Prof. Magdy Ishak, Chair

Prof. Ishak was born in Egypt and currently lives in London, where is the current Executive Chairman of Optive Group. He graduated from Ain Shams Medical School in Egypt and was trained as an Orthopedic and Spinal Surgeon in the United Kingdom.

During his medical career, he pioneered work on lower limb graded pressure stockings, which reduce the risk of DVT and Pulmonary Embolism; currently, these stockings are used worldwide in all type of surgeries. Prof. Ishak was instrumental in the adaptation of the ISO 9001 in healthcare accreditation, and he was chosen by his peers as an Honorary Companion Charter at the Institute of Management, where he also teaches Healthcare Economics to MBA students. He was made Freeman of the City of Glasgow for his civic contributions, including work as a senior adjudicator in disputes between government and private healthcare providers in the UK. Prof. Ishak is one of the early participants in PPP and has three major projects with the British National Health Service, including a project with the Neuroscience Institute in Preston University.

Prof. Ishak is the Chairman of the Egyptian Medical Society-UK and Vice Chairman of The British Egyptian Society. He is a member of the Institute of Directors-UK and the Supervisory Board of the London-Middle East Institute at London University. He is the Founder and former CEO of Covenant Healthcare Group.

Prof. Sir Magdi Yacoub

Prof. Sir Magdi Yacoub was born in Egypt and is currently a Professor of Cardiothoracic Surgery at the National Heart and Lung Institute, Imperial College London.

He is the Founder and Director of Research at the Harefield Heart Science Centre (Magdi Yacoub Institute), overseeing over 60 scientists and students in the areas of tissue engineering, myocardial regeneration, stem cell biology, end stage heart failure and transplant immunology. He is also founder and director of the Magdi Yacoub Research Network, which created the Qatar Cardiovascular Research Centre in collaboration with the Qatar Foundation and Hamad Medical Corporation. Prof. Yacoub established the largest heart and lung transplantation program in the world, where more than 2,500 transplant operations have been performed, and he has also developed novel operations for a number of complex congenital heart anomalies.
Research led by Prof. Yacoub includes tissue engineering heart valves, myocardial regeneration, novel left ventricular assist devices and wireless sensors.

Prof. Yacoub graduated from Cairo University Medical School, later training in London and holding an Assistant Professorship at the University of Chicago. He is a former BHF Professor of Cardiothoracic Surgery and Consultant Cardiothoracic Surgeon at Harefield Hospital and Royal Brompton Hospital.
Prof. Yacoub was knighted for his services to medicine and surgery in 1991, awarded Fellowship of the Academy of Medical Sciences in 1998 and Fellowship of The Royal Society in 1999. A lifetime achievement award in recognition of his contribution to medicine was presented to Prof. Yacoub by the Secretary of State for Health in the same year.

Prof. Yacoub has an active interest in global healthcare delivery with particular focus developing programs in Egypt, the Gulf Region, Mozambique, Ethiopia and Jamaica. He is Founder and President of Chain of Hope, the Magdi Yacoub Heart Foundation and Aswan Heart Centre, a charitable tertiary cardiac in Upper Egypt that serves underprivileged Egyptian pediatric and adult patients, as well as patients in need from around the world.

Dr. Hany Findakly

Dr. Findakly, is Vice Chairman and Director of the Clinton Group Inc., an investment management firm in New York. For 30 years, he has advised many governments, central banks, and international institutions in the fields of portfolio management, capital markets, and risk management.

Dr. Findakly previously served as President of Potomac Babson Inc., as well as senior management positions on Wall Street, including PaineWebber Inc. and Drexel Burnham Lambert. He joined Wall Street from the World Bank in Washington, DC, where he served as Director of the Investment Department and Chief Investment Officer.

Prior to this, Dr. Findakly served on the MIT faculty and as OAS Visiting Associate Professor at the Catholic University in Rio de Janeiro. He received his Doctor and Master of Science from MIT, where he was Goulbenkian Foundation Fellow and elected to Sigma Xi and Chi Epsilon. He graduated magna cum laude from Baghdad University with his Bachelor of Science, Civil Engineering.

Dr. Findakly serves on several academic and public interest boards, including the Middle East Institute, Harvard University Center for Middle East Studies, and University of Maryland Sadat Chair for Peace and International Development. He is the former President of the Arab Bankers Association of North America, and his international activities include the UNDP Steering Committee on Private Finance for Human Development, UN Summit on Financing for Development, and the Council on Foreign Relations Task Forces on the Balkans 2010 and Middle East Trade & Investments.

