Richard is the full-time CEO of HBGI.
Mental health has run as a theme through much of his work of the last 23 years, striving to enable socially excluded people to secure and sustain independence and healthy lives. He uses contracting and performance management to connect spending better with delivery, in order to give the service users a better, more individual and locally relevant, outcomes-focused response.
At HBGI he is bringing together an exciting, performance-focused, global team to challenge the tired delivery (and wasted funding) of so many national and international systems and institutions, to deliver more meaningful outcomes for more vulnerable people limited by poor mental health (and social exclusion).
Richard spent two years as a Senior Advisor for the Global Fund (HIV, TB and malaria). He mobilized a number of projects, including: incentivizing informal medicine vendors to extend malaria testing and treatment in rural areas of Nigeria; introducing incentives to increase TB reporting by private pharmacies in the Philippines, and; linking the payments of community health workers to their performance to increase HIV treatment adherence in Niger.
He worked for nearly ten years as a Senior Consultant for the World Bank. Until the resurgence of the Taliban, he was supporting the Ministry of Public Health in Afghanistan with the management of contracted health services in which service provider payments were tied to the delivery of key health interventions. Other projects, across a number of countries, have included: linking refugees with jobs in Ethiopia, and; designing and mobilising outcomes-based job intermediation for long-term unemployed people in Saudi Arabia.
He continues to oversee and advise on the delivery of social impact programs. He is Chair of a youth employment Development Impact Bond in Palestine and a similar Social Impact Bond in South Africa. He has previously chaired nine Social Impact Bonds in the UK, which targeted homelessness, care for carers and refugees.
Previously, Richard set up and ran a series of high-performing private employment service providers in the UK under contract with the government there – paid on the basis of outcomes. His last contract was worth £750 million over seven years, assisting long-term unemployed people, many of whom had poor mental health, to find employment.
Previously Richard had established one of the first Employment Zones – the first large scale outcome-based contracts in the UK – in an area of chronically high deprivation. He worked as an advisor to service providers in Australia, assisting people with disabilities to secure jobs. He was a Specialist Advisor to the UK government’s Work and Pensions Select Committee.
Richard had an early career in international education (in Sudan, Northern Cyprus, Greece and the UK). He studied Philosophy and Psychology at Oxford University and Applied Linguistics at Exeter University.
Dr. Jonathan Sherin is a longtime health and wellbeing activist who has worked “Heart Forward” and spoken truth to power on behalf of vulnerable populations throughout his career at local, state and national levels. He has worked as a clinician, teacher, researcher and administrative leader to help others connect to a brighter future and stays busy as a father, writer, cook and surfer to stay connected himself.
Prior to joining the HBGI team as Chief Medical Advisor, Dr. Sherin served as Director of the Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health, the largest public mental health system in the United States. In this post, he pushed for wholesale systems transformation by insisting on a bottom up culture wherein “grass-roots guide grass-tops”, advocating fiercely for behavioral health parity as well as outcomes-oriented payment reform, and focusing relentlessly on building out community-based (as opposed to institutional) programs, policies and practices.
Before his LA County tenure, Dr. Sherin served as Chief Medical Officer and Executive Vice President for Volunteers of America (national), a community-based safety net provider steeped in tradition that reaches and impacts disenfranchised populations in almost every state across the country. In addition, he spent over a decade working in the Department of Veteran Affairs (VA), serving in his last post as Chief of Mental Health for the Miami VA and Vice-Chairman for the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the University of Miami.
Dr. Sherin has functioned in many other capacities throughout his career and takes special pride in his work helping to design a reintegration community for homeless veterans at the Greater Los Angeles VA medical campus. This work, prompted by an ACLU lawsuit successfully levied against the federal government, resulted in a master plan for the campus, currently under construction.
In addition to his body of work in the health and human services sector, Dr. Sherin is an accomplished scientist who is published in the fields of neurobiology and psychiatry. He has received international acclaim for his research identifying a core sleep-circuit in mammals (the “sleep switch”, featured in Science magazine) and received a prestigious Kempf Award from the American Psychiatric Association for his conceptual model of the psychotic process.
Dr. Sherin completed his undergraduate study at Brown University, his graduate work at the University of Chicago and Harvard, and his psychiatry residency training at UCLA. He currently serves as volunteer clinical professor at both UCLA and USC.
