Dave A. Chokshi, MD, MSc, FACP was the 43rd Commissioner at the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, one of the leading health agencies in the world. He led the City’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, including its historic campaign to vaccinate over 6 million New Yorkers, saving tens of thousands of lives. Dr. Chokshi architected treatment strategies, navigated school and economic reopenings, and served as principal public spokesperson. Under his tenure, the Health Department’s budget grew to its highest-ever level, reflecting investment in signature initiatives such as the Public Health Corps, Pandemic Response Institute, and New Family Home Visiting program. In 2021, the Department also stewarded the launch of the nation’s first publicly-authorized overdose prevention centers—as well as a landmark Board of Health resolution on racism as a public health crisis.

From 2014-2020, Dr. Chokshi served in leadership roles at NYC Health + Hospitals (H+H), including as its inaugural Chief Population Health Officer, where he built an award-winning team dedicated to transforming the largest public health care system in the country. He was also Chief Executive Officer of the H+H Accountable Care Organization (ACO), one of the few ACOs in the nation to achieve high quality and cost performance for nine consecutive years. He has been a practicing primary care internist at Bellevue Hospital since 2014. He is also Clinical Professor of Population Health at NYU and a Senior Scholar at the CUNY School of Public Health and Health Policy.

Previously, Dr. Chokshi served as a White House Fellow at the U.S. Dept. of Veterans Affairs, where he was the principal health advisor in the Office of the Secretary. His prior work experience spans the public, private, and nonprofit sectors. Dr. Chokshi has written on medicine and public health in the New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA, Lancet, Health Affairs, Science, the New York Times, Harvard Business Review, and Scientific American. In 2016, President Obama appointed him to the Advisory Group on Prevention, Health Promotion, and Integrative and Public Health.

He trained in internal medicine at Brigham & Women's Hospital, where he received the Dunne Award for Compassionate Care, and was a clinical fellow at Harvard Medical School. During his training, he did clinical work in Guatemala, Peru, Botswana, Ghana, and India. He received his M.D. with Alpha Omega Alpha distinction from Penn. He also earned an MSc in global public health as a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford, and graduated summa cum laude from Duke.

Jennifer Ng’andu is the managing director–Program at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF). She helps lead grantmaking activities to advance social and environmental changes that help ensure that all children and their families have the full range of opportunities to lead healthy lives, while providing a strong and stable start for every child in the nation.

Jennifer comes to RWJF from the National Council of La Raza (NCLR), where she oversaw efforts to advance the organization’s Health and Civil Rights Policy Projects. In her decade there she worked alongside other policy experts and advocates to advance policy change and the social well-being of Latino and immigrant workers and families. She led organizational efforts to insert Latino priorities into the historic Affordable Care Act. Jennifer contributed to landmark social policies campaigns that restored health insurance options to more than 250,000 uninsured children and pregnant women, when Congress restored $1 billion of public health insurance to legal immigrant children and expectant mothers. In 2012, she broadened her work on equity to lead the organization’s efforts on civil rights pursuing equal opportunities and promoting nondiscrimination in key frontiers of civil rights including juvenile justice, telecommunications, and Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender equality.

Jennifer has been recognized for these past achievements. She has received the 2008 Congressional Black Caucus Health Braintrust Leadership in Advocacy Award. She was also recognized in 2013 by Families USA, receiving the Consumer Health Advocate of the Year Award for her work advancing Latino health priorities. Jennifer has published numerous reports and articles and a spectrum of radio, print, and television media credits including The New York Times, BBC, and The Washington Post.

Beyond her work at the Foundation, Jennifer has also engaged in numerous volunteer opportunities to improve health and health care. Jennifer has been appointed by the Government of Mexico to the Advisory Board of Ventanillas de Salud, a cooperative program to promote preventive health access for Mexican nationals in the United States. She is also on the Advisory board of the California State University at Long Beach’s Center for Latino Community Health, Evaluation, and Leadership Training. She has previous positions serving as vice president of the board of directors of the Herndon Alliance and volunteering for board of directors and the council of consumers of the National Physicians Alliance.

Jennifer has also worked at the National Immigration Law Center, helping to advance the rights of low-income immigrants. Jennifer holds a BS in psychology from Duke University. She was born in Lusaka, Zambia, and hails from southeastern Connecticut.

Adam Brown is an Associate Professor of Psychology at The New School for Social Research and Vice Provost for Research at The New School and holds an appointment as an Adjunct Assistant Professor at NYU Langone Health. As the Director of the Trauma and Global Mental Health Lab, Dr. Brown studies the ways in which psychosocial interventions can be delivered by non-mental health professionals globally to increase access and equity in mental healthcare. In NYC, he is currently carrying out a large NIH trial with the NYC Mayor's Office, in which community based organizations throughout the city are being trained in a brief non-mental health specialist delivered intervention. He has served as a consultant for organizations such as the United Nations, UNICEF, and Amnesty International. He is the recipient of grants from the National Institute of Health, USAID, Fulbright, and numerous private foundations. His work appears in numerous peer-reviewed journals and book chapters.