Chairman and founding president of the Skoll Global Threats Fund, Dr. Larry Brilliant is the former Vice President of Google and former Executive Director of Google.org. In his book, Sometimes Brilliant: The Impossible Adventure of a Spiritual Seeker and Visionary Physician Who Helped Conquer the Worst Disease in History, he reflects on his remarkable life and his extraordinary experiences as a doctor, innovator, philanthropist and cultural revolutionary.

Larry is an MD and MPH, board-certified in preventive medicine. He lived and worked in India for