the ethics of therapies for ultrarare diseases, and the genetic contribution to sudden, unexplained infant and childhood death. She was elected to the Society for Pediatric Research, is a fellow of the American Academy of Pediatrics and a fellow of the American College of Medical Genetics and Genomics. Dr. Holm is chair of the Boston Children’s Institutional Review Board.

Katie Moynihan, MBBS, DCH

Associate Director of Research & Scholarship, Center for Pediatric Bioethics, Boston Children’s Hospital
Senior Associate Cardiologist, Department of Cardiology, Boston Children’s Hospital
Associate Professor of Pediatrics, Harvard Medical School

Dr. Katie Moynihan is a staff physician in the Cardiac Intensive Care Unit at Boston Children’s and associate professor of pediatrics, Harvard Medical School. She serves as research director and academic faculty development lead within the Division of Cardiovascular Critical Care. Dr. Moynihan studied medicine and completed her pediatric and critical care training in Australia and New Zealand. She is committed to delivering high-quality, compassionate care to critically ill children with heart disease, drawing on extensive international clinical experience across Australia, New Zealand, Africa, the Pacific Islands, India, and the United States. Her research interests focus on ethically supported decision making, particularly in relation to life-sustaining devices, as well as social determinants of health and health care access and outcomes in pediatric critical illness. Dr. Moynihan is completing a PhD describing an equity-based rationale for ethically supported decision-making in Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation through the University of Sydney.

Kerri O. Kennedy, DBE, RN, HEC-C

Director of Clinical Ethics, Center for Pediatric Bioethics, Boston Children’s Hospital
Director, Office of Ethics, Boston Children's Hospital

Kerri O. Kennedy is a clinical ethicist and director of the Office of Ethics at Boston Children’s, where she also co-chairs the Ethics Advisory Committee. She received a BSN from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, as well as a master's degree in bioethics and health policy and a doctorate in bioethics with a concentration in organizational ethics, both from Loyola University Chicago. With a clinical foundation in surgical-trauma critical care nursing, Kennedy brings deep bedside experience to her current work, which centers on ethics consultation for infants, children, and adolescents with serious or life-threatening illness. She has a particular interest in end-of-life decision making and co-led a multi-year, multi-stakeholder initiative to revise Boston Children’s policy on resolving intractable conflicts over life-sustaining treatment. Her broader bioethical areas of focus include adolescent autonomy, the ethics of innovative and emerging therapies, and ethics consultation for children in state custody.

Robert Truog, MD, MA

Faculty Associate, Center for Pediatric Bioethics, Boston Children's Hospital
Frances Glessner Lee Distinguished Professor of Medical Ethics, Anaesthesia, & Pediatrics
Senior Associate in Critical Care Medicine
Department of Anesthesiology, Critical Care, and Pain Medicine, Boston Children's Hospital
Director Emeritus, Center for Bioethics, Department of Global Health and Social Medicine, Harvard Medical School

Robert D. Truog is the Frances Glessner Lee Distinguished Professor of Anaesthesiology, Pediatrics, and Bioethics at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Truog received his medical degree from UCLA, and is board certified in the practices of pediatrics, anesthesiology, and pediatric critical care medicine. He also holds an MA in philosophy from Brown University. He recently stepped down from his role as the founding director of the Center for Bioethics at Harvard Medical School. He continues to serve on the active staff at Boston Children’s in the Department of Anesthesiology, Critical Care, and Pain Medicine, where he has practiced for nearly 40 years — including a decade as chief of the Division of Critical Care Medicine. Dr. Truog has published more than 350 articles in bioethics and related disciplines. His books include “Talking with Patients and Families about Medical Error,” and “Death, Dying, and Organ Transplantation.” In 2013 he was honored with the Spinoza Chair at the University of Amsterdam.