A member of the Council on Foreign Relations, Dr. Findakly has lectured worldwide on issues of international development, global capital markets, global investing, and financial risk management.

Dr. Thoralf M. Sundt

Dr. Sundt is the Edward D. Churchill Professor of Surgery and Chief of Cardiac Surgery at Massachusetts General Hospital, a position he has held since 2011.

A graduate of the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, he trained in Surgery at the Massachusetts General Hospital and in Cardiothoracic Surgery at Washington University in St. Louis. Following an additional year of training in transplantation and advanced cardiac surgery at the Harefield Hospital with Professor Sir Magdi Yacoub, he joined the faculty at Washington University. During his 7 years at Harefield Hospital, he developed an interest in surgery of the aorta as well as valve repair and arterial grafting for coronary artery disease. In 2001, he relocated to the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, where he advanced to Professor of Surgery and Vice-Chair of the Department of Surgery. He also developed an interest in patient safety, medical error and surgical decision-making.

He is a co-director of the Corrigan Minehan Heart Center and Past-President of the American Association for Thoracic Surgery.

Dr. Andrew ElBardissi

Dr. ElBardissi is a Partner at Deerfield Management and President of the Deerfield Foundation. Dr. ElBardissi works on the structured transactions team with a focus on private investments. Dr. ElBardissi is currently a board director on Neochord, Acutus, Conventus, Farapulse, vWave, Sollis Therapeutics, Axon Therapies, Singular Genomics, Element Sciences, and Epic Sciences.

Before to joining Deerfield, Dr. ElBardissi was an early stage life sciences investor focusing on medical technology and biotechnology and was previously an investment banker in J.P. Morgan’s healthcare practice. He received residency training in General Surgery at Harvard Medical School’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital and in Cardiothoracic Surgery at Stanford University. Dr. ElBardissi has been independently funded by the National Institutes of Health and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, has over 30 publications in leading peer reviewed scientific journals and has presented his research at numerous medical and surgical conferences. He holds an M.D. from the Mayo Clinic, an M.P.H. in Quantitative Methods from Harvard University, an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School and a B.S. with honors in Biology (Phi Beta Kappa) from the Schreyer Honors College at the Pennsylvania State University.

Dr. Amr Awadallah

Dr. Amr Awadallah is the CEO and cofounder of Vectara, a company that is revolutionizing how we seek meaning across all languages of the world using the latest advances in Neural Natural Language Processing and Information Retrieval.

He previously served as VP of Developer Relations for Google Cloud. Prior to joining Google in Nov 2019, Amr co-founded Cloudera in 2008 and as Global CTO, he spent 11 years working closely with enterprises around the world on how to ingest and extract value from big data (he famously coined the concept of “schema-on-read vs schema-on-write”).

He also served as vice president of product intelligence engineering at Yahoo! from 2000-2008. Amr joined Yahoo after they acquired his first startup, Aptivia, in mid-2000 which was a search engine for online product information. Amr received his PhD in EE from Stanford University, and his Bachelor and Master Degrees from Cairo University, Egypt.

Caroline Faraj

Caroline Faraj, Vice President, Editor-in-Chief, joined CNN in 2001. Since then she has overseen the content and management of the CNN Arabic site which she launched in 2002, together with CNN Dubai operation and expansion until present. In 2014, she led the site’s comprehensive re-launch to embrace rapidly evolving consumer needs. She continues to oversee the Dubai operation and expansion.

Based in Dubai, she has overseen CNN Arabic during a time of great regional upheaval, over a period which has encompassed the US-led invasion of Iraq, the Arab spring and the rise of Islamist Militant group ISIS.

Before joining CNN, Faraj’s previous roles included Senior Political Reporter for Al Rai – the leading Arabic daily newspaper in Jordan, Managing Editor for English-language newspaper the Jordan Times and Regional Correspondent for the US Defense News. Faraj has also conceived and hosted Jordan’s first morning television talk show Youm Jadid.

Faraj was born in Amman, Jordan. She has a Bachelor of Arts in Journalism and Mass Communications – Radio and Television from Yarmouk University in Jordan and a Master of Arts in International Journalism from City University London. Faraj is fluent in both Arabic and English.