Nan McKenzie Laird (born September 18, 1943) is the Harvey V. Fineberg Professor of Public Health, Emerita in Biostatistics at the Harvard T.H.

Laird began her undergraduate studies at Rice University in 1961, first majoring in mathematics, before switching to French.

Later, she resumed studies at University of Georgia in computer science before eventually switching to statistics and earned her BA in 1969.

[3] Laird worked between 1969 and 1971 as a computer programmer on the Apollo program at MIT's Draper Laboratory before starting her graduate studies at Harvard University in statistics in 1971.

She received her PhD from Harvard in 1975 under Arthur Dempster and was hired as a faculty member directly after graduation.