On the morning of Tuesday, January 7, in his first full week as chancellor, Julio Frenk officially introduced himself to the Bruin community in a video message. Poised and polished in a gray blazer and blue-and-gold tie, he spoke of his eagerness to embark on the new journey and laid out his plans for the immediate future.
Then, within hours, the worst fire disaster in the history of Los Angeles began to engulf large swaths of the city, including nearby Pacific Palisades. Thousands were forced to flee their homes.
Frenk was no stranger to public emergencies: As one of the world’s foremost public health experts and a higher education leader, he’s been on the front lines of hurricanes, earthquakes and pandemics. He quickly rolled up his sleeves and marshaled UCLA to rally for both Bruins and the city.
Over the following days, Frenk worked with campus leaders to provide housing and assistance to Bruins displaced by the fires, pivot to remote instruction, and set up virtual town halls to keep students, parents, staff and faculty connected and informed. He walked the campus, speaking with everyone from health workers to maintenance crews clearing brush. He oversaw the donation of space at the UCLA Research Park in West Los Angeles, working with federal and local government agencies to launch a one-stop disaster recovery center serving evacuated residents and those whose homes and livelihoods had been decimated. UCLA, Frenk emphasized continually, was “not just a university in Los Angeles, but a university of Los Angeles,” with an abiding commitment to serve the city and its people.
As the fires crept closer to Westwood, he sent out daily messages through Bruin Posts and social media with words of encouragement and resolve. “Let’s continue to stand together as one Bruin community,” he said in one of the first. “These fires have brought so much destruction, loss and displacement. They have also brought fear and uncertainty. But what I have seen firsthand — they have brought countless acts of kindness. Let us all continue to tap into kindness. We can get through this, together, as Bruins.”
Before the smoke had even begun to clear, Frenk pledged the university’s continued support and expertise in recovery and rebuilding efforts. And as the threat to campus receded, he acknowledged the widespread loss and grief. “My gratitude to every Bruin who has shown kindness during this time. I’m new to UCLA," he said, but he had learned quickly that “this is a community that sticks together and stays connected … we are One UCLA.”
It wasn’t the opening chapter of Frenk’s tenure that Bruins, the city or even Frenk himself could have imagined when he was appointed chancellor last June. But the crisis hastened the public’s understanding of the type of leader he is — assured yet humble, strong yet adaptable, and embodying a spirit of sincerity, warmth, collaboration and shared purpose.
Many of those traits were apparent even in Frenk’s earliest years.
“Julio was a foundation”
Back in the 1960s, the Frenk household in Mexico City was a buzzing hive of activity. With his six siblings, Julio always found time to entertain the younger ones, his sister Silvia Frenk Elsner recalls. She particularly loved his games, like the “pyramid,” when Julio laid on his back, knees raised in the air, and encouraged his little sisters to take turns climbing atop and balancing on their own.
With her brother grasping her hands firmly and calmly reassuring her, Elsner would eventually, after a few unnerving wobbles, find her footing, let go and stand straight up. It was an ascent of just a few feet, but at the time, it seemed like scaling Everest. “Once I was straight, I felt that I had reached heights and views that normally I didn’t have access to — which now belonged to me. It was thrilling,” says Elsner, now a psychotherapist in the U.K. “I knew there was always the risk of falling, but there was always something encouraging in Julio that gave me confidence. Julio was a foundation, which enabled one to stand on one’s own.”
Those qualities — that sturdiness, the ability to instill confidence in the face of risk, to envision and achieve goals with a steady hand, and to help raise people to new heights — have characterized Frenk’s lifetime of service, from his pioneering work in public health and social policy to his leadership at the highest levels of government and academia. And they explain why he is known as much for his empathetic acuity and ability to build consensus as for his impressive credentials.
“One of the things I admire most about Julio is his remarkable ability to make everyone feel seen and heard,” says his partner, Dr. Felicia Marie Knaul, herself a well-known economist and global health activist. “People may know him as a university president, dean or health minister. But not everyone knows about the deep compassion that drives his work.”
She is an esteemed global health expert and tireless advocate for access to health care for all. Read a revealing Q&A with Julio Frenk’s impressive partner, Dr. Felicia Marie Knaul.
Undoubtedly, after his first weeks on the job, they do now.
The Los Angeles region is still reeling; the recovery will be long and difficult. But with students back on campus, Frenk, having navigated the most perilous moments of the catastrophe, has been focused on listening and learning from Bruins from every university school and unit. His mission: leading our great university to even greater heights.
“Without great universities, there is no democracy”
Frenk is among the most accomplished leaders in higher education today. The chancellor’s bona fides have been well chronicled in the press: his years as president of the University of Miami and as dean of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health; his service as national health secretary in his native Mexico and founding director of Mexico’s National Institute of Public Health (he has the distinction of having brought health insurance to more than 55 million people); his work as an executive director at the World Health Organization and his contributions as a senior fellow at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Along the way, Frenk has also authored 29 books, including a novel for young people explaining the functions of the human body, which he wrote as a medical student and has been reprinted uninterrupted for almost five decades.
