Vinod (Vinny) Bhutani, MD

Professor of Pediatrics (Neonatology), Stanford Medicine

Dr. Vinod Bhutani is a medical graduate of the Armed Forces Medical College, Poona, India and has been trained as a basic scientist of physiology and board certified in neonatology. His research is to advance translational research in neonatology through design and use of innovative, evidence-based technologies/tool-kits that are intuitive, practical to reduce neonatal morbidities. He co-Chairs the Audrey K. Brown Kernicterus Symposium, Pediatric Academic Societies; is the Fellow of the National Neonatology Forum of India, Faculty Awardee of Stanford-India BioDesign Program, as well as the recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award, National Neonatology Forum of India and The Landmark Award of the Section on Perinatal Pediatrics, American Academy of Pediatrics.

Alex Counts

President and CEO, American India Foundation (AIF)

Alex Counts is a leader in international development with two decades of experience building, scaling, and managing nonprofit organizations. Counts is the founder of Grameen Foundation and became its President and CEO in 1997, after having worked in micro-finance and poverty reduction for 10 years. A Cornell University graduate, Counts’ commitment to poverty eradication deepened as a Fulbright scholar in Bangladesh, where he witnessed innovative poverty solutions being developed by Grameen Bank. He was trained under Professor Muhammad Yunus, the founder and managing director of Grameen Bank, and co-recipient of the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize. Since its modest beginnings, sparked by a $6,000 seed grant provided by Prof. Yunus (who was a founding board member and continues as director emeritus), Grameen Foundation has grown to become leading international humanitarian organization with an annual budget of approximately $20 million.

Counts has propelled Grameen Foundation’s philosophy through his writings, including Small Loans, Big Dreams: How Nobel Prize Winner Muhammad Yunus and Microfinance Are Changing the World and Voices From the Field. Counts has also been published in The Washington Post, the International Herald Tribune, the Stanford Social Innovation Review, The Miami Herald, The Christian Science Monitor and elsewhere. In 2007 he received the Distinguished Alumni Award from Horace Mann School. While at Cornell University, he received the John F. Kennedy Memorial Award, given annually by the Class of 1964 to the graduating senior who is the best example of the ideal of public service articulated by our 35th President. Counts is a board member of Citizen’s Climate Education and Grameen-Jameel Microfinance, Ltd, and sits on the Advisory Council of the Center for Financial Inclusion.

Gary Darmstadt, MD, PhD

Associate Dean for Maternal and Child Health; Professor of Neonatal and Development Pediatrics, Stanford Medicine

Dr. Gary Damstadt is Associate Dean for Maternal and Child Health, and Professor of Neonatal Developmental Pediatrics in the Department of Pediatrics at the Stanford University School of Medicine. Previously Dr. Darmstadt was a Senior Fellow in the Global Development Program at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF), where he led a cross-foundation initiative on Women, Girls, and Gender, introducing initiatives to address gender inequalities and to empower women and girls, leading to improved gender equality as well as improved health and development outcomes. Prior to this role, he served as Director of Family Health, leading strategy development and implementation across nutrition, family planning and maternal, newborn and child health.

Madhuri Dixit

Madhuri Dixit, is an Indian actress who is known for her work in Hindi cinema. A leading actress in the 1980s, 1990s and early-2000s, Dixit has been praised by critics for her acting and dancing skills. She has received six Filmfare Awards, four for Best Actress, one for Best Supporting Actress and one special award. She has been nominated for the Filmfare Award for Best Actress a record fourteen times. She was awarded the Padma Shri, India's fourth-highest civilian award, by the Government of India in 2008.

In addition to acting in films, Dixit has featured as a talent judge for four seasons of the dance reality show Jhalak Dikhhla Jaa. She has participated in several stage shows and has engaged in philanthropic activities. In 2014, she was appointed the UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador in India. 

Madhuri, beyond being an ambassador for UNICEF for women and children, has been involved with many Indian movements like Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao (Save the girl child; Educate the girl child), Mamta Abayan (mother and child pregnancy and early care), Maa (campaign for breast feeding).  In addition, she has done campaigns like Girl Rising and Boys Don't Cry with Vogue regarding women's empowerment and the fight against violence against women.  She was featured in Tina Brown's recent Women in the World campaign for women's empowerment along with Cate Blanchett and a host of powerful women.

