Donna Hackley is an Assistant Professor part-time in Oral Health Policy and Epidemiology and Global and Community Health and faculty of pre-doctoral Pediatric Dentistry at the Harvard School of Dental Medicine. Dr. Hackley earned her DMD from Boston University’s Goldman School of Dentistry (1992) where she also completed a 1-year Advanced Education in General Dentistry residency (1993). Dr. Hackley earned her certificate in pediatric dentistry at Children’s Hospital Boston and Harvard School of Dental Medicine in 1995 and spent more than 15 years in private practice.
Dr. Hackley joined the Office of Global and Community Health in 2013 and the following year she completed her Master’s in Peace and Conflict Resolution at the University of Massachusetts Lowell and her Master’s in Public Health from the University of California, Berkeley in 2022. Dr. Hackley is PI for HSDM’s initiative to create and implement a robust oral health module for medical students at the University of Global Health Equity, in Butaro, Rwanda, where she serves as Department Head for Oral Health. She also served as PI for HSDM’s Human Resources for Health Rwanda project, as Co-PI for HSDM’s mOral Health initiative for the WHO-AFRO region, and as Investigator on HSDM’s Health Advancement Initiative for Vietnam at the University of Medicine and Pharmacy, Ho Chi Minh City.
Dr. Hackley co-founded HSDM’s Sustainability Committee and also co-founded the Special Interest Group on Sustainability in Dentistry at ADEA. She is a member of the FDI World Dental Federation Task Team on Sustainability in Dentistry. She strives to promote contextually relevant, sustainable, and inclusive workforce development and to leverage her practical experiences to inform operations and policy.