Andrew started on the front-line of public service as a firefighter/paramedic in the greater Detroit area. Seeking greater impact, responsibility, and leadership opportunities, Andrew took a position in operations with MSF/Doctors Without Borders. Quickly rising to the role of Field Project Manager, he led emergency and non-emergency interventions throughout Africa, Southeast Asia, and the Caribbean.
In that role, Andrew learned the biggest gaps in the public, humanitarian, and development sectors were in resource, operations, and strategic management. Thus, he decided to pursue an MBA at University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business. He capped that experience working for a boutique management consulting firm specializing in implementation with the client, always being paid for results. In one year, he established himself well enough to become an independent consultant.
Since 2021, Andrew’s primary client has been the Global Fund to Fight Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria, where he advises the design and implementation of a change management strategy shifting to performance-based contracting.
Anna began her career as an Economist in the UK Civil Service, having always been motivated by policymaking and improving outcomes. She first worked at the Ministry of Justice and then at the Department for Business. She had early interest in performance management, focusing her MSc thesis on incentives in the contract design of new prisons. However, seeking a faster pace and wanting to develop her leadership skills, after several years in the Civil Service, Anna moved into consumer goods. Here she undertook an assortment of roles across finance, sales & strategy, honing her commercial & enterprise strategy skills. She carved out her leadership footprint, known for her agility, collaborative nature, and ability to drive her team and projects forward. Passionate about mental health and wanting to bring her skills to a truly impactful organisation, Anna is delighted to bring her passion and energy to HBGI as Chief of Staff.
Anna is a graduate of UCL (MSc Economics) and the University of Oxford (MA Economics & Management).
Outside of work Anna loves almost anything active, reading and spending time with her friends and family, including two small children.
Sally Carruthers has spent over 25 years working in the charitable sector to optimise performance, philanthropy and create organisations which offer donors and team members the best experience, whilst maximising impact, professionalism and outcomes for all.
Sally began her life in newspaper and magazine publishing, working globally in international syndication. Her first role in the charitable sector was as the development manager at the Centre for Socio-Legal Studies, Wolfson College, University of Oxford. After this she has filled senior roles in house – at the Story Museum Oxford, as the Campaign Director for OnSide Youth Zones, raising £40 million in 2 years for children and young people nationwide in areas of multiple deprivation,championing inclusion and social justice, to her latest role as Director of the Poetry School, an Arts Council National Portfolio Organisation and the world’s largest provider of poetry tuition, both online and in person. Whilst there she created the Laurel Prize for Ecopoetry with Poet Laureate Simon Armitage, to which he gives his Laureate’s Stipend and the Ginkgo Prize for ecopoetry – both global they are the largest prizes of this nature in the world.
Sally has acted as a development consultant for a variety of charities over the years including The Royal Armouries, Roald Dahl Museum and the Poetry Archive, to name but a few. Her experience of working with ultra high net worth individuals, trusts and foundations, corporate partnerships with organisations such as Client Earth, Global Witness, L’Ecologiste, Cartier, Jo Malone, Selfridges and Fortnum and Mason have all given her a unique insight into providing donors and charities what they need to achieve their goals. She acts as a mentor and has considerable experience building exceptional, happy teams and nurturing talent.
Sally speaks fluent French, is finishing her first novel, enjoys sailing, skiing, woodland preservation and holds an MA in English Language and Literature from the University of Oxford. She is thrilled to be supporting the critical work of HBGI which holds great personal as well as professional meaning for her.
Joining from CIFF, as director for sexual and reproductive health investments within the Girl Capital Africa portfolio, Julia brings over 15 years international development experience and a phenomenal track record in program fundraising, delivery, and performance. She also led on the development, negotiation and management of two development impact bonds, including the world’s first bond for adolescent reproductive health.
After many years of delivering high impact work to improve the reproductive health of adolescents, her own experience of life-threatening post-partum depression following the birth of her daughter has inspired her to work at the nexus of reproductive health and mental health.
Julia lives in Nairobi with her husband, two daughters and an exceptionally elderly dog. She loves motorcycling, dungeons and dragons, crochet and making quilts.
Stacey Ann Pillay has recently been appointed as the Contract & Performance Manager at the Healthy Brains Global Initiative. Stacey will be responsible for ensuring the high performance of contracted service providers, initially on a project to integrate mental health care into maternal care and childhood immunizations in South Africa and beyond.