Such a stellar resume could have opened any number of opportunities for him — board seats, teaching classes of his choosing, or, at the age of 71, retirement. He chose UCLA. “People have asked me that question: ‘Why on earth would you want to take on another university?’” he says. “The reason is that I firmly believe that universities are among the most important institutions in society. They are essential to building social cohesion, building the fabric of society, promoting the values of democracy. Without great universities, there is no democracy.”
“He seems, to me, ideally suited to a complex and diverse university like UCLA,” says Drew Gilpin Faust, who served as president of Harvard during Frenk’s tenure as dean of the public health school. “He’ll be well served by his unwavering commitment to the possibilities inherent in learning and teaching, and to the importance of evidence and research in addressing what seem all but intractable problems.”
Indeed, as the new leader of one of the world’s premier research universities, Frenk plans to continue doing what he has spent his career doing as an academic, a public servant and an administrator — bringing the power of scholars and institutions to bear on some of the most pressing issues around the globe, from health and disease to environmental degradation, racial justice and humanitarian crises.
But he also recognizes that some of the newest challenges lie closer to home. There is, of course, the immediate necessity of aiding Los Angeles and members of the UCLA community in recovering from the devastating fires and rebuilding. And at this particularly fraught time in higher education and American life, there remain serious issues front and center around free speech and expression, political polarization and an erosion of trust in American institutions.
“We have the opportunity to model for the rest of society how to engage in respectful disagreement,” he says. “This is an essential component of democracy. Democracy is not about uniformity of opinion — quite the opposite. It’s about the existence of pluralism. That includes pluralism of thought. It is looking at the use of reason to, first of all, listen empathetically to the other side. Not to dismiss ahead of time, but listen.”
That may seem like a tall order in a society where social media has made the notion of polite disagreement seem as quaint and faded as an old photograph. But those who know Frenk say he is completely steadfast in his belief in respectful and constructive dialogue across difference — also the name of a UCLA initiative to promote intellectual engagement, curiosity, empathy, active listening and critical thinking across campus.
“He really is a conciliator,” says his brother, Carlos, a renowned physicist and the director of the Institute for Computational Cosmology at Durham University in England. “He can listen carefully to people, unlike me — I talk a lot. Julio listens a lot. Even in controversial and tricky situations, he always manages to find consensus.”
Faust marvels at Frenk’s ability to bring people together around his unique vision. “Throughout my presidency,” she says, “the deans of all of the Harvard schools met monthly, and Julio made outstanding contributions to the group. His ability to capture the essence of a situation and express it in vivid and powerful language became a source of admiration for us all.”
Conveying the message of universities’ value to society, Frenk says, will be an important challenge, especially as higher education increasingly finds itself a target on both sides of the political spectrum. Some allege colleges aren’t doing enough to promote social justice around issues such as climate change and global conflict; others believe institutions are indoctrinating students into “woke” or progressive politics. He disagrees with both characterizations.
“These attacks against ‘indoctrination’ are especially toxic, because the core of what we call liberal education doesn’t mean liberal as a political position. It means liberal as freedom of thought. It means critical thinking that is free from dogmas,” he says. “It’s the root of liberty.”
A university embodying our common aspirations
As one might expect, there is keen interest in Frenk’s vision as chancellor. His immediate plans are centered around disaster recovery, ensuring the health and safety of the campus and continuing to assist those directly impacted by the wildfires. He also wants to continue listening: learning, questioning, learning even more. He took “copious” notes, he says, on his visits to UCLA in the fall. He is now embarking on what he labels “listening exercises,” a series of more than 30 conversations bringing together every school and unit on campus, to deepen his understanding of the hopes and values of all members of the Bruin community, and to synthesize what he hears.
And while he intends to lay out a long-term vision for the university in his inauguration address in the spring — “It’s an important speech, because it is a statement of our common aspirations” — he has already made several of his values and priorities clear.
He is firmly dedicated to the idea of public higher education as society’s primary means of social mobility. While coming from previous roles at two private universities, he stresses that most of his life has been spent helming public institutions and that public service “is very much my spirit.” He is eager to embrace UCLA’s vital mission of providing opportunities for students from lower-income families, underrepresented groups and those who otherwise might not even consider college as an option.
“At its essence, an education at UCLA must always be the rightful vehicle for creating equal opportunities and enabling upward social mobility,” he says. “I’m keenly aware this is center stage, and I’m happy with that. I believe in the importance of a vigorous, effective, efficient, accountable, responsible public sector.”
That notion of equal opportunity also encompasses one of Frenk’s lifelong pursuits: health access for all. Among the things that most attracted him to UCLA, he says, was the university’s mission of fostering health alongside education — through the work of the UCLA Health system, the pursuit of public health research (Frenk will hold a professorship at the school of public health) and programs like the Healthy Campus Initiative. These endeavors, he asserts, are closely intertwined, with public institutions like UCLA playing a key role in providing and promoting access to education and health resources, both on campus and in the broader community. Having proper health care, in the chancellor’s philosophy, is a necessity if education is to succeed.
“I always like to say that education is the future of young people, and health is their present,” he says, noting that addressing and monitoring issues such as campus air quality after the wildfires remains top of mind. “As we build the future through education, we need to be mindful that health needs to be sustained at every step of that process. Education and health, in my ethical framework, are fundamental human rights.”
And education for UCLA students, he believes, should be a lifelong proposition. In the face of emerging challenges such as those posed by rapidly evolving technologies in the workplace, he feels the university should focus on expanding the scope of its continuing education services by creating new ways to meet the changing needs of each generation of graduates throughout the course of their careers.
“We need to move from a closed system where we take the students at admission, allow them to flourish, then graduate them into what we call ‘the real world,’” he says. “Instead, I embrace the idea of an open system. The analogy I use in talking to students is, ‘Don’t think of yourselves as the tenants of this temporary place where you live for four years. Think of UCLA as your educational home for life. At every step of your life, we will be here to try to meet your evolving educational needs.’”
Finally, in tandem with his concept of universities as bastions of pluralism and empathetic engagement, Frenk believes passionately that UCLA has a moral obligation to sustain an environment in which people feel not only heard, but safe in their right to express themselves. He is unequivocal: There is no place on campus, he says, for discrimination, harassment or incitement to violence.
“Things were going to be fine as long as Julio was around”
The term “renaissance man” is overused, but if anyone fits the description, it’s Frenk: A passionate lover of opera, he boasts a collection of more than 400 recordings; fluent in English, Spanish and French, he lists kaleidoscopes, walking in nature, reading literary fiction and Oaxacan cuisine among his passions.
Read more about Julio Frenk, including the 4 operas everyone should see, the books that most shaped his life and his 3 big questions about life in L.A., answered by UCLA experts.
“I was deeply impressed, from the first moment, by his exceptional intelligence, his vast knowledge of arts and humanities, and his interest in politics and social issues. He was the best student in our large cohort,” says Frenk’s old friend Dr. Jaime Sepulveda, former executive director of the University of California, San Francisco’s Institute for Global Health Sciences and professor emeritus of epidemiology and global health. The two met as medical students at the National University of Mexico; Sepulveda and his wife are godparents to one of Frenk’s sons.
Yet even with all his achievements and erudition, Frenk exudes a warmth and mirth that are both infectious and touchingly genuine.
“My first memories of him are of a brother who found the humorous turn in everything,” says his sister Silvia Elsner. “It came so easily to him to find a pun and then turn it around to reveal the funny or absurd side of what one had just said and produce an explosion of laughter.” But his cleverness, she says, was always accompanied by “understanding and warm solidarity. Whatever came up, things were going to be fine as long as Julio was around.”
Frenk grew up in Mexico City with his six siblings — including five sisters, one of them his twin — in what his brother Carlos calls “a very close, although chaotic family” where both the arts and sciences held heavy sway. His father was an accomplished physician who had been the director of the National Institute of Pediatrics and retired at the age of 93. His mother was a classical pianist, as is one of his sisters; another is a cellist. His paternal grandmother retired at the age of 90 as curator of the Museum of Modern Art in Mexico City and still managed to publish two books after she turned 100.
“I have the example in my family of people who simply thought that you need to keep going as long as you have the motivation, the interest, the desire,” Frenk says.
“His parents were incredibly influential in shaping his values and work ethic,” Knaul says. “And though they’re no longer with us, their legacy continues through him.”
Almost everyone who speaks about Frenk mentions his calm demeanor, thoughtfulness and decisiveness, and clarity of purpose as his most defining characteristics — all of which were apparent during his hectic first weeks in office. “He’s not a Buddhist, but he has a Buddhist personality,” says Carlos. “I never once can remember ever seeing him angry. Ever. He can be annoyed, upset, disillusioned. But I’ve never seen him angry or shouting.”
Frenk is asked what brings him joy. Commencements, he says. “I love commencements. It’s just this sense of renewal in the annual cycle, and that’s the beauty of academia — it has a very cyclical nature. We start when the first-year students arrive, encountering them, meeting them, seeing the expectation, and it culminates a few years later when they graduate.”
And it is here, in the midst of this lovely soliloquy, that one can see the true essence of Julio Frenk — all of the hope and belief and optimism he brings to his stewardship of UCLA. His face almost glows. “It is our absolute sacred duty to make sure that they blossom, that they flourish,” he says. “It creates a vicarious feeling of eternal youth, because at each commencement, the students look equally young. It’s a feeling of constant rejuvenation.”
Read more from UCLA Magazine’s Winter 2025 issue.
