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Dr. Aparna Ahuja
Dr. Aparna Ahuja, MD is a physician, executive, and global healthcare leader with nearly three decades of experience spanning diagnostics, MedTech, medical affairs, clinical strategy, public health, and healthcare innovation. She has held senior leadership roles across the healthcare and life sciences industry, including Divisional Vice President at Abbott, Chief Medical Officer at T2 Biosystems, and Worldwide Vice President at BD. Her expertise spans clinical development, regulatory and reimbursement strategy, evidence generation, medical affairs, and advancing equitable access to healthcare solutions globally. Dr. Ahuja is widely recognized for her commitment to patient-centered innovation, scientific excellence, and mentoring the next generation of healthcare leaders. She also co-leads Abbott’s Diversity in Research Office, helping advance more inclusive clinical research and ensuring that the science of medicine works for everyone.
Dr. Ahuja’s commitment to service extends well beyond the healthcare industry. She serves on the Board of Directors of Freedom United, the world’s largest community dedicated to ending human trafficking and modern slavery, where she contributes to global advocacy efforts focused on human dignity and social justice.
Ask Aparna what recharges her, and she’ll tell you: meaningful conversations, discovering new places, and being surrounded by people from different walks of life. Outside of work, she is an avid traveler and passionate mentor who finds equal joy in exploring new cultures and helping young professionals find their footing. She believes deeply that science and human connection are not opposites; they are, at their best, inseparable.
True to her mission, she has a unique ability to bring people together across generations, disciplines, and geographies and make everyone in the room feel like they belong. She is also actively involved in initiatives centered on public health equity, mentorship, and expanding access to healthcare innovation. Throughout her career, she has supported nonprofit and community efforts focused on underserved populations, diversity in clinical research, and leadership development for emerging professionals in medicine and science.
Aparna comes from a lifelong belief that every individual deserves to be understood, valued, and empowered— especially those whose experiences or challenges may not fit within traditional systems. Across nearly three decades in healthcare, MedTech, diagnostics, and public health, she has seen firsthand how compassion, inclusion, and advocacy can transform lives. She has watched patients and families navigate systems that were never designed with them in mind. She has also seen the profound cost of stigma in delayed care, in silence, and in isolation.
A Different Mind deeply resonates with her because of its understanding that art and culture can often reach people in ways clinical language cannot. A film, a story, or a performance can create connection, empathy, and understanding far beyond what a diagnosis alone can achieve.
She is honored to support this mission because a different mind is not a lesser mind. Often, it is an extraordinary one.