Dr. Leary is a senior vice president at the Urban Institute, lecturer in public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, associate professor of psychology at the Harvard Medical School, and an associate professor of health policy and management at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of public health. She currently sits on the Board of Trustees at the Boston Psychoanalytic Institute and at the Austen Riggs Center.

Dr. Leary is a psychoanalyst who trained at the Michigan Psychanalytic Institute, and she is a former chair of American Psychoanalytic Association’s (APsaA) Program Committee. As a Robert Wood Johnson Health Policy Fellow, she served as an adviser to President Obama's White House Council on Women and Girls, helping to develop the Advancing Equity initiative, focused on improving life outcomes for women and girls of color.