Stacey has 14 years of experience in the social impact sphere and is committed to improving access to healthcare and education. Stacey has recently been a partner at an organisation that aimed to help small businesses scale through culture change programmes. Stacey’s experience in start-ups extends to her role as Chief Operating Officer at a medical technology organisation that connected health workers and enabled them to send and receive referrals.
In the preceding three years, Stacey was the Academic Executive at a leading private higher education provider in South Africa, where she led seven academic programmes as well as conferencing and learnerships. Stacey continues to teach and assess part-time on post graduate leadership courses. Stacey was previously the CEO of an organisation that placed health workers where they were needed in Africa and capacitated them and their colleagues to serve patients and the health system. Stacey advanced in her career at the organisation from administrative assistant over a 10-year period. Stacey has supported hundreds of doctors in their transition to serving in underserved areas in Africa and made education accessible to over 100,000 thousand people across the continent.
In 2015, Stacey was one of 25 participants from six African countries selected by the University of Cape Town’s Graduate School of Development Policy and Practice for the ‘Leading in Public Life’ Programme. Stacey was also selected as a fellow by the Vedica Scholars Programme for the Global Programme for Women’s Leadership in 2019. In her various roles Stacey managed relationships with a range of key stakeholders including existing and potential donors, government and healthcare regulators. Stacey has led diverse projects and continues to mobilise stakeholders around a social mission.
Erin has over 15 years of experience addressing complex mental health challenges through frontline service delivery, clinical supervision, program design and development, and clinic operations management. A Licensed Clinical Social Worker, she recently earned her Doctor of Public Health (DrPH) at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, with a concentration in Population Mental Health. Erin has worked with health systems across the United States and internationally. She began her career in Chicago, Seattle, and El Paso, where she contributed to various crisis mental health systems, focusing on high-acuity, complex mental health needs for both adults and children.
Before pursuing her doctoral studies, Erin served as a Clinical Supervisor overseeing multiple behavioral health programs at a Federally Qualified Health Center (FQHC) in southern New Mexico and as the Director of Prevention and Outreach at the Children’s Advocacy Center in Washington, DC. Her recent work focuses on applying a systems leadership approach to drive sustainable change and improve population health outcomes.
Erin holds a BA in Psychology and a BA in Political Science from The University of Chicago and completed dual MPH/MSW degrees at Saint Louis University.
Deanne spent her last three years at McKinsey & Company, from which she joined HBGI as Strategy and Special Projects Manager on a fellowship. During her time at McKinsey, Deanne served clients across the public, social, and private sectors with a focus on behavioral health, education, real estate and hospitality, and closing the digital divide. Her work has ranged from supporting a non-profit in preparing for the launch of the new US 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline, to helping K-12 school districts improve their project and change management capabilities.
Deanne also brings experience working for Rightway Healthcare, a US-based healthcare navigation platform, STAAH, a hospitality channel management and booking software, and conducting research on US gun laws.
Deanne graduated from Cornell University. She lives in NYC, where she volunteers in a youth arts and integrative medicine program at Montefiore in the Bronx. In her free time, she enjoys making music, hiking, and trying new foods with friends and family.
Cindy brings over 16 years of nonprofit leadership experience with a can-do spirit to the Healthy Brains Global Initiative (HBGI). As former Operations & Finance Director for leading brain health nonprofit, One Mind, Cindy supported the initial launch and fiscal sponsorship of HBGI as well as the 501c3 establishment of the US organization and continues to manage the bookkeeping and financial compliance as Head of Accounts.
Cindy’s nonprofit work has ranged from most recently with a live music wish-granting organization, Do It For The Love, to the NC Winegrowers Association at the start. Highlights of her 14-years with One Mind include: production of the Music Festival for Brain Health at Staglin Family Vineyard, one of the most successful brain health fundraising and convening events featuring entertainment such as One Republic, Jennifer Hudson, and Tim McGraw; granting of 40 Rising Star Research Awards; fiscal sponsorship of eight other non-profit programs at their launch; and financial accounts management of five divisions. She was awarded the One Mind 2022 Mobius Award for Courageous Leadership for the Mental Health Cause.
Cindy graduated from DePauw University in her home state of Indiana and has completed coursework in nonprofit finance at San Francisco State and the Kellogg Center for Nonprofit Management. She lives in Santa Rosa, California with her husband, Matt, and spends free time supporting Matt’s private chef catering and going to concerts, hiking, skiing, or traveling to visit family and friends.
