About

Dr. Raj Panjabi is a globally renowned leader in public health, national security, pandemic and biodefense policy, entrepreneurship and philanthropy.

Dr. Panjabi serves as Special Assistant to President Biden and Senior Director for Global Health Security and Biodefense at the White House National Security Council. He serves as the President’s top health security and biodefense advisor and works with the National Security Adviser to execute federal policy to prevent, prepare for, and respond to epidemics, pandemics and other biological threats. 

Previously, Dr. Panjabi was appointed by President Biden at the U.S. Agency for International Development as the first U.S. Global Malaria Coordinator born in Africa and of Asian descent to lead the President's Malaria Initiative, which has invested billions of dollars to protect hundreds of millions of people at risk of malaria across 30 countries.

Prior to serving in the Biden-Harris Administration, Panjabi was an Advisor to former President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf in her role as co-chair with Former Prime Minister Helen Clark of the World Health Organization’s Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response. Between 2007-2021, Panjabi co-founded and served as CEO of Last Mile Health, an award-winning non-profit organization that works to save lives in the world's most remote communities. 

Part of the Harvard University community since 2008, Dr. Panjabi has served as Assistant Professor at Harvard Medical School and Associate Physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital Division of Global Health Equity. Between 2019-21, he served on the faculty of the Harvard Kennedy School of Government's Social Innovation and Change Initiative. 

Panjabi was named by TIME as one of the 100 Most Influential People in the World in 2016 and one of the 50 Most Influential People in Healthcare in 2018. In 2015 and 2017, he was listed in the World’s 50 Greatest Leaders by Fortune. He is a recipient of the 2017 TED Prize, the Clinton Global Citizen Award for leadership in response to the West Africa Ebola epidemic, the Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship and was named a Schwab Social Entrepreneur of the Year at the World Economic Forum. In 2017, President Sirleaf and the Government of Liberia recognized Panjabi with Distinction of Knight Commander of the Most Venerable Order of the Pioneers, one of the country's highest civilian honors.

Panjabi has delivered hundreds of speeches, lectures and presentations and authored numerous publications in the scientific and popular press. Panjabi received an M.D. degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, trained in internal medicine and as a clinical fellow at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, and received a Master of Public Health in epidemiology from Johns Hopkins University as a Sommer Scholar.

Panjabi's parents migrated from India to Liberia, 

where Panjabi was born and raised. After civil war broke out in Liberia in 1989, Panjabi and his family became refugees in the United States of America. He now lives with his family in the Washington, D.C. area.