Executive Team

Roger L. Williams, M.D.
Executive Vice President and Chief Executive Officer


Roger L. Williams, M.D., Executive Vice President and Chief Executive Officer

Roger L. Williams, M.D., has been the executive vice president and chief executive officer of the United States Pharmacopeia (USP) since April 2000. Working with a staff of nearly 400, Dr. Williams provides strategic leadership for USP at the direction of USP's Board of Trustees. Dr. Williams also serves as chair of the Council of Experts, USP's scientific body, which continuously revises the United States Pharmacopeia and National Formulary.

Since joining USP, Dr. Williams has led a re-engineering effort designed to ensure that USP's products and services meet the needs of its constituencies. These constituencies include practitioners and patients/consumers who seek safe, effective, and good-quality therapeutic products as well as pharmaceutical manufacturers, compounding professionals, and many other stakeholders. Dr. Williams has reorganized the structure of the Council of Experts, brought focus to its science-based decisions, and has aligned USP's efforts with other pharmacopeias throughout the world. He has established stakeholder forums that promote communication with and input from pharmaceutical and dietary supplement manufacturers, compounding professionals, patient safety advocates, and USP's membership.

Dr. Williams is USP's lead representative for international activities and outreach efforts to the many professional groups and societies who share USP's public health mission. The strength of USP's public programs has allowed USP to expand its public health mission both nationally and internationally. USP established a site in India in 2006 and in 2005 opened a sales office in Basel, Switzerland. The USP–NF was published in Spanish in 2005.

Dr. Williams received his undergraduate degree at Oberlin College and his medical degree and training in internal medicine at the University of Chicago. He served in the United States Army, both in Korea and at Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, where he conducted antimalarial drug research. After completing a fellowship in clinical pharmacology at the University of California, San Francisco, in 1974, he continued as a faculty member until 1989. He joined the Food and Drug Administration in 1990 where he worked for ten years.

Dr. Williams is a member of the medical honor societies Phi Beta Kappa and Alpha Omega Alpha. He is a fellow of the American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists, a member of the International Pharmacy Federation (FIP) Board of Pharmaceutical Sciences, and has represented USP at the World Health Organization. He has authored or co-authored approximately 200 reports in the areas of clinical pharmacology, patient safety, biopharmaceutics, and pharmaceutical chemistry, and has published books on clinical pharmacology and regulatory science. He retains an adjunct appointment at UCSF, has served on the Board of Overseers for the University's School of Pharmacy, Pharmaceutical Foundation Advisory Council of the College of Pharmacy at the University of Texas at Austin, the Board of Directors for the American Society for Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics, and the Pharmacy Compounding Accreditation Board. Dr. Williams is a board-certified internist and clinical pharmacologist.