Before joining CTU as the Program Director for Healthcare Management, Dr. Elder was the Chair of the Health Sciences Program at South University and the Director of Online Instruction for nursing and health sciences. In this role, she led faculty, developed curricula and assessments, and launched the online Master of Public Health and Adult Health Nurse Practitioner programs. Her work in the healthcare field includes clinical research and project management at the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute, where she was the Executive Director of the Immunologic Monitoring and Cellular Products Laboratory, facilitating translation of novel cancer therapies from basic research to bedside. In 2001, Dr. Elder became co-founder and Vice President of ImmunoSite, Inc., a central reference laboratory providing custom designed strategies for pharma-sponsored clinical trials. In 2005, she joined RedPath Integrated Pathology, Inc., a national molecular diagnostic reference laboratory, as Vice President of Clinical Operations.
Dr. Elder holds a doctorate in Infectious Disease and Microbiology from the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health. For more than 20 years, she was an adjunct faculty member at colleges and universities in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She has published over 40 peer reviewed scientific papers and seven chapters, has presented at national and international meetings and been an investigator on 70 NIH-funded grants. She holds a certificate from the Mini-MBA program for BioScientists from the Katz Graduate School of Business and has served as a consultant to biotech through her own company, EM Elder Enterprises, Inc.