Dr. Roopa Dhatt is a passionate advocate for women’s leadership and gender equality in global health. She is a leading voice in the movement to correct the gender imbalance in global health leadership. She is a practicing Internal Medicine physician in California and Washington D.C. She has faculty appointment, Assistant Professor at Stanford University. She has also been recognized as a Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum. (Link: https://www.weforum.org/people/roopa-dhatt/) and recognized in the Gender Equality Top 100, the most influential people in global policy 2019.

Determined to build a movement to transform women’s leadership opportunities in health, Dr. Dhatt co-founded Women in Global Health in 2015. Today, Women in Global Health has 65 chapters and in more than 60+ countries and continues to grow. Dr. Dhatt, served as the Executive Director from April 2015 to May 2024, where she led the global team work and a network of WGH chapters in every region to challenge power and privilege for gender equity in health by mobilizing a diverse group of emerging women health leaders, by advocating existing global health leaders commit to transforming their own institutions, and by holding these leaders to account.  With chapters in all regions, Women in Global Health is changing the conversation about women’s leadership in health at global, national, and local levels.

Dr. Dhatt is a regular speaker at global health events and has published her views on gender equality widely, including in the Lancet and British Medical Journal (BMJ). She is the section editor for Gender and Health in PLOS Global Public Health Journal and on the Advisory Board for Cell Med. She was also a member of the Lancet COVID-19 Commission, Global Health Diplomacy and Cooperation Task Force and the Women7 advisory body to the Germany’s G7 Presidency in 2022 and Japan’s G7 Presidency in 2023. Dr. Dhatt also served on several advisory bodies advancing gender equality in health; She is was on the United States President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) Scientific Advisory Board, is a member of the President Council of Pathfinder International. She was invited as a public delegate the historical United States Government Delegation to the United Nations 65th Commission of Status of Women Meeting in March 2021.

She was formerly on the United Nations Global Council on SDG 3: Good Health and Wellbeing, the Strategic Advisory Committee for the Global Health Workforce Network and co-chair of the Gender Equity Hub, at the World Health Organization. She served a key implementing partner role in the first Women Leaders in Global Health Conference in 2017 at Stanford University, including being on the Steering Committees in 2019 and 2018 at London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and later to join the WomenLift Health Conference 2020 and 2019 advisory roles. She is a Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation She is a Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Goalkeepers.

SPEAKING TOPICS INCLUDE: 

Women’s Leadership

Gender Equity in Medicine

Gender Equity in the Health and Care Workforce

Gender Responsiveness Health Systems

Gender Responsive Health Security

Advocacy

Transformative Leadership

Global Health