Dean for the College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences, Belmont University

Dr. Pinto serves as Dean for the College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences at Belmont University, in Nashville, Tennessee. She has dedicated her professional career to helping communities thrive by leveragingthe strengths of interdisciplinary health care teams to advance practice. She is an innovative and outcomes-driven transformational leader with extensive experience in building successful and sustainable community-based programs.

At Belmont University, Dr. Pinto leads an interdisciplinary team of 130 faculty and staff and approximately1000 students, working together to advance health and human potential, across seven professions. Theseprofessions include physical therapy, occupational therapy, exercise science, mental health counseling, social work, public health, and pharmacy. Prior to Belmont, she served in various roles at South Dakota State University’s College of Pharmacy and Allied Health Professions, including as Founding Center Director of the Community Practice Innovation Center, Founding Department Head of the Department of Allied and Population Health, and the Hoch Endowed Professor for Community Pharmacy Practice. She has also previously served in academic and administrative roles at the University of Toledo and the University of Florida. Most notably as Director for the Pharmaceutical Care and Outcomes Research (PCOR) Centerwhich she established in 2006, and the founding fellowship director for a Community-based Health Outcomes Fellow, initiated in 2016.

Born in a small town in India, Dr. Pinto earned her bachelor’s degree in pharmacy from the University of Bombay in India as well as a post graduate degree in marketing management. She began working as a pharmacist in Bombay but realized her passion for serving the underserved by merging community practice with clinical training. She went on to attend the University of Toledo for her master’s in pharmacy health careadministration and the University of Florida for her Ph.D. in Pharmacy Health Care Administration.

Dr. Pinto’s career and experience spans multiple sectors of health care beginning with her tenure in PhRMA.In her role as the Medical Liaison and Territory manager for Eli Lilly, she worked with her sales/marketing teams and the medical community to identify needs for patients with diabetes. She offered multiplesymposiums in collaboration with physicians from across the globe to expand knowledge and provide customized diet and lifestyle modification programs for patients from diverse backgrounds in India. She continued serving underserved patients through a HRSA funded Demonstration Project to measure the impact of team-based care on patient outcomes, across Federally Qualified Community Health Centers in Florida.

Since then, she has worked at various practice sites in Florida and Ohio, including but not limited to, Eckerdand Rite Aid Pharmacies, Federally Qualified Community Health Centers, The VA, Shands Hospital etc.

Across her various roles, Dr. Pinto has been instrumental in bringing together teams of clinicians and researchers working together to solve the world’s complex problems through innovative e and transformativecommunity-based solutions. She is passionate about the role of pharmacists and the impact community pharmacists can have through practice transformation. She firmly believes in team-based approaches to care where each member of the health care team works toward the common goal of providing value-based care to their patients. Her pioneering contributions to team-based care across the community have demonstrated improved patient outcomes through quality of care and medication optimization. For two decades, she has developed community-based programs and services customized to meet the needs of patients, practitioners, and payors. From 2018-2023, she expanded her work in rural health, as Principal Investigator for CDC-1815: Improving Care for South Dakotans with Diabetes, Cardiovascular Disease, and Stroke. Through this multi-year multimillion-dollar project, in collaboration with the SD Department of Health, Dr. Pinto and her team partnered with Integrated Delivery Networks (IDNs), independent and chain pharmacies, health home clinics, FQHCs, Urban Indian Tribal partners and a state-wide EHR network to launch various innovative programs and services, geared towards diverse populations in the state.

A decorated academician, Dr. Pinto’s transformative work seeking solutions to community- based problems earned her the honor of the Harvard Scholar for Leading Innovations in Healthcare and Education in 2019. She was inducted as a Fellow in the APhA Academy of Pharmaceutical Research and Science in 2020 andearned the Community Pharmacy Innovation in Quality (CPIQ) Award, bestowed by The Pharmacy QualityAlliance (PQA) and the Community Pharmacy Foundation (CPF) in 2021. In November 2022, she received the Patriot Award from the Employer Support of the Guard and Reserve, under the Department of Defense,recognizing her efforts to support citizen soldiers.