Aneta Wierzynska is an attorney and risk management expert who specializes in design of results based contracting modalities and in redesign of internal processes and systems to achieve efficient performance management. Aneta started her career in anti-corruption, as a fraud investigator for the World Bank and Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Malaria and Tuberculosis, and as Senior Policy Director for Transparency International-USA. Observing that accountability is best aligned when driven by incentives, quality performance management, and efficient internal controls, Aneta shifted to operational risk management and grant oversight roles, targeting under-performing and under-absorbing portfolios which also presented high fiduciary risk. Aneta pioneered the use of risk assessment methodology to facilitate responsibly and efficiently designed results based contracts in health.
Aneta now works as the Senior Specialist for Anti-Corruption and Impact at the Global Fund, and she is a Fellow of Practice at the Oxford Government Outcomes Laboratory in the Blavatnik School of Government. She works with HBGI in an Advisory Capacity.
Craig Nunn, Finance Advisor
Craig is a Charted Accountant and has extensive experience of designing and delivering the financial strategy for complex international organisations. Much of Craig’s career has been spent in organisations trusted with the delivery of complex and essential public services. In many cases, the contracting models were highly innovative, represented true public / private partnership and in some cases, pioneered the use of outcome-based funding models.
Craig has a Masters degree in Physiological Sciences from Oxford University. Since publishing the results of his research in neurophysiology, he has continued to have an active interest in mental and physical health.
Craig is currently the Chief Financial Officer for a BTB services company and works with HBGI in an advisory capacity.
Garen is Founder and Co-Chair of the HBGI Board.
He is also the Founder and Chairman of ONE MIND (“OM”) a 501.c.3 non-profit: (1) pursuing discoveries in brain health research fostering open science principles; (2) advancing better diagnostics, treatments, early intervention; and (3) eliminating the stigma for all brain illnesses. OM leverages large scale public/private partnerships as well as individual scientists to achieve these goals. One Mind at Work, a global coalition of 90 employers and partners, now covers more than 25 million employees and their dependents. Over 26 years, OM and the Staglin Music Festival for Brain Health have raised $480M for brain health.
Garen has a 40-year career as a successful entrepreneur and private equity investor. He is on the Board of SVB, Chairman of ExL Services and Profit Velocity Solutions, is a Senior Advisor to FTV Capital and recently Co-Chaired the $5.4.8B UCLA Centennial Campaign. He and his family founded Staglin Family Vineyard in 1985 in Napa. The Staglin’s’ motto is “Great Wine for Great Causes.” They have generated over $1.2B through causes they have led, their charity, and wine donations.
Husseini K. Manji, MD, FRCPC is Visiting Professor, Oxford University and Duke University, and past Global Therapeutic Head for Neuroscience at Janssen Research & Development pharmaceutical companies, and Global Head, Science for Minds, J&J. Before joining J&J, Dr. Manji was Chief of the Laboratory of Molecular Pathophysiology at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and Director of the NIH Mood and Anxiety Disorders Program, the largest program of its kind in the world. He has been inducted into the National Academy of Medicine (NAM, formerly IOM), is a member of the National Institutes of Health Novel and Exceptional Technology and Research Advisory Committee, the World Dementia Council, the World Economic Forum (WEF) Global Future Councils, the Board of Mass General-Brigham Incorporated; the Board of Trustees of Harvard University/McLean Hospital, Scientific Advisory Board of the Stanley Center at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. He is chair of the National Academy of Medicine Neuroscience, Behavior, Brain Function & Disorders group, co-chair of the Healthy Brains Global Initiative, and has held numerous leadership positions within the NIH, NAM, the FNIH Biomarkers Consortium Executive Committee.
The major focus of Dr. Manji’s research is the investigation of disease and treatment-induced changes in synaptic and neural plasticity in neuropsychiatric disorders. Dr. Manji has helped to discover, develop, and launch several new medications for serious neuropsychiatric and neurodegenerative disorders. These include the first novel antidepressant mechanism in over 30 years, the first medication in Neuroscience granted FDA “Breakthrough designation”, a once every 6-month treatment for schizophrenia, novel mechanism(s) for Alzheimer’s Disease, multiple sclerosis among others. Dr. Manji also has been actively involved in developing biomarkers to help refine these multifactorial diseases, and to develop a holistic approach towards neuropsychiatric and neurodegenerative disorders.
