Dr Ronke Akerele is a distinguished and visionary leader dedicated to transforming lives and strengthening organizations across the public and private sectors. With extensive board-level and executive experience, she is recognized for her expertise in governance, fifinancial oversight, strategic planning, culture and service transformation, and system-wide collaboration.

As National Director of Experience and Engagement at NHS England, she plays a pivotal role in shaping and delivering the world’s largest workforce strategy, focused on improving retention, staff engagement, and workplace culture for 1.3 million NHS employees. Her career is defined by leading high-impact initiatives that improve access to services, patient health outcomes, reduce disparities, enhance patient-centred care, and create positive, inclusive environments where staff can thrive.

Dr. Akerele also holds prominent Non-Executive Director positions, including at Goldsmiths, University of London, where she provides strategic oversight on governance, fifinancial sustainability, and capability development. In her role at the WHO Collaborating Centre, she provides expert guidance on global workforce development, quality improvement, and health system strengthening.

Beyond her professional leadership, she is a passionate advocate for diversity, empowerment, and career advancement. As Co-Founder of OJA Group, she champions programme that support Black and ethnic minority women in building confidence, developing skills, and accessing opportunities that accelerate their careers.

With a Doctorate in Organizational Change and an Executive MBA from Imperial College London—where she is also an honorary lecturer—Dr. Akerele blends academic rigour with deep practical experience. Her career spans senior roles in transformation, innovation, performance management, and quality improvement, earning recognition for driving award-winning service models and embedding cultures of excellence.

A dynamic strategist, innovator, and champion for meaningful change, Dr. Ronke Akerele continues to inspire progress, empower people, and shape a brighter future through every organisation and community she serves.

Isabel Rocha Pimenta, MD, MBA, is an Assistant Professor of Medicine at Johns Hopkins University and a hospitalist physician at Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center, where she serves as Director of Strategy and Digital Health for the Division of Hospital Medicine. Her work focuses on the practical implementation of artificial intelligence in clinical and operational settings, including AI-driven hospital workflows, ambient documentation, and real-world data research in collaboration with academic medical centers in Brazil and the United States.

A recognized voice in responsible clinical AI adoption, Dr. Pimenta bridges the worlds of medicine, technology, and health systems strategy. Prior to her clinical career, she spent over a decade as a Health Specialist at the World Bank Group, leading health system reform initiatives across multiple regions.

She holds a medical degree from the Universidade de São Paulo (FMUSP), completed internal medicine residency at Johns Hopkins Hospital through the Osler Program, and holds an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.

Dr. Milton Chen is CEO and cofounder of VSee - the no code, low code EMR + telehealth + AI tech stack used by TelaDoc, McKesson, GE, Shell, Optum, DaVita, etc. Dr. Chen completed his PhD research at Stanford on conversational cues that create trust over video calling, and also wrote the first version of VSee there.  Dr. Chen is the co-author of XMPP video standard, where XMPP is used by Facebook, Google, etc.  Dr. Chen is the co-creator and moderator of the United Nations telemedicine course, in partnership with UNITAR.  Dr. Chen has given hundreds of invited talks including keynotes at Arab Health and Health 2.0.  He has deployed VSee for Hillary Clinton, Angelina Jolie, Ban Ki-moon, the rock band Linkin Park, and former President Obama’s Inauguration.  Dr. Chen has traveled to over 50 countries deploying telemedicine in the field, including 3 trips to Iraq, and 2 trips to Syria.

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Dr. Chen led the design of the telemedicine system for the NASA Space Station, where VSee has been in continuous operation for over 10 years.  VSee also holds the world record for the longest distance video call from the Artemis II mission from the Moon to Earth.  VSee also created the disaster EMR + telemedicine + AI system for the USA Health and Human Services, where VSee is used for all federal disasters such as earthquakes and wildfires. VSee is also the end-to-end software used by the USA Ebola response in Kenya.

Dr. Iyabo Tinubu-Karch is a physician executive and former healthcare CEO whose career sits at the intersection of clinical operations, advanced technology, and the economics of scaling healthcare systems. She brings to this conversation not a theoretical view of AI in healthcare, but the operator's perspective: what it actually takes to deploy data-driven and intelligent technologies inside complex, regulated clinical institutions — and to make them deliver measurable value.

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As Chief Executive Officer of Sidra Medicine, Qatar's sovereign-funded national women's and children's academic medical center affiliated with Weill Cornell Medicine, she led the institution's precision-medicine strategy and oversaw the implementation of clinical-grade whole genome sequencing as a diagnostic-grade test, the establishment of a gene therapy center, the launch of genomics and translational research programs, and partnerships to advance AI-driven healthcare innovation. She drove enterprise-wide digital and operational transformation, aligning technology platforms with clinical need, building enterprise data and performance frameworks, and embedding the governance and workforce discipline that responsible technology adoption requires. Under her leadership Sidra achieved Joint Commission International reaccreditation and launched pioneering programs in genomics, gene therapy, and pediatric hematopoietic stem cell transplant.

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She is certified in health information technology, has led international programs on the application of technology in clinical medicine, and previously served on the Washington State Medical Association's Health Informatics committees and as a clinical instructor at the University of Washington School of Public Health. She founded and scaled a US physician-services platform across more than 20 states, and has advised on health-systems improvement internationally,including in Nigeria.

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Her perspective bridges the developed and emerging-market healthcare contexts — making her especially attuned to how AI can address workforce shortages, leapfrog legacy infrastructure, and expand access responsibly. She has been listed in Forbes Middle East's 100 Most Powerful Businesswomen in 2024 and 2025.

Dr. Dessalegn Melesse is a global health leader, based at the University of Manitoba, Canada, working at the intersection of global public health, complex data ecosystems, digital innovation, evidence-to-policy, and health systems transformation. He architects data-driven digital platforms that transform health systems, converting fragmented, multi-source data into actionable intelligence that strengthens decision-making, expands equitable access to services, and optimizes performance. His current work pioneers how responsible, locally informed, and context-aware AI can build on digital foundations to elevate service quality, system efficiency, and health outcomes across Africa.

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As Principal Investigator of a US$1 million Gates Foundation-funded initiative, he led a deep, ground-level systems-building effort embedded within Ethiopia's own health architecture, working hands-on from design and proof of concept through regional-scale deployment across 155+ districts, integrating data from 6,500+ health facilities and serving 25+ million people. As Ethiopia Country Lead and one of the core global technical team members with Countdown to 2030, he contributes to efforts shaping the analytical frameworks and strategy that drive evidence generation and health systems performance across 30+ African countries. He has authored and co-authored 35+ peer-reviewed papers in high-impact journals and led Ethiopia's example case study - alongside five countries across Africa and South Asia - examining the key drivers and design principles behind accelerated progress in maternal and newborn health. He is the founding archetc of a recently launched institute  of data innovation, a platform positioned to convene governments, academia, funders, and the private sector to architect, align, and catalyze data-driven innovation and sustainable health system transformation across Africa.