New research firm CEO never stops learning

<p>When she was young, Anne Lindblad was interested in medicine, even becoming a physician, until she came face-to-face with the inevitable frog to dissect in high school biology class. “I mutilated that frog,” recalled Lindblad, who recently was promoted to CEO and president of The Emmes Corp., a Rockville research company that conducts studies for clinicians and biomedical scientists. “That dashed my hopes of becoming a physician.” But math was another of her likes, and after growing up in Cleveland, Ohio, she enrolled at Hollins University in Roanoke, Va. “It was one of the few colleges in the area that offered a degree in statistics back then,” Lindblad said. After earning a statistics degree there, she went to the Medical College of Virginia in Richmond and obtained a master’s in biostatistics. She started teaching at the all-girls Foxcroft School in Middleburg, Va., where she began a statistics course. While in graduate school, Lindblad met Donald Stablein, who earned a doctorate in biostatistics from the Medical College of Virginia and started working for Emmes as a staff statistician in 1980, some three years after the company formed. Stablein eventually became president of Emmes. “We kept in contact, and he asked me if I wanted a job,” said Lindblad, who earned a doctorate herself in statistics from George Washington University. She joined Emmes in 1982 and worked her way to vice president in 1992 and executive vice president in 2006. She has led major projects in ophthalmology, oncology, transplantation, neurology, stroke, traumatic brain injury and more. “I’m in a field where you never stop learning,” Lindblad said.</p>