Dr. Manji has received a number of prestigious awards, including the NIMH Director’s Career Award for Significant Scientific Achievement, PhRMA Research & Hope Award for Excellence in Biopharmaceutical Research, the American Federation for Aging Research Award of Distinction, the A. E. Bennett Award for Neuropsychiatric Research, the Ziskind-Somerfeld Award for Neuropsychiatric Research, the NARSAD Mood Disorders Prize, the Mogens Schou Distinguished Research Award, the ACNP’s Joel Elkes Award for Distinguished Research, the DBSA Klerman Senior Distinguished Researcher Award, the Briggs Pharmacology Lectureship Award, the Caring Kind Alzheimer’s Disease Leadership Award, and the Global Health & the Arts Award of Recognition, and has also been recognized as one of 14 inaugural “Health Heroes” by Oprah magazine.
Throughout his career, Dr. Manji also has been committed to medical and neuroscience education and has been a member of the National Board of Medical Examiners (NMBE), the Howard Hughes Medical Institute Research Scholars Program, and numerous national curriculum committees. He founded and co-directed the NIH Foundation for the Advanced Education in the Sciences Graduate Course in the Neurobiology of Neuropsychiatric Illness and has received several teaching and mentoring awards. He has also served as Editor, and on editorial boards of numerous scientific journals, and has over 350 articles on the neurobiology of severe neuropsychiatric and neurodegenerative disorders and development of novel therapeutics. Additionally, publications on holistic approaches to treatment/care, including digital and psychological approaches. Papers have appeared in Science, Science Translational Medicine, Nature Neuroscience, Nature Reviews Neuroscience, Nature Reviews Drug Discovery, Neuron, New England Journal of Medicine, Journal of Clinical Investigation, The Lancet, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, , JAMA Psychiatry, Lancet Psychiatry, and Molecular Psychiatry. (H-index: 122).
Founded in 2008, Equilibrium Capital has built a platform of real assets focused sustainability driven investment strategies for institutional investors. Equilibrium currently manages $2 billion in two portfolio strategies: Carbon Transition Infrastructure and Controlled Environment Foods.
Dave is Equilibrium’s CEO and serves on the boards of several of its fund portfolio companies. He started his career at Solectron, a pioneer in outsourced manufacturing, and McKinsey in their technology practice, and later served as a general partner with OVP Venture Partners. He served on the San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank Board system until 2012 as Chairman of the Portland Branch, and was a board member of B Labs until 2018. Dave has, for 13 years, been a professor at Northwestern’s Kellogg Business School teaching and encouraging students to pursue sustainable investing.
Damian holds a BSc degree in Medical Psychology from Moi University, School of Medicine and a Global Mental Health advocate based in Kenya. He is a young leader for the Lancet Commission on Global Mental Health and Sustainable Development. He sits on a number of different advisory councils. He is the co-founder of #Mymindourhumanity campaign and Mental Health; Unveiling the mask project which incorporates art in promoting mental health. He is passionate about youth mental health, research (Peer Support, Adverse Childhood experiences & Anxiety and Depression) and health policy.
Nawal Roy is the founder and CEO of Holmusk. Holmusk is building the world’s largest real-world evidence platform for mental and behavioral health. After working as a junior partner at McKinsey and seeing first-hand the transformation of the finance sector due to data and technology, Nawal decided to focus on how to help transform the healthcare space in the same way. There is an urgent need for better evidence for behavioral health, and this need is what spurred Nawal to found Holmusk in 2015.
Bringing more than fifteen years of finance and strategy consulting experience to the helm of the company, Nawal carves out the strategic direction of Holmusk, leading from the front with round-the-clock hustle and infectious energy. During his time as CEO, Nawal has successfully overseen the closing of a multiple rounds of financing, the launch NeuroBlu, Holmusk’s data and analytics platform that helps generate real-world evidence to transform behavioral health research and care, and the acquisition of MaST, a digital solution that provides analytics-informed clinical decision support in the U.K.
Nawal holds an MA in economics from the University of Mumbai and a MS in quantitative analysis from the University of Cincinnati.
Yogesh Rajkotia, PhD is a social entrepreneur and global health expert. Currently, he serves as the Founder and Chairman of ThinkWell, an organization dedicated to improving health systems around the world. With a career spanning over two decades, Yogesh has become known for his entrepreneurial skills and his ability to innovate and drive change in the global health sector.
