Derek Griffing received his Master of Public Health degree from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and his Doctor of Pharmacy degree from the Chicago College of Pharmacy at Midwestern University. He was a pharmacist at Johns Hopkins Hospital prior to beginning the fellow program.

As the 2012-13 ACCP/ASHP/VCU Congressional Healthcare Policy Fellow, Griffing spent one month with the government affairs division at both ACCP and ASHP, and in November, he attained a position as a health policy fellow on Capitol Hill in the office of Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (Rhode Island).

Griffing was responsible for staffing Senator Whitehouse at Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee hearings and meetings. In this capacity, he led his office on compounding pharmacy legislation that was developed in response to the 2012 fungal meningitis outbreak. He managed stakeholder concerns, helped develop policies to protect public health and participated in bipartisan negotiations. Griffing also wrote speeches for Senator Whitehouse and was responsible for keeping the senator up to speed on numerous health care delivery system reforms in the Affordable Care Act.

Since completing the fellow program, he accepted a position as a research associate in the Center for Health Policy at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. In this role, he managed multiple projects related to improving regulatory science, evidence development and innovation in medical products in the United States. Since then, Griffing has served as a policy analyst in the Office of Generic Drug Policy at the United States Food and Drug Administration. In this position, he conducted research on a broad range of legal and regulatory issues and is supporting the FDA in the its efforts to renegotiate the Generic Drug User Fee Amendments of 2012. He has also served as an adjunct professor at Georgetown University.