Full Name Nina Vasan | Nationality United States | |
Born January 27, 1984 (age 33)
Washington, D.C., U.S. ( 1984-01-27 ) Alma mater Harvard University
Harvard Medical School
Stanford Graduate School of Business Residence San Francisco Bay Area, California, United States Books Do Good Well: Your Guide to Leadership, Action, and Social Innovation Education Harvard University, Stanford Graduate School of Business, Harvard Medical School | ||
Nina Vasan, MD (born January 27, 1984) is an American psychiatrist and author of the Amazon #1 best-selling book Do Good Well: Your Guide to Leadership, Action and Innovation. She is a Resident Physician in Psychiatry at Stanford Hospital and Clinics and in the MBA program at Stanford Graduate School of Business. She currently resides in the San Francisco Bay Area and has advised companies and startups including McKinsey & Co and Lyra Health.
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Early Years
Vasan was born in Washington, DC, spent her childhood in Vienna, West Virginia, and attended Parkersburg High School. At age 16, she started a local group in Wood County to engage teenagers in the American Cancer Society that grew into a nationwide network of teen volunteers leading efforts in education, advocacy, and service. For this work, Vasan was honored as Prudential Spirit of Community Awards National Honoree, an Olympic torchbearer, and a USA Today All-USA Academic First Team member.
Vasan was active in the Girl Scouts since age 7 and received the highest honor in Girl Scouting, the Gold Award Young Woman of Distinction, from Justice Sandra Day O’Connor in 2002. She also participated in the America’s Junior Miss pageant (now Distinguished Young Women) as West Virginia’s Junior Miss.
In 2002, Vasan won the $50,000 Intel Foundation Young Scientist award, the top grand prize award at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair, for her work with Harvard Medical School professor Jeremy Wolfe on visual learning, which she conducted at the Research Science Institute. She also received the Seaborg (now Dudley Herschbach) SIYSS Award, which led to her presenting her research during the 2002 Nobel Prize ceremonies in Stockholm.
Education
Vasan entered Harvard College and graduated with an A.B. in Government with Honors in 2006. She was named one of the “Top 10 College Women” in the US by Glamour Magazine. She earned an M.D. from Harvard Medical School, where she was voted by classmates as a student commencement speaker.
In 2016, she entered the 2-year full-time MBA program at Stanford Graduate School of Business.
Career
During the 2008 Presidential Election, Vasan served as a Co-Leader of Battleground State Outreach for the Obama campaign’s Health Policy Advisory Committee. On the international level, she worked with Director-General Dr. Margaret Chan at the World Health Organization in Geneva on strategy for advancing the Millennium Development Goals.
After graduating from Harvard Medical School in 2013, she entered residency training in Psychiatry at Stanford University Hospital in Stanford, California. In 2015, Vasan launched The Psychiatry Innovation Lab at the Annual Meeting of the American Psychiatric Association, the world’s largest psychiatric organization. The Lab is an incubator that catalyzes the formation of innovative ventures to transform mental healthcare.
She regularly advises companies and startups including McKinsey & Co and Lyra Health and has lectured on entrepreneurship at numerous institutions including Harvard University, Stanford University, UC Berkeley, Babson College, and Hong Kong Polytechnic University. MedTech Boston named her a "40 Under 40 Healthcare Innovator" in 2016.
Book
Vasan’s experience as a young civic entrepreneur led to her co-authoring the #1 Amazon best-selling book Do Good Well: Your Guide to Leadership, Action and Innovation on how to maximize impact in solving social problems. Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Muhammad Yunus called the book "the primer for social innovation."