Dr. Harper was appointed Chief Operating Officer and Medical Director of the Ralph Lauren Center for Cancer Care and Prevention June 2007.

Dr. Harper attended Brown University for his undergraduate education where he received a B.A. in Biology and a B.A. in Afro-American Studies. He went on to receive his medical degree from the State University of New York, Health Science Center at Syracuse, and a Masters Degree in Public Health from Columbia University. His postgraduate experience started at Harlem Hospital Center, in New York City, where he completed an internship in Internal Medicine. He continued his training at the State University of New York, Health Science Center at Stony Brook, where he completed a combined residency in General Preventive Medicine and Public Health. Dr. Harper is Board Certified in Preventive Medicine and Public Health.

Dr. Harper has worked as a physician at the Rikers Island Medical Unit, served as the first Director of the Bureau of HIV Services at the Nassau County Department of Health, and as the Senior Vice President of Community Affairs at the Nassau University Medical Center. In this role, Dr. Harper served as the medical director for a network of seven community health centers where he remodeled medical services to conform to hospital standards and successfully passed two JCAHO (Joint Commission on the Accreditation of Health Care Organizations) surveys. Dr. Harper then served as the first African American Commissioner of Health for Suffolk County, New York. During his tenure, he successfully managed a Department of 1500 employees with a budget of approximately $450 million. Dr. Harper also created new innovative programs including an Office of Minority Health to address health inequities, an HIV Commission to focus on methods of curtailing the HIV epidemic, and a Public Health Institute to investigate long-standing public health problems in collaboration with the State University of New York Health Science Center at Stony Brook.