Vikram Patel is the Paul Farmer Professor and Chair of the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School.  He is a co-founder of the Indian NGO Sangath, recipient of the WHO Public Health Champion of India award, and served on India’s first National Mental Health Policy committee and the WHO High-Level Commission on NCDs.

Tarun Khanna is the Jorge Paulo Lemann Professor, Harvard Business School and Director of the Lakshmi Mittal & Family South Asia Institute, Harvard University. He studies entrepreneurship as a means to social and economic development across the emerging markets, is a co-founder and board member of several technology companies and non-profits across the developing world, and an occasional member of commissions of the Government of India related to education, scientific advance and entrepreneurship.

Dr. Prashanth N Srinivas is a medical doctor and health policy and systems researcher with broad interests in social equity and planetary health. He is with the Institute of Public Health Bengaluru (IPH Bengaluru) since 2009 and is currently the Director. He initiated a long-term Adivasi health program in southern Karnataka in collaboration with NGOs and CBOs. He leads multiple center grants from DBT/Wellcome Trust India Alliance, ICMR & NIHR (UK) and serves as the Vice-Chair of the General Council of ITM Antwerp.

Dr. Pankaj Bhardwaj is Director of ICMR-National Institute for Implementation Research on Non-Communicable Diseases (NIIRNCD), Jodhpur. Previously, he was Professor of Community and Family Medicine, Head, School of Public Health at AIIMS Jodhpur, leading the MPH Program and Executive Program on Public Health Policy, Leadership, and Management. His expertise spans implementation research, geriatrics, NCDs, and tobacco control. A FAMS and FAIMER Fellow, he serves as Editor-in-Chief of the Indian Journal of Community Medicine, with roles in MoHFW, ICMR, WHO committees, and collaborations at LMU Munich, Karolinska Institute, ECDC Stockholm, Public Health Agency of Sweden, and Johns Hopkins University.

Poonam Muttreja is the Executive Director of the Population Foundation of India and for the last 40 years has been a strong advocate of women’s health, reproductive & sexual rights and rural livelihoods. She has co-conceived the popular transmedia initiative, Main Kuch Bhi Kar Sakti Hoon – I, A Woman, Can Achieve Anything. Before joining PFI, she served as the India Country Director of the John D and Catherine T MacArthur Foundation for 15 years and has also co-founded and led the Ashoka Foundation, Dastkar, and the Society for Rural, Urban and Tribal Initiative (SRUTI). An alumna of Delhi University and Harvard University’s John F Kennedy School of Government, Poonam serves on the governing council of several non-governmental organisations, and is a regular commentator in India and globally for television and the print media.

Anuska Kalita is a Visiting Scientist and India Health System Specialist at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. She has worked in the health sector for more than 16 years, in India and other countries in South Asia, in a variety of roles ranging from research and implementation to grant-making and policy. Before joining Harvard, she worked with the Gates Foundation and The World Bank and has been closely involved in designing some landmark health policies, most notably India’s nationwide ASHA Program and the primary care program under the National Health Policy (2017). At Harvard, Anuska has been at the forefront of a first-of-its-kind comprehensive health system assessment in India. Her research focuses on quality of care, citizens’ perceptions and satisfaction, and political economy in mixed health systems with public and private sector interactions. Anuska has trained at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences and Harvard University, where she is pursuing her doctoral degree.

Kheya is the Bajaj Visiting Research Fellow at the Mittal South Asia Institute at Harvard University, Spring ‘23. She is Associate Professor of Healthcare Management at the Goa Institute of Management, India, and works in the areas of Health Systems Financing and Public Health. Her recent research focuses on policy and implementation around India’s publicly financed insurance programmes in collaboration with the World Health Organization. Prior to her academic position at GIM, she worked at the NITI Aayog, the policy think-tank of the Government of India, where she implemented key projects including the NITI Health Index for ranking States on their performance and drafting the Health Chapter of the Three- Year Action Agenda for Government of India 2017-18 to 2019-20, among several others. Her doctoral research on engaging private providers in disease surveillance was carried out under the INSPIRE Fellowship Award of the Department of Science and Technology, Government of India.

Pamela Das joined The Lancet family of journals in 2001. She is currently a Senior Executive Editor at The Lancet, where she co-lead’s the journal’s global health work with the Editor-in-Chief, Richard Horton. This work has led to a new role for the journal—to use organised science as a strong platform for social and political action. Her areas of interest are infectious diseases and tropical medicine, global health, public health, and international health policy. Her roles include peer review, and regularly writing editorials and for other sections of the journal, as well as overseeing The Lancet’s Comment and News sections. Pam is co-Chair of The Lancet’s racial equality group, GRacE and an advisory board member of the Global Health Film Festival. She is a PhD Science graduate in Biochemistry, and prior to working at The Lancet spent a few years as a medical writer and a journalist.

Professor Vijay Chandru (PhD MIT) has served on the faculty of engineering at Purdue University and now with interdisciplinary research in digital health at the Indian Institute of Science. An elected fellow of both the Indian academy of sciences and engineering, he is a distinguished alumnus of BITS Pilani and the MIT India program. An inventor of the Simputer, he is a founder of Strand Life Sciences, India’s leading precision medicine solutions company which he led as Executive Chairman from inception in 2000 till retirement in 2018. A technology pioneer of the World Economic Forum since 2006, he served with the IAC of WEF on the future of healthcare from 2014-16. In his work at the Centre for Health Equity and Transparency and OPFORD Foundation, Professor Chandru has been committed to orphan diseases outreach with scalable platforms towards the vision of “no disease orphan by 2030.

