Asad Lilani

Asad Lilani [he/him] was on the corporate finance track, with a career trajectory pointing straight upward. Then he looked toward Tanzania, where he was born, and thought about how lucky he’d been. He was one of the few who’d made it to the US, where a first-class education had given him opportunities that put life for most Tanzanians in sharp relief. Back home, he knew, preventable deaths occurred on a scale that should shame the world, and international aid lasted just long enough for a press release. “I wanted to do something for Africa,” he says. He went looking for a graduate program with a solutions-based treatment of Africa’s challenges. When he couldn’t find one, he turned to Gallatin, determined to build it himself.

The decision to attend Gallatin was risky (read: expensive), but it completely remade Lilani’s future. Soon after his arrival, NYU's Africa House welcomed H.E. Jakaya Kikwete, former Tanzanian President, as its inaugural Former-President-in-Residence. A couple of interviews later, Lilani found himself, as if in a dream, ghostwriting the former President's book. “For months, I had the privilege of working closely with him,” he says. “I knew my old life was over.” The book’s success drew Lilani to The Access Challenge—an organization reforming healthcare access across Africa.

Hired as a director, Lilani was soon named, at 32, The Access Challenge’s youngest-ever CEO. Under his stewardship, the organization has forged partnerships with the African Union, Africa CDC, and the UN, expanding healthcare access for roughly 75 million people. Despite historic funding cuts to global-health initiatives, Lilani is part of a new generation of leaders using this crisis as an opportunity to define—through innovation and technology—a new era of global health. “My first goal,” he says, “is to save lives. But I also want to build the movement that will carry this fight forward."