Ronald R. Peterson is president of The Johns Hopkins Hospital and Health System, and executive vice president of Johns Hopkins Medicine -- the umbrella alliance of the Health System and The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. As President of the Johns Hopkins Health System, he provides senior oversight for Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center, Howard County General Hospital, Suburban Hospital, Sibley Memorial Hospital and All Children’s Hospital as well as The Johns Hopkins Hospital. He also serves as chairman of Johns Hopkins Community Physicians which provides ambulatory care at 36 locations throughout Maryland and the DC area, and as a director of Johns Hopkins HealthCare, the Johns Hopkins Home Care Group and Johns Hopkins Medicine International.

Tenth president of The Johns Hopkins Hospital -- rated the nation's best for 21 consecutive years by U.S. News & World Report -- Mr. Peterson arrived at Hopkins in 1973 as an administrative resident and since then, has carried out one assignment after another on behalf of Hopkins. He became administrator of the Henry Phipps Psychiatric Clinic in 1974, of Hopkins Hospital's Cost Improvement Program in 1975, and of the Johns Hopkins Children's Center in 1978.

In 1982, he started the process of transforming the troubled Baltimore City Hospitals into what is now known as the Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center, directing a $100 million physical redevelopment program and turning a $7 million a year loss under City ownership into a significant positive bottom line performance. He served as president of the medical center from 1984 until 1999.

In 1995, Mr. Peterson was named executive vice president and chief operating officer of Johns Hopkins Health System, in order to bring stronger coordination and cohesion to its operations and strategic planning. He was named acting president of Hopkins Hospital and Health System in September 1996. The hospital position was made permanent in December 1996 and the health system position in February 1997.

A 1970 graduate of The Johns Hopkins University, with a master's degree in hospital administration from The George Washington University, Mr. Peterson is a member of the Board of Governors of the University HealthSystem Consortium, vice chairman of The Governor’s Workforce Investment Board, and holds an appointment to the Notre Dame of Maryland University President’s Advisory Council and the Joint Commission Center for Transforming Health Care’s Leadership Advisory Council.He serves as a member of the boards of Big Brother Big Sister of Greater Chesapeake, the Maryland Business Roundtable for Education, the Living Classrooms Foundation and the Greater Baltimore Committee as well as the Maryland Hospital Association Executive Committee.

Born in 1948, the New Brunswick, New Jersey native now lives in Bel Air, Maryland with his wife, Elizabeth "Rooney" Peterson. Their daughter, Susie, a graduate of The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, is currently a chief resident at Hopkins in emergency medicine and son, Joe, is an attorney in Baltimore and the father of their two delightful grandsons.