Bindu is Chair, Co-Founder, and Managing Trustee of Dvara Holdings, and Founder of Dvara Health Finance. She previously served as Board Chair of Northern Arc Capital (2009–2018) and held leadership roles at ICICI Bank’s microfinance and rural banking groups. She holds degrees in Economics from Madras University, IRMA, and Harvard Kennedy School. Bindu has published extensively, served on RBI and Government of India committees, is an Independent Director on multiple boards, and received the ET Prime Women’s Leadership Award (2020).

Ajay Tandon is Lead Economist in the World Bank’s Health, Nutrition and Population Global Practice, working in the South Asia Region. He previously worked with the research department of the Asian Development Bank in Manila, Philippines. Earlier, he was an economist at the World Health Organization in Geneva working on issues related to measuring health system performance. He has also held visiting research appointments at Oxford University and Harvard University. He received his bachelor’s degree from St. Stephen’s College (India) and a PhD in economics from Virginia Tech (USA).

Soumya Swaminathan is a pediatrician and global health leader with over four decades of experience in clinical care and research. She served as Chief Scientist at the WHO and as DG of the ICMR, Govt. of India. Currently, Chairperson of the M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation and Principal Advisor to India’s National Tuberculosis Elimination Programme. A Fellow of leading global academies, she has authored more than 480 publications. Her current work focuses on climate change, nutrition, and the health of women and children.

Viren Shetty is the Vice Chairman of Narayana Health, a globally recognized healthcare group dedicated towards making healthcare accessible to all. In his prior role, Viren was responsible for Hospital Operations, Investor Relations, Business Planning, Technology Transformation, and Business Expansion. He is currently leading a program to transform NH into a fully Integrated Healthcare Organization encompassing Hospitals, Health Insurance, Clinics, Daycare centres, and Digital health – both in India and overseas.

Kush M Parmar, M.D., Ph.D., is a Managing Partner at 5AM Ventures and serves on the boards of Ensoma, Entrada (NASDAQ: TRDA), GlycoEra, Precede Bioscience, and Prolynx, with prior board roles across multiple biotech companies. He is on advisory boards of Harvard Medical School, Penn Medicine, Princeton University, and the Grace Science Foundation, and is a Kauffman Fellow. Dr. Parmar trained at Princeton University and Harvard Medical School and is based in Boston.

Sanjay Nagral, MS, FACS, is a Mumbai-based surgeon specialising in hepatopancreatobiliary surgery and Director of Surgical Gastroenterology at Jaslok Hospital & Research Centre. He trained at GS Medical College and KEM Hospital and completed fellowships at King’s College Hospital and the Royal Free Hospital, London. He has over 120 publications, edited surgical textbooks, and serves on ethics and editorial boards, including BMJ. He is publisher of the Indian Journal of Medical Ethics and a noted public health writer.

Sunita Nadhamuni is a Board Member & Advisor at Medtronic LABS and has built health technology systems in India, enrolling over 450 million people across 31 states. Formerly Global Head of Social Innovation at Dell, she led the implementation of the Government of India’s NCD Portal with Tata Trusts. With a decade of Silicon Valley experience, her expertise spans digital public infrastructure, primary healthcare, and government systems. She is Chairperson of Arghyam, a foundation supporting India’s Jal Jeevan Mission for domestic water security.

Nachiket Mor has a PhD in Economics from the University of Pennsylvania. His work is focused on the design of national and regional health systems. He is a Visiting Scientist at The Banyan Academy of Leadership in Mental Health, and a Visiting Professor at the Indian School of Business.

Karthik Muralidharan is the Tata Chancellor’s Professor of Economics at UC San Diego. His research focuses on public finance and development economics, particularly improving education, health, welfare, and public service delivery, and has been published in leading journals including AER, QJE, JPE, and Econometrica. He actively advises governments in India and engages in public scholarship. He is also co-founder and Scientific Director of the Centre for Effective Governance of Indian States.

Dr. Santhosh Mathew leads on State Execution Capacity and Health Systems Design in India for the Gates Foundation. From 1985 to 2017, he had a career as a civil servant in the Indian Administrative Service. During this time, among other assignments, he served as Additional Chief Secretary for the Government of Bihar, Chair of the National Council for Teacher Education and Joint Secretary in the Ministry of Rural Development, Government of India. From 1994 to 2000, he was Professor of Social Management at India’s Civil Service college in Mussoorie and from 2000 to 2003, Country Director of the Leadership for Environment and Development program in India.

Santhosh holds a PhD in Development Studies from IDS, Sussex, an MSc in Social Research Methods from the University of Sussex, an MA in Economics from the Delhi School of Economics and a BA in Economics from Loyola College, Chennai.

Alok Bansal is Co-founder & Executive Vice Chairman, PB Fintech Limited that owns India’s leading Insurtech brand Policybazaar. The group has recently incubated a healthcare venture to bring payer and healthcare service provider together to enable superior product offering and service to health insurance customers. Prior to PolicyBazaar.com, Alok has worked in various cross-functional roles with Mahindra & Mahindra and GE. He holds an MBA from IIM Calcutta and has a special interest in science & technology and economic empowerment.

As Tata 1mg’s Co-founder, Gaurav drives its consumer businesses and shapes its cutting-edge product and technology strategy. With a background in Computer Science from IIT Delhi and over a decade of experience in the Silicon Valley, he’s pioneering leveraging AI and ML for healthcare. Under his leadership, Tata 1mg is recognized globally for innovation in healthcare tech, reshaping the industry landscape.