Samantha Baxter, M.S.

Samantha Baxter is the associate director, genetic and genomic data sharing, and a genetic counselor in the Program in Medical and Population Genetics Translational Genomics Group at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. Under the direction of Heidi Rehm, she is the operations manager and council member for gnomAD, she co-chairs the policy working group for the GREGoR Consortium, and she leads the TGG’s variant curation team. As part of Baxter’s ongoing research, in partnership with Chan Zuckerberg’s Rare As One network, she uses various curation and gnomAD allele frequencies to estimate the prevalence of rare disease in the global population. Baxter’s work has a strong focus on data modeling and scalable processes for clinical and genomic data sharing, across multiple efforts, including the Broad Institute’s Center for Mendelian Genomics, gnomAD, BRCA Exchange, and the Clinical Genome Resource.

Baxter began her tenure at the Broad Institute in 2016 as a clinical project manager and genetic counselor. In 2018, she became a senior clinical genomics specialist and founded the Genetic Counselor Affinity Group. She also took an appointment as an adjunct associate professor at the MGH Institute of Health Professions in 2019. In 2020 she started her current position. She is an active member of the National Society of Genetic Counselors and has served on the board of directors.

Prior to joining the Broad Institute, Baxter was director of VariantWire, a real-time genomic data-sharing network based on the GeneInsight platform that grew out of her previous work as an application specialist for the Partners Healthcare Business Development Team. Other work experiences include positions as a genetic counselor for GeneDx and the Partners Center for Personalized Genetic Medicine. In 2012 she was awarded the National Society of Genetic Counselors New Leader Award.

Baxter obtained her M.S. in genetic counseling from the Boston University School of Medicine and holds a B.S. in behavioral neuroscience from Lehigh University. She is certified as a genetic counselor through the American Board of Genetic Counseling and is a licensed genetic counselor in the state of Massachusetts.

Contact Samantha Baxter via email at samantha@broadinstitute.org.