While serving as the CEO of ThinkWell for 11 years, Dr. Rajkotia built a $20 million/year global enterprise that worked in over 50 countries, attracted over 150 top-flight employees, and established 13 permanent offices across Africa, Asia, Europe and US. A prolific fundraiser, he secured funding from a wide range of sources including USAID, BMGF, WHO, World Bank, ADB AfDB, UNICEF, bi-lateral aid agencies, and industry. Under his leadership, ThinkWell secured brand eminence as a disruptive, creative, innovative leader in health systems development. He credits these successes to his relentless focus on ‘hard coding’ the company’s culture and values of compassion, creativity, questioning everything, ‘thinking big’, and being authentic.
Prior to founding ThinkWell, Dr. Rajkotia provided leadership to USAID’s global health systems strengthening efforts as a senior advisor and team leader, where he oversaw the Agency’s $45 million health portfolio in Rwanda and its $125M global Health Systems 20/20 program. He has also consulted for many organizations including WHO, GAVI, World Bank, and industry.
Throughout his career, Dr. Rajkotia has advised governments in countries across Africa, Asia, and Latin America on issues ranging from health financing and governance to health workforce development and service delivery. His experience working inside both governments and industry have given him a unique understanding of the complexities and challenges involved in improving health systems at the national and sub-national levels.
Dr. Rajkotia is a sought-after and skilled public speaker with extensive experience presenting to high-profile audiences on complex global health issues. Known for his ability to articulate complex concepts clearly and effectively to diverse audiences, his presentations are marked by his passion, expertise, and dedication to inspiring improvements in health and well-being.
Yogesh holds a Master’s degree in Health Policy, Planning and Financing from the London School of Economics, and a PhD in Health Systems from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
Scientia Professor Helen Christensen (AO) is Scientia Professor of Mental Health at UNSW Sydney and Board Director of Black Dog Institute. She is the former Executive Director and Chief Scientist at Black Dog Institute, having led the organisation from 2011 to 2021. Professor Christensen is a leading expert on using technology to deliver evidence-based interventions for the prevention and treatment of depression, anxiety, suicide, and self-harm. Her research also encompasses prevention of mental health problems in young people through school-based research programs. These programs are aimed at the prevention of depression and suicide risk through eMental Health interventions.
Gary Gottlieb is a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and a member of the National Academy of Medicine.
From 2015-2019, he served as CEO of Partners In Health, a global NGO providing a preferential option for the poor in health care in severely resource constrained settings. He assumed this role after serving on the PIH Board of Directors for a decade. From 2010 until February of 2015, Dr. Gottlieb was the CEO of Partners HealthCare (now MassGeneral Brigham), the parent of the Brigham and Women’s and Massachusetts General Hospitals, the largest health care delivery organization in New England and among the largest biomedical research and training enterprises in the US. From 2002-2009, he was President of Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Previously, he served as President of North Shore Medical Center and as Chair of Partners Psychiatry and Mental Health System.
Dr. Gottlieb served as a member of the Board of Directors of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston from 2012-2016 and as its chair from 2016-2018. From 2006-2016, he was Chair of the Boston Private Industry Council, the workforce board of the City of Boston.
Prior to coming to Boston, Dr. Gottlieb spent 15 years in positions of increasing leadership in health care in Philadelphia. He established the University of Pennsylvania Medical Center’s first program in geriatric psychiatry and developed it into a nationally recognized research, training, and clinical program. He served as executive vice-chair of psychiatry and associate dean for managed care at the University of Pennsylvania Medical Center, and as director and CEO of Friends Hospital, the nation’s first freestanding psychiatric hospital.
Dr. Gottlieb is currently an Executive Partner at Flare Capital Partners, a Boston venture firm investing in early stage health related technology companies. In addition to being a director at OneMind, he serves on the boards of health tech firms OM1, Kyruus and CohereHealth and hospital services company Agiliti. He is a Senior Advisor at the Albright Stonebridge Group.
Dr. Gottlieb received a B.Sc. cum laude from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and an M.D. from Albany Medical College in a six-year accelerated program and he completed a psychiatry residency at New York University/Bellevue Medical Center. As a Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholar at Penn, he earned an M.B.A. with distinction from the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania.
