The CDC Leaders

“Too many people fail to realize that real communication goes in both directions.”

—Lee Iacocca

Louise Galaska

Chief Management Officer, Coordinating Center for Environmental Health and Injury Prevention

Louise Galaska is Chief Management Officer (CMO), Coordinating Center for Environmental Health and Injury Prevention (CCEHIP), Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), responsible for improving business services, practices, and systems through effective and efficient strategic thinking, critical analysis, resource and performance management, change leadership, policy development, communications and coalition building. She has direct authority for all business operations such as fiscal, human capital, information technology, procurement, grants, facilities, property, security, and similar functions and assets. Ms. Galaska also promotes the CCEHIP leadership development initiative, called “Growing Great,” and supports CCEHIP management effectiveness initiatives, among other responsibilities. As part of the CDC Management Council, she helps govern and set the agency's direction for business and administrative services, strategies, and operations. Ms. Galaska´s first job at CDC was as a VD investigator (a position now known as "STD disease intervention specialist") in Chicago, identifying and counseling people who had been exposed to gonorrhea or syphilis and referring them, and their sex partners, for treatment.

Ms. Galaska completed undergraduate studies at Barat College, earning two bachelor of arts degrees—one in history and one in American studies. She then went to work for CDC in the Chicago Health Department and learned public health through "shoe-leather" epidemiology. She spent the next 15 years working in STD, HIV and TB control and prevention in state and local health departments. In 1993, she came to Atlanta and, for the next eight years, worked in cancer prevention and control in the National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion (NCCDPHP). In 2001, she joined CDC Injury Center as deputy director.

She and her husband Pete have one son.