Akili Hinson is an award-winning physician, entrepreneur, and author on a mission to fix what's broken in American healthcare. His work has earned him recognition as an Obama Foundation Leader, one of Crain's Notable Healthcare Leaders, Business Insider's 30 Leaders Under 40 in Healthcare, and a Goldman Sachs MBA Fellow. He holds a BA from Georgetown University, an MD from Cornell Medical College, and an MBA from Columbia Business School. His debut book, Overlooked: A Memoir on Heritage, Medicine, and the Meaning of Loss, is forthcoming.

Akili decided he would become a doctor at age eight, inspired by his third-grade teacher's husband, a cardiologist who took time to encourage a rambunctious, curious kid. His mother and grandmother nurtured that dream into reality.

His heroes are physicians who refused the limitations of others. Including Dr. Daniel Hale Williams, who performed the first successful open-heart surgery in America, and Dr. Mae Jemison, who became the first Black woman in space. He is also inspired by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Paul Kalanithi, whose works are influential. Both showed him that medicine could be a launching pad, not a ceiling.

After his surgical residency at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital and graduating from business school, Akili joined McKinsey & Company's healthcare practice, where he led initiatives that identified hundreds of millions in savings while improving care quality for millions of Medicaid members across the country. But consulting on the system's problems wasn't enough. Akili wanted to create something that could actually solve them.

Akili is the Founder and CEO of a new venture making exceptional healthcare affordable and accessible, starting in New York City. He was previously the founder and CEO of a venture capital-backed startup that delivered high-quality care to overlooked people and places across the United States. Akili led all aspects of the business—strategy, operations, fundraising, product development—and built a values-driven culture of more than one hundred team members.

Akili is a New Yorker, raised just outside the city and planted in it for more than two decades. He is the son of a sharecropper. He is a child produced by the hopes of the Great Migration—his mother's family among the early waves north, his father's following later. He has called Harlem home for more than fifteen years, where he lives with his wife, Shante, and their two daughters.