Ken Shatzkes, Ph.D. Promoted to Foundation for Opioid Response Efforts Program Director
Foundation for Opioid Response Efforts (FORE) congratulates Ken Shatzkes, Ph.D. on his promotion to program director, effective July 2022. Since joining FORE as a senior program officer in May 2019, Ken has helped develop and shape our grantmaking programs to date, including our four major program areas of Access to Treatment, Responding to COVID-19, Innovation, and Family-Based Prevention. As program director, he will continue to develop FORE’s grantmaking activities and programmatic strategies, as well as take on responsibilities related to our communications and dissemination activities.
Last year, Shatzkes completed the Council on Foundation’s Career Pathways leadership program and he has been selected to be one of Grantmakers in Health’s Terrance Keenan Institute for Emerging Leaders in Health Philanthropy fellows this fall.
Shatzkes has over 15 years of experience performing biomedical research in academic, government, and nonprofit settings. In 2017, Ken served as the science policy advisor in the Office of the New Jersey Governor, providing evidence-based recommendations on state opioid initiatives and supporting the governor’s work as chair of the President’s Commission on Combating Drug Addiction and the Opioid Crisis. Previously, he was a Rutgers-Eagleton Institute of Politics Fellow, placed in the Office of Intergovernmental and External Affairs at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, where he researched, tracked, and informed senior leadership of innovative state-led opioid-related initiatives. Prior to joining FORE, Ken was an associate program officer at the Helmsley Charitable Trust, a global health philanthropy focused on improving patients’ lives.
Shatzkes earned his Ph.D. in Biomedical Sciences (Immunology and Infectious Disease) from Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, and his B.Sc. in Biology (Molecular Genetics and Development) from McGill University.