Shekhar Saxena, MD, is Professor of the Practice of Global Mental Health at the Department of Global Health and Population at the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health.
A psychiatrist by training, he has served in the World Health Organization (WHO) since 1998. From 2010 to 2018 he was the Director of the Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse at the WHO. In 2017, he received the prestigious Leon Eisenberg Award from Harvard Medical School. Author of more than 300 academic papers, he functioned as an editor of the Lancet Series on Global Mental Health 2007 and 2011, and the Lancet Commission on Global Mental Health and Sustainable Development 2018. His expertise includes providing advice and technical assistance to policy makers on prevention and management of mental, developmental, neurological and substance use disorders and suicide prevention.
Dr. Ling, Professor of Neurology and Attending Neuro-Critical Care Physician at the Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions and Professor Emeritus at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences (USUHS).
Dr. Ling has an extensive and impressive career background. Between 2016 and 2023, he was CEO of On-Demand Pharmaceuticals, which works with Pharmacy on Demand (POD) and BioMedicine on Demand (BioMOD) technologies. Prior, Dr. Ling served at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) from 2004 to 2015, culminating as the founding Director of the Biological Technologies Office. He also served as an Assistant Director of Science in President Obama’s White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP). He served on Advisory Councils of the NIH-National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Strokes for 10 years and the NIH-National Center for Advanced Translation Science for 4 years. He recently completed a 4-year tenure on the Veterans Administration’s National Research Advisory Council, which he chaired. Colonel Ling is a retired U.S. Army medical officer who served on active duty for 21 years as a critical care physician.
Dr. Ling earned his PhD in Pharmacology at Cornell University Graduate School of Medical Sciences, and his MD at Georgetown University School of Medicine.
Since joining Rush in October 2015, Krishnan has reorganized Rush Medical College’s curriculum to keep the college at the vanguard of medical education. Among other features, the new curriculum provides students with prerecorded instructional content. This innovation reduces class time spent on lectures and shifts the emphasis to teams of students collaborating on case studies.
Krishnan is leading innovation of care delivery at Rush, as well, by organizing providers around patients and diseases and conditions, rather than by department or division, to enable greater collaboration. The service line approach enables providers to share expertise, ultimately improving patient care, quality and safety. Service lines established to date include liver, cancer, cardiac, neurology and neurosurgery, and mental health.
Krishnan has been instrumental in forging key external partnerships, including with Tempus, a Chicago-based technology company with expertise in gene sequencing and analysis. Krishnan also has restructured Rush’s Innovation and Technology strategy including the Innovation and technology Transfer Office (ITTO), which manages Rush intellectual properties (IP) and assists inventors, authors and other creators of intellectual property at Rush in the process of IP disclosure, protection, marketing and licensing. He is currently working to launch Rush3D (Design, Demonstrate, Deliver), through which Rush will work with external inventors needing a “sandbox” for exploring opportunities and co-development.
Prior to joining Rush, Krishnan served for eight years as dean of the Duke–NUS Graduate Medical School Singapore (now Duke-NUS Medical School). Krishnan arrived at Duke University Medical Center in 1981, when he began a residency in psychiatry, which he followed with a fellowship in neurobiology. He joined the Duke faculty in 1985 and was a professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences from 1995 to 2015. As chairman of the department from 1998 until 2009, he implemented an innovative continuing-education network while overseeing more than 490 faculty members.
Dr. Vaibhav A. Narayan is currently Executive Vice President at the Davos Alzheiemr’s Collaborative (DAC). Vaibhav joined after 13+ years at Johnson & Johnson (J&J) where he was Vice President of Digital Health Innovation and Head of Data Science for Neuroscience R&D. At J&J, Vaibhav created and led programs that utilized multi-modal data from ‘genomics to digital’ to understand disease subtypes and develop AI/ML driven digital health solutions for prevention, early detection, disease course monitoring and prediction in Alzheimer’s and neuropsychiatric diseases.
Prior to J&J, Vaibhav held multiple data science and informatics leadership roles in various Biotech and Big Pharma companies including 5 years as Celera Genomics as Head of Computational Sciences, where he directly participated in the Human Genome Project. During his career, in addition to running large internal programs within organizations, Vaibhav has helped form and lead multiple multi-stakeholder innovation ecosystems and large scale public-private consortia (e.g. www.radar-cns.org, www.radar-ad.org) at the intersection of data science, digital health, and neuroscience.
