Khaliya Aga Khan

Through her foundation, Falkora, Khaliya is working to transform society's understanding of mental health issues and push for faster innovation in the field. Her advocacy has earned her a spot on the World Economic Forum's Futures Council on the Future of Health and Healthcare. She was on the braintrust for the Obama White House-sponsored 2016 United State of Women Summit, where she was also a speaker. Other speakers at the daylong event included former President Barack Obama, First Lady Michelle Obama, Warren Buffett and Oprah Winfrey. Khaliya is on the leadership council for the 2017 Solve Global Challenge on Brain Health for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She's also the permanent curator-in-residence on brain health and neurotech for The Near Future Summit.

She's been the recipient of multiple awards, including the Middelthon-Candler Peace Prize, alongside Former First Lady Rosalynn Carter, in 2016 and the inaugural Clare Boothe Luce Award for International Service in 2017.

In 2016, Khaliya was the recipient of the National Monuments Foundation's Middelthon-Candler Peace Prize, alongside Former First Lady Rosalynn Carter, who received the Justice Prize. Additionally, the James J. Dudley Luce Foundation awarded her the first annual Clare Boothe Luce Award for International Service in 2017. In 2016, she was appointed to The World Economic Forum's Expert Advisory Global Futures Council on the Future of Health and Healthcare. Other members include Dame Sally Davies, Chief Medical Officer for England, and Peter Piot, the co-discoverer of the Ebola virus and Time's 2014 Person of the Year, and others.

Khaliya sits on the advisory committee for the world's leading accelerator for neuroscience apps, NeuroLaunch. Khaliya was also on the founding board and continues to sit on the advisory board of Nexus Youth Summit, a global initiative aimed at pairing promising young social entrepreneurs with the communities and capital needed to bring their projects to scale. Nexus has hosted over 20 summits across six continents and has thousands of members from around the world. Khaliya was also on the founding board of Venture for America, a non-profit that pairs recent graduates with startups in economically depressed areas of the U.S. Since its inception in 2011, Venture for America has placed more than 500 fellows in 18 cities nationwide.

A native of New York City, Khaliya graduated with honors from New York University and obtained a Master of Public Health from Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health. From 2006 to 2013, Khaliya was married to Prince Hussain Aga Khan, the son of Prince Karim Aga Khan (Aga Khan IV), spiritual leader to the world's 25 million Nizari Ismaili Shia Muslims. Since her divorce from Prince Hussain in 2013, she continues to practice Islam. As part of her work as for the Aga Khan Development Network, Khaliya travelled throughout Africa and Asia on health and diplomatic missions. In 2005, she worked as a health consultant at Y.R. Gaitonde Centre for AIDS Research and Education in Chennai, India, and in 2004 she researched the links between infectious disease and national security for the Council on Foreign Relations. She also served in the Peace Corps in Bulgaria from 1999-2001, during the country's rocky post-Communist period. In her WIRED 2017 talk and again in her interview on CNN Money Switzerland, Khaliya claims she was the victim of a kidnapping.

Khaliya studied International Politics, European Studies, and Computer Science at New York University, graduating Cum Laude and with Departmental Honors in 1999. As part of her focus on Europe, she spent a year at Institut d'Etudes Politiques (SciencePo) in Paris and a semester at the Centro Linguistico di Firenze in Florence, Italy. At Columbia's Mailman School of Public Health, she focused on urbanism and community health, graduating with honors in 2006.