Larry Brilliant

Dr. Larry Brilliant is a physician and epidemiologist, CEO of Pandefense Advisory, Chair of the Advisory Board of the NGO Ending Pandemics, and a CNN Medical Analyst. He also serves on the board of the Skoll Foundation. Dr. Brilliant was previously the president and CEO of the Skoll Global Threats Fund, vice president of Google, and the founding executive director of Google.org. He co-founded the Seva Foundation, an NGO whose programs have given back sight to more than 5 million blind people in two dozen countries. In addition, he co-founded The Well, a progenitor of today's social media platforms. Earlier in his career, Dr. Brilliant was an associate professor of epidemiology and international health planning at the University of Michigan. Dr. Brilliant lived in India for nearly a decade where he was a key member of the successful WHO Smallpox Eradication Programme for SE Asia as well as the WHO Polio Eradication Programme.

He was chairman of the National Biosurveillance Advisory Committee, which was created by the presidential directive of President George W. Bush, he was a member of the World Economic Forum's Agenda Council on Catastrophic Risk, and a "First Responder" for CDC's bioterrorism response effort. Recent awards include the TED Prize, Time magazine's 100 Most Influential People, "International Public Health Hero," and four honorary doctorates. He has lectured at Oxford, Harvard, Berkeley, and many other colleges, speaking at the Royal Society, the Pentagon, NIH, the United Nations, and some of the largest companies and nonprofits all over the world. He has written for Forbes, the Wall Street Journal, the Guardian, and other magazines and peer-reviewed journals and was part of the Global Business Network where he learned scenario planning.

Dr. Brilliant is the author of “Sometimes Brilliant,” a memoir about working to eradicate smallpox, and a guide to managing vaccination programs entitled “The Management of Smallpox Eradication.”