Rajesh (Raj) Ramesh Panjabi was nine years old when he escaped a civil war in his home country of Liberia and immigrated with his family to the United States. He returned to Liberia as a young medical student, cofounding Last Mile Health to save lives in some of the world’s most remote communities by partnering with governments to create national networks of community health professionals. The organization played a key role in battling the West Africa Ebola epidemic, helping to train over 1,000 health workers.
From 2021 to 2023, Panjabi served as White House senior director and special assistant to the president for global health security and biodefense, playing a lead role in executing the 2022 National Biodefense Strategy and American Pandemic Preparedness Plans. He was named one of the “100 Most Influential People in the World” by Time magazine, and was twice named to Fortune magazine’s list of the “World’s 50 Greatest Leaders.”
Panjabi graduated from the University of North Carolina School of Medicine, received an MPH in epidemiology from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and trained at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital. In 2023 he returned to Chapel Hill to deliver the commencement address to UNC’s Gillings School of Global Public Health. “As an immigrant,” he told the graduates, “I deeply believe that we are not defined — as people or as professionals — by the circumstances we face, but rather by how we respond to them. A public health education gives us the tools we need to respond effectively, and now a whole new graduating class is prepared to fight for the health of all.”