Vaibhav holds multiple patents and has co-authored > 80 scientific publications. Vaibhav obtained a PhD from Yale University in computational biology and an Executive MBA from Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University.
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Damian holds a BSc degree in Medical Psychology from Moi University, School of Medicine and a Global Mental Health advocate based in Kenya. He is a young leader for the Lancet Commission on Global Mental Health and Sustainable Development. He sits on a number of different advisory councils. He is the co-founder of #Mymindourhumanity campaign and Mental Health; Unveiling the mask project which incorporates art in promoting mental health. He is passionate about youth mental health, research (Peer Support, Adverse Childhood experiences & Anxiety and Depression) and health policy.
Joanna Grace Farmer has worked for over 30 years on community development initiatives and programs focused on housing and education; culturally competent mental health systems, integrated social service delivery systems; transformative pedagogy and curriculum development; capacity and team building; program and organization evaluation; and political engagement strategies. She is the founder and director of Building Community Capacity, a social enterprise, which operates at the intersection between education, mental health, and community development to increase access to information and resources that strengthen, empower, and engage children, families, and communities, especially Indigenous populations.
Joanna earned her bachelor’s degree in Public Policy Studies and master’s degree in Sociology from the University of Chicago, and another master’s degree in Curriculum and Instruction from the University of Missouri-Kansas City.
Her community activities include advocating for children’s rights, developing innovative mental health delivery systems, financial literacy, citizen engagement, and voter participation. She is the proud and happy mother of Jonathan and Faith and enjoys sharing genealogy research and traveling with them.
Maureen Gikonyo is a co-founder and director of a youth led mental health organization in Kenya called Speak Mind Love Foundation. The organization mainly focuses on mental health awareness raising, advocacy, resilience building & mentorship. For 2 years now, she has practised mental health awareness raising at the grassroot level in various communities. She has also taken part in various discussions on mental health both internationally and locally as a panelist. In addition, she also holds a bachelor’s degree in special needs education. She is also an experienced child & adolescent mentor. Lastly, she is a youth & mental health consultant serving in the youth council of Cities Rise, Nairobi and various other platforms.
Jason is a lived experience consultant who uses their experience to improve outcomes for people in mental health. Currently working for Sussex Partnership NHS Foundation Trust, The Royal College of Psychiatrists, and The University of Manchester working on a study looking into the ethnic inequalities in severe mental illness. Jason sits on a number of organisational boards, most notably The Stability Network.
Carlos A. Larrauri, serves on the Board of Directors for the National Alliance on Mental Illness and NAMI Miami-Dade County. Diagnosed with schizophrenia at 23 years of age, access to affordable health care, community based treatments, and early intervention afforded him the best opportunity for recovery.
Mr. Larrauri is board certified as a Family Nurse Practitioner and Psychiatric Mental Health Nurse Practitioner, and formerly lectured at the University of Miami and Miami Dade College.
Mr. Larrauri is currently pursuing a legal education at the University of Michigan. He aspires to interface clinical practice, health policy, and research, to reduce health inequities for people living with mental illness.
Clinical Social Worker. Executive Director for Mental Health Users and Carers Association (MeHUCA) working with peer support workers in Malawi.
Currently PhD Fellow at the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa. Sociology Department.
“COVID-19, Mourning and Mental Health”
Awareness: Mental Health chats to destigmatize mental health.
Kulbir works in communications and PR primarily in the wellbeing and healthcare spaces. A London – resident, he takes great pride in normalising conversations around mental health and stigma in South Asian communities. He also co -runs Sarbat, the Sikh LGBTQ group and has an interest in how our various intersectionalities add to the quality of decision making. He is a member of the Charted Institute of Public Relations.
Ms. Sunkel is the Founder/ CEO of the Global Mental Health Peer Network. She is a global mental health advocate with lived experience with schizophrenia. She has published internationally on issues related to mental health and human rights, stigma and the needs of people with mental illness in low- and middle-income countries. Ms. Sunkel has been involved in provided technical assistance to national and international mental health related policies, reports and documents. She serves on a number of international boards and committees. She received a number of national and international awards for her work.
Godfrey is a prominent mental health advocate from Uganda.
He is the Founding Director of Twogere; a leading mental health charity with hundreds of committed young advocates starting mental health conversations everywhere in Uganda.