Raj Panjabi

Raj Panjabi is responsible for leading Flagship’s Preemptive Health and Medicine Initiative, which is pioneering a new field to protect, maintain, or improve people’s health before they get sick.

Raj is former White House Senior Director and globally recognized as a distinguished authority in healthcare, public policy, entrepreneurship, and technology.

As White House Senior Director, Raj served as President Biden’s top pandemic and health official at the National Security Council, where he played a pivotal role in the largest vaccination campaign in history against COVID-19 and responses to public health crises, including mpox, influenza and Ebola. He played a lead role executing the 2022 National Biodefense Strategy and American Pandemic Preparedness Plan, coordinating over $12 billion in annual investment across 16 federal agencies in biodefense, including in diagnostics, therapeutics, and vaccines. Raj also helped oversee implementation of the President’s 2022 Executive Order to Advance Biotechnology and Biomanufacturing Innovation and the 2022 U.S. Global Health Security Act, authorizing $5 billion and expanding health investments across 50 countries. He co-developed President Biden’s COVID-19 and health security initiatives with the G7, G20, and regional bodies, and efforts to organize Presidential Summits, launch the Pandemic Fund at the World Bank, negotiate the WHO International Health Regulations and Pandemic Accord, and uphold the UN Biological Weapons Convention.

Previously, Raj led the President’s Malaria Initiative, helping launch the world’s first malaria vaccine, create a strategy to prevent 1 billion cases, and manage a $800 million enterprise protecting 700 million people across 30 countries. Raj is co-founder and former CEO of Last Mile Health, a global organization transforming community health systems.

Raj has been a senior advisor to several biotech companies and has served on the boards of private sector companies, non-profits, and other initiatives. He currently serves on the boards of WHO Foundation, Skoll Foundation, Last Mile Health, among others, and on the Bipartisan Commission on Biodefense. He serves on the faculty at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital.

One of TIME’s 100 Most Influential People in the World and TIME’s 50 Most Influential People in Healthcare, and twice named to the FORTUNE World’s 50 Greatest Leaders list, Raj has received the TED Prize, Clinton Global Citizen Award, and World Economic Forum’s Social Entrepreneur of the Year award. He was knighted by President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and the Government of Liberia. He trained in biochemistry, epidemiology and biostatistics, and medicine at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Johns Hopkins University, Harvard Medical School, and Massachusetts General Hospital.