Jemilah Mahmood

Dr Jemilah Mahmood is a medical professional with over two decades of crisis-management experience in health, disaster and conflict settings.

Together with being Professor and Executive Director of the Sunway Centre for Planetary Health at Sunway University in Malaysia, Dr Mahmood holds advisory roles in the Government of Malaysia within Foreign Policy, Health and Climate Change. Meanwhile, she advises Air Asia on sustainability and is a national advisor to the Malaysian Red Crescent Society. More globally she is a respected member of the board of Roche in Switzerland, the Norwegian Refugee Council, the World Economic Forum’s Global Future Council for Responsible Resource Use, and a Global Ambassador for the Humanitarian Grand Bargain.

Dr Jemilah Mahmood’s previous appointments include Under Secretary General for Partnerships at the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), Chief of the World Humanitarian Summit secretariat at the United Nations, and Chief of the Humanitarian Response Branch at UNFPA. She was Special Advisor to the Prime Minister of Malaysia on Public Health in 2020-2021; founder of MERCY Malaysia, a southern-based international humanitarian organisation; and former Senior Fellow at the Humanitarian Futures Programme, Kings College London and Khazanah Research in Malaysia.

Over time, Dr Mahmood has received multiple national and international awards, including the prestigious Malaysian Merdeka Award (2015), the inaugural Isa Award for Humanity (2013) from the Kingdom of Bahrain, and the Gandhi-King-Ikeda Award from Morehouse College, USA. For her contribution to peace, community development and humanitarian work, she was awarded the ASEAN Prize in 2019.

Dr Jemilah Mahmood graduated as a Doctor of Medicine (MD) from the National University of Malaysia, has a Masters in Obstetrics and Gynaecology from the same university, and is a Fellow of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists United Kingdom. She completed executive education at the International Management and Development Centre, IMD Lausanne.