Krista Donaldson, PhD

CEO, D-Rev

As the CEO of D-Rev, Krista has led the design and scaling of medical devices focused on closing the global health inequalities. D-Rev's first product Brilliance, radically affordable phototherapy treatment for babies with severe jaundice, came to market in partnership with Phoenix Medical Systems of Chennai, India in late 2012. Since then, Brilliance has treated more than 75,000 at-risk newborns in India and other countries. D-Rev also recently launched the ReMotion Knee - the next generation of the JaipurKnee, a product that started at Stanford University in partnership with the world-famous Jaipur Foot Clinic. D-Rev's goal is to impact millions of people and catalyze global change to make world-class healthcare more accessible for all people.

D-Rev has been recognized by Fast Company as one of the World's Most Innovative Companies, and by the World Economic Forum as a Technology Pioneer. Krista has a PhD from Stanford University in mechnical engineering, and has previously worked at the design firm IDEO in Palo Alto, Kickstart in Nairobi, and the US Department of State in Washington DC and Baghdad. Fast Company has called her one of the 50 Designers Shaping the Future of Design.

Pushkar Ingale

Industrial Designer, Laerdal Global Health

Pushkar is an industrial designer and heads the India design office of Laedal Global Health - a not for profit working to help save lives of mothers and newborns on the day of birth. At Laerdal, the team of designers and developers are designing lifesaving equipment and training devices for health workers and midwives in resource constrained settings across the world.

Pushkar's most recent design participation was a preterm carrier CarePlus - a behavior change agent for accelerating the uptake of Kangaroo Mother Care. He has worked on solutions like a simulation trainer for insertion of post-partum intra uterine contraception and learning tools for simplifying education of midwives and nurses. He spends a large amount of his time in the field as a design researcher trying to understand the unmet needs of midwives - especially in India. As a Stanford India Biodesign fellow, he was part of a team working on identifying deafness in newborns during their first days of life.

Charu Johri

Director of Public Health, The American India Foundation (AIF)

Charu Johri is a Public Health professional with 14 years of subject experience in maternal and child health, nutrition, infectious diseases and health system strengthening and is currently associated as Director – Public Health for American India Foundation. She is successfully managing a Public Private Partnership for improving neonatal survival in Jharkhand by working closely with a corporate partner, Tata Steel and globally renowned organization SEARCH Gadchiroli. In her previous association with Urban Health Resource Center as Technical Advisor and earlier with CARE as Capacity Building Officer her work has been varied and has encompassed management of PPP approaches, strategy and program development, technical oversight and supervisory guidance to program partners, networking with training institutes and government officials of state and district, production of BCC material and training manuals, designing monitoring and evaluation systems and conducting reviews and impact studies.
She has thorough knowledge of Government of India’s Health, Nutrition and population policies and programs and has worked closely with district and state government structures in facilitating improved supervision, planning and training of health functionaries. She possesses a Masters in Science with specialization in Community Nutrition from SNDT University, Mumbai.

Lata Krishnan

Chair, American India Foundation (AIF)

Lata Krishnan is the Chair of AIF and the CFO of Shah Capital Partners. Previously, she co-founded SMART Modular Technologies and served as its CFO. Prior to joining Shah Capital, Mrs. Krishnan held various corporate accounting and finance positions with leading financial firms. Mrs. Krishnan also serves on the board of Silicon Valley Bank, Commonwealth Club, Fellow of the American Leadership Forum and Advisory Board positions for Narika and the WAC Global Philanthropy Forum. She received a B.S. with honors from the London School of Economics and is a member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales.

Mamta Mahato

Sahiya, AIF-MANSI

Mamta has been associated with the AIF- MANSI project since 2010 which is a PPP project with the Government of Jharkhand, Corporate Tata Steel, and SEARCH. She received comprehensive in-house training for 24 days in Home Based Maternal New Born and Childcare with supportive field supervision from AIF. With her proficiency and confidence at work as Sahiya (Sahiya is a community level health worker commonly known as an ASHA (Accredited Social Health Activist) acts as a first contact point of contact with health care facility to the community in her village) she has saved many lives of neonates and children under 5 years old in her community. She has managed cases of Pneumona, Fever, dysentry, Puss in Cord and Hypothermia. There has been no maternal or child deaths in her village in the last 3 years.

She has now earned special recognition in her community and is a source of inspiration for other Sahiyas in the project. She has been working as a community worker since 2005. She was selected by the Village Health Committee and the Gram Sabha and she is serving the village. Mamta's husband Ashok is an agriculturist and they have two children. Her Son Shivam is 8 years old and daughter Dipa 11 years old both studying in an English medium school. 

Lloyd B. Minor, MD

Dean School of Medicine, Professor, Otolaryngology, Stanford Medicine

Lloyd B. Minor, MD, is the Carl and Elizabeth Naumann Dean of the Stanford University School of Medicine. With his leadership, Stanford Medicine has established a strategic vision to lead the biomedical revolution in Precision Health. The next generation of health care, Precision Health is focused on keeping people healthy and providing care that is tailored to individual variations. Dr. Minor is also a professor of Otolaryngology–Head and Neck Surgery and a professor of Bioengineering and of Neurobiology, by courtesy, at Stanford University. With more than 140 published articles and chapters, Dr. Minor is an expert in balance and inner ear disorders. In 2012, he was elected to the National Academy of Medicine.

Shriram Nene, MD

Dr. Nene graduated from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. We was trained in General Surgery and did a Vascular Surgical Research Fellowship at the University of California in Los Angeles in Cardiovascular and Thoracic Surgery.  Later, he practiced in Denver as a board-certified Cardiovascular and Thoracic Surgeon.  In addition, to routine coronary artery bypass cases, he specialized in mitral valve repair, endovascular aortic surgery, and was trained as a Da Vinci Robotic surgeon. 

Within healthcare, he is actively involved in the community trying to spur innovation in healthcare delivery.  He has been working as an ambassador for improving healthcare delivery in India through a combination of awareness, education, technology, and brick and mortar. Ultimately it is to make a difference in the lives of others and improve the practice of medicine, worldwide, to international, evidence-based standards by empowering the patient and extending the doctor’s reach.  He is involved with the MIT-IIT redx campaign for low cost, high impact medical innovation. He has also been active in Mission Jaldaan, a clean water initiative, with Eureka Forbes designed to raise social awareness through matching clean water pledges. Through his blog, Top Health Guru, he regularly sheds light on critical healthcare issues.

He is now working full-time on a medical venture that combines multiple modalities to scale doctors and empower patients.  His team is developing a medical platform and apps system in addition to collaborating with peers in other ventures such as GoQii, where he is an investor and was the initial Chief Medical Officer. 

Diaz Nesamoney

President and CEO, Jivox Corporation and AIF Board Member

Diaz Nesamoney founder of Jivox has had two prior successful ventures. Before founding Jivox, he founded Celequest, raised over $20M in venture capital, and served as its CEO until early 2007, when the company was acquired by Cognos Corporation. Celequest introduced the market’s first BI appliance, a disruptive innovation that led to its acquisition by Cognos. He was previously co-founder, President and Chief Operating Officer at Informatica (NASDAQ:INFA), which he took from a startup to a publicly traded company in 1999 with a market capitalization of over a billion dollars. Informatica pioneered data integration software as a category and is now the market leader with over $400M in revenue. Diaz holds a Masters degree in Computer Science from the Birla Institute of Technology and Science in India.

Josh Nesbit

CEO, Medic Mobile

Josh Nesbit is the Chief Executive Officer of Medic Mobile, a nonprofit organization that builds mobile and web tools for community health workers, clinic staff, and families in hard-to-reach communities. These tools help over 10,000 health workers provide care for 5 million people in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Medic Mobile focuses on improving health systems for antenatel care, childhood immunization, lifesaving child health treatments, stock monitoring for essential medicines, and disease surveillance. In 2014, Medic Mobile received the Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship.

Before co-founding Medic Mobile, Josh studied global health and bioethics at Stanford University, where his qualitative research focused on pediatric HIV/AIDS in Malawi. Josh is an Shoka Fellow, PopTech Social Innovation Fellow, Echoing Green Fellow, and Rainer Arnhold Fellow. He has served on the Board of Directors for Developing Radio Partners and IntraHealth International. Josh was selected by Devex as one of the 40 Under 40 Leaders in International Development, received the Truman Award for Innovation from the Society for International Development, and was named by Forbes as on eof the world's top social entrepreneuers.

Baba Shiv

Sanwa Bank, Ltd., Professor of Marketing, Stanford Graduate School of Business

Baba Shiv is the Sanwa Bank, Ltd., Professor of Marketing at the Stanford Graduate School of Business.  He has done extensive work on the emotional brain, documenting its powerful role in shaping decisions and experiences. His work includes the application of neuroeconomics to the study and practice of innovation and entrepreneurial leadership in companies, from Silicon Valley startups to Fortune 500 companies, as well as countries including India, Malaysia and New Zealand. He frequently consults with and is on the advisory boards of several start-ups. His work has been featured in a variety of media outlets including The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, CNN, Economic Times, Fox Business, Financial Times, The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, NPR, and Radio Lab. Baba Shiv teaches courses at the GSB and the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford, including “The Frinky Science of the Mind,” “Scaling Design Thinking Globally,” and “Crafting Interventions for Massive Change.” He frequently hosts executives from around the world in executive education programs at Stanford on strategy, entrepreneurial leadership, and customer-focused innovation.

Priya Singh

Senior Associate Dean, Strategy and Communications, Stanford Medicine

Priya Singh joined the Stanford School of Medicine in 2013.  In her current role as Senior Associate Dean, Priya is responsible for Strategy and Communications for the school.  Previously, she was Assistant Dean at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, where she was responsible for the GSB’s Global Innovation Programs including Stanford Ignite and the GSB/School of Engineering’s joint online program for the Stanford Innovation & Entrepreneurship Certificate. Prior to that role, she was Assistant Dean and Managing Director of Executive Education, managing over thirty Executive Education programs, including the flagship Stanford Executive Program. Before coming to Stanford University, Priya held marketing management roles at Oracle Corporation, Respond.com and Levi Strauss & Co.

Piya Sorcar, PhD

Founder and CEO, TeachAIDS

Dr. Piya Sorcar is the founder and CEO of TeachAIDS, a Lecturer at Stanford’s Graduate School of Education, and an Adjunct Affiliate at Stanford’s School of Medicine. She leads a team of world experts in medicine, public health and education to develop software that solves numerous persistent problems in HIV prevention. With 250+ partners, the TeachAIDS educational software is used in 80+ countries globally. She sits on the Executive Board of The Tech Awards in Silicon Valley and has spoken at leading universities including Caltech, Columbia, Tsinghua University, MIT and Yale. She holds a Ph.D. in Learning Sciences and Technology Design from Stanford University. In 2011, MIT Technology Review named her to its TR35 list of the top 35 innovators in the world under 35. In 2016, she was recognized as the youngest recipient of Stanford’s Alumni Excellence in Education Award.

Abraham Verghese, MD

Professor of Medicine, Vice Chair for the Theory and Practice of Medicine, Stanford Medicine

Abraham Verghese is a critically acclaimed author and a prominent voice in medicine. His books have sold millions of copies and are broadly translated. His gifts as a storyteller give him powerful appeal for healthcare professionals and non-medical audiences alike.

He sees a future for healthcare that marries technological innovation with hands-on physical diagnosis, and has a deep faith in patients’ stories and the power of touch in providing what patients most want – healing, if not curing.

Dr. Verghese’s novel, Cutting for Stone, topped the New York Times bestseller list for over two years and My Own Country, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and made into a movie. The Tennis Partner was a New York Times Notable Book. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, The New Yorker, Granta, and The Wall Street Journal.

He has served on the Board of Directors of the American Board of Internal Medicine. He is a Master of the American College of Physicians, elected to the Association of American Physicians, as well as, notably in 2011, to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences. He is a 2014 recipient of the Heinz Award for Arts and Humanities.

Dennis Wall, PhD

Associate Professor, Pediatrics, Psychiatry and Biomedical Data Sciences, Stanford Medicine

Dr. Dennis P. Wall, PhD is Associate Professor of Pediatrics, Psychiatry and Biomedical Data Sciences at Stanford Medical School. He leads a lab in Pediatric Innovation focused on developing methods in biomedical informatics to disentangle complex conditions that originate in childhood and perpetuate through the life course, including autism and related developmental delays. For over a decade, first on faculty at Harvard and now at Stanford University, and as healthcare has shifted increasingly to the use of digital technologies for data capture and finer resolutions of genomic scale, Dr. Wall has innovated, adapted and deployed bioinformatic strategies to enable precise and personalized interpretation of high resolution molecular and phenotypic data. Dr. Wall has pioneered the use of machine learning and artificial intelligence for fast, quantitative and mobile detection of neurodevelopmental disorders in children, as well as the use of use of machine learning systems on wearable devices, such as Google Glass, for real-time “exclinical" therapy. These same precision health approaches enable quantitative tracking of progress during treatment throughout an individual’s life enabling big data generation of a type and scale never before possible, and have defined a new paradigm for behavioral detection and therapy that has won Dr. Wall several awards including a spot in the top ten of the World’s top 30 autism researchers. Dr. Wall has acted as science advisor to several biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies, has created and advised on cutting-edge approaches to cloud computing, and has received numerous awards, including the Fred R. Cagle Award for Outstanding Achievement in Biology, the Vice Chancellor's Award for Research, three awards for excellence in teaching, the Harvard Medical School Leadership award, and the Slifka/Ritvo Clinical Innovation in Autism Research Award for outstanding advancements in clinical translation. He completed his PhD at the University of California, Berkeley and a National Science Foundation postdoctoral fellowship in Computational Genetics at Stanford University before joining the faculty at Harvard Medical School.