Mrs. William McCormick Blair, Jr. (Deeda) is Director Emeritis of the Albert and Mary Lasker Foundation and serves on the Board of the Scripps Research Institute.

Mrs. Blair is a member of the Harvard AIDS Institute Policy Board and Co-Chairman of the Harvard AIDS Institute International Advisory Council. Mrs. Blair serves as an Advisor to the Department of Immunology and Infectious Disease. Mrs. Blair is a member of the Advisory Board to the Department of Infectious and Molecular Genetics at Harvard Medical School.

Having lived in Asia and Europe as the wife of Ambassador William McC. Blair, Jr., Mrs. Blair also became deeply interested in a global approach to prevention of infectious diseases and the development of vaccines.

Mrs. Blair has had a long time interest in cancer research and served for more than twelve years on the Board of the American Cancer Society on the Research Committee and in the 1970's served on the Breast Cancer Task Force of the National Cancer Institute