Linda V. Green

Linda V. Green is the Cain Brothers and Company Professor Emerita of Healthcare Management at Columbia Business School. She joined Columbia Business School in the Decision, Risk, and Operations division in 1978. She served as head of the division before becoming the Senior Vice Dean for Academics from 1989 till 1991. Her research, which has focused on the development and application of mathematical models to improve service systems, has resulted in dozens of publications in the premier technical journals such as Operations Research and Management Science as well as prominent healthcare journals such as Health Affairs, Health Services Research, Inquiry, and Academic Emergency Medicine. Her seminal work, on queueing systems with random numbers of servers per customer, resulted in a new methodology for assigning police cars to districts and was implemented by major cities across the United States and abroad. It was also the basis for a study on the feasibility of implementing a one-officer patrol car system in New York City under the Ed Koch administration. Her work over the past 25 years has focused on providing policy insights and operational methodologies to increase the efficiency, effectiveness, and access to healthcare delivery systems. Specific projects have included reducing delays for emergency care, providing timely access to primary care, the development of new nurse staffing methodologies and the evaluation of physician and hospital bed capacity needs. She has been a consultant and advisor to numerous health systems, physician practices, health start-ups, and government agencies. Her work on prioritizing burn victims during a catastrophic event earned a best paper award from the INFORMS Section for Public Programs, Services, and Needs and became a model for burn protocols across the country. Her work has been featured in various media outlets including The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Business Week, Slate, and Crain’s New York. Dr. Green has held editorial positions for Operations Research and Management Science, including serving as the Department Editor for Stochastic Models for Management Science for over 12 years. She has been an INFORMS Fellow since 2004 and an MSOM Fellow since 2019.

Green received a B.S. in Mathematics from CCNY, an M.S. in Applied Mathematics from the Courant Institute at New York University, and a Ph.D in Operations Research from Yale University.  Before returning to school for her doctorate, she worked at Bell Laboratories from 1970–1973 and AT&T from 1973–1974. She currently serves on the board of Lehigh Valley Health Network in Pennsylvania and continues to do some research and advise healthcare organizations.


Last updated December 16, 2022