Peter Pitts' Biography

Peter Pitts is President and co-founder of the Center for Medicine in the Public Interest and Senior Vice President, Director for Global Health Affairs for Manning Selvage & Lee. Prior to founding CMPI, Pitts was a Senior Fellow for healthcare studies at the Pacific Research Institute.

From 2002-2004 Peter was FDA’s Associate Commissioner for External Relations, serving as senior communications and policy adviser to the Commissioner. He supervised FDA's Office of Public Affairs, Office of the Ombudsman, Office of Special Health Issues, Office of Executive Secretariat, and Advisory Committee Oversight and Management. He served on the agency’s obesity working group and counterfeit drug taskforce.

His book, Become Strategic or Die, is widely recognized as a cutting edge study of how leadership, in order to be successful over the long term, must be combined with strategic vision and ethical practice. He is the editor of the new book, Coincidence or Crisis, a discussion of global prescription medicine counterfeiting.

He has served as an adjunct professor at Indiana University’s School of Public and Environmental Affairs and Butler University.