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Dr. Stuart Finder, with an undergraduate degree in environmental science from Allegheny College in Meadville, PA (BS, 1983), studied philosophy at the University of Colorado in Boulder (MA, 1985) and the University of Wisconsin in Madison (MA, 1988) before writing his dissertation on medical discourse and ethical perspective at the University of Utah (PhD, 1991).

Dr. Finder then spent 16 years at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, TN, holding academic appointments in both the department of medicine (School of Medicine) and the department of philosophy (College of Arts & Sciences) as well as a clinical appointment in Vanderbilt University Medical Center's Center for Clinical and Research Ethics; he served as director of the Center 2000-2005. During his tenure at VUMC, Finder also was the lead clinical ethics consultant for Vanderbilt University Hospital as well as a member of many core institutional committees, including the ethics committee (for which he became co-chair in 2001), several IRB committees, the conflict of interest committee, and the Medical Center Medical Board. In addition to the School of Medicine and College of Arts & Sciences, he also regularly taught in the School of Divinity, the Graduate School, and the School of Law.

In July 2007, Dr. Finder joined the faculty of Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles to become the director of the Center for Healthcare Ethics. At CSMC, Dr. Finder is one of the clinical ethics consultants and is a member and co-chair of the CSMC's Bioethics Committee. He also is a member of the Stem Cell Research Oversight Committee/IRB and the ethics representative to CSMC's Chief of Staff Advisory Council. In addition to holding academic appointments at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center (associate professor of surgery and associate professor of biomedical sciences[secondary]), Finder also is an adjunct associate professor of medicine at the Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and teaches an undergraduate course in clinical ethics at the American Jewish University in Los Angeles.

As a clinician, a teacher, and a researcher, Dr. Finder is interested in exploring the complexity and implications of moral experiences as actualized in health care contexts. This includes the entire spectrum of the health care arena, from patient care to clinical and basic sciences research. Dr. Finder has presented extensively at professional meetings locally, regionally and nationally in both the United States and Canada, and has also authored and co-authored a variety of articles, book chapters, and reviews. His works have appeared in such journals as American Journal of Bioethics, Annals of Internal Medicine, Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics, Human Studies, Journal of the American Medical Association, The New England Journal of Medicine, and Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics.