![[object Object] Neil M. Vora, M.D.](https://cdn.sanity.io/images/71jmx9y3/production/2dfa6335c184eacaeed39417ca300366083da1ee-1384x1905.jpg?auto=format&fit=max&q=75&w=692)
Neil M. Vora, M.D.
Neil Vora, MD, is the senior advisor for One Health at Conservation International.
He served for nearly a decade with the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), including as an Epidemic Intelligence Service officer and a commander in the US Public Health Service. Vora deployed for CDC to Liberia in 2014 and to the Democratic Republic of the Congo in 2019 to assist in the responses to the two largest Ebola outbreaks ever. He also led the investigation of a newly discovered smallpox-like virus in the country of Georgia in 2013. In 2020, Vora was asked by then New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio to develop and lead its COVID-19 contact tracing program, through which he oversaw a team of over 3,000 people that traced more than 700,000 affected New Yorkers.
Vora is currently the executive director of the Preventing Pandemics at the Source Coalition, a co-chair of the Lancet Commission on Prevention of Viral Spillover, an associate editor at the CDC’s Emerging Infectious Diseases journal, an adjunct professor of Internal Medicine and Infectious Diseases at Columbia University, and a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He sits on the Board of Directors for the Global Health Council. He was previously a Presidential Leadership Scholar. He still sees patients in a public tuberculosis clinic in New York City. He has published more than 80 articles in leading outlets such as the New York Times, Nature, New England Journal of Medicine and The Lancet. In 2023, he delivered a TED talk on how stopping deforestation is a critical intervention for preventing pandemics and mitigating climate change.
Outside of work, Vora loves to spend time with his rescue pets and to train in Brazilian jiu jitsu.