Dr. Sejal Hathi is New Jersey’s state health officer and deputy health commissioner for public health services. Most recently, she served as the White House’s Senior Policy Advisor for Public Health, where she led various public health priorities for the Domestic Policy Council. A board-certified attending physician, she also held joint faculty appointments as an assistant professor of medicine at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and Bloomberg School of Public Health.
Early in her career, Dr. Hathi founded and led two global social enterprises, each advancing women’s and girls’ agency, entrepreneurship, and leadership—over time, across 6 continents, mobilizing more than 30,000 young women. In 2013, Dr. Hathi was appointed as 1 of 9 public health leaders to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s expert advisory group on women’s & children’s health, charged with evaluating and reporting global progress against maternal and child mortality. More recently, she served as the Host & Producer of Civic Rx, a podcast on health equity and social justice that featured long-form interviews with leaders ranging from Dr. Anthony Fauci to Navajo Nation President Jonathan Nez — its listeners spanning 40+ countries. At the same time, Dr. Hathi cared for COVID-19 patients as a resident physician at Massachusetts General Hospital and a faculty member at Harvard Medical School, where she also launched and led a voter education and mobilization initiative for providers and their patients. She has served on numerous national boards related to public service and public health, and today maintains a role as a founding board member of Indiaspora. Dr. Hathi has spoken at TEDWomen, the World Health Assembly, and the United Nations, among other venues. And during the first two years of the pandemic, she appeared regularly as a medical commentator for CNN, BBC, CBS News, and Yahoo! News.
Dr. Hathi holds a B.S. with honors from Yale University and an M.D./ M.B.A. from Stanford University, where she studied as a Harry S. Truman Scholar and Paul & Daisy Soros Fellow. Among other honors, she’s been named to the Forbes 30 under 30, Newsweek’s “150 Women Who Shake the World,” Glamour’s Amazing Young Women of the Year, the Muhammad Ali Humanitarian Awards, the National Minority Quality Forum’s 40 Under 40, the World Economic Forum Global Shapers, and the United States Presidential Scholars for her work. She is a delegate of the Academy of Achievement, a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and a member of the Yale University President’s Council on International Activities.