Joe Shonkwiler, MD
Dr. Joe Shonkwiler joined the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) as the agency’s inaugural Chief Operating Officer in 2023. ARPA-H is a newly formed federal agency with over $2.5 billion in funding to make pivotal investments in break-through technologies and broadly applicable platforms, capabilities, and resources that have the potential to transform important areas of medicine and health. ARPA-H focuses on “moonshot” investments in solutions that cannot readily be accomplished through traditional research or commercial activity. As COO, he leads all the business and administrative operations for the agency, including technology transfer, finance, IT and data infrastructure, contracting and acquisitions, and human resources.
Dr. Shonkwiler joined ARPA-H from the healthcare and life sciences startup business development team at Amazon Web Services (AWS). In that role, he and his team were responsible for putting Amazon’s people, technology, best practices, and relationships to work alongside investors and their portfolio companies to accelerate scientific, engineering, and commercial efforts in biotech, health tech, and med tech. He not only worked directly with hundreds of healthcare and life science startups from conception to exit, but also founded and hosted the AWS Health Innovation Podcast, a weekly podcast featuring entrepreneurs and investors driving progress in healthcare and life science from across the globe.
Prior to joining Amazon, Dr. Shonkwiler was the Vice President of Adoption and Training at Aledade, a venture-backed startup helping independent primary care practices succeed in value-based care. In that role, he led national implementation of Aledade’s software and services as well as all internal and external training on principles of population health management and value-based care. Before Aledade, he was the CEO of CollectedMed, a cloud-based health education software startup spun out of Columbia University’s Department of Surgery.
Dr. Shonkwiler also spent time on Capitol Hill as the Healthcare Legislative Assistant for former United States Senator Rob Portman, serving as the Senator’s senior health policy advisor for all matters related to federal health policy. He began his career as a general surgery resident at Columbia University Medical Center/New York Presbyterian Hospital.
He has a BA from the University of Notre Dame, an MPP from Princeton University, an MBA from MIT, and an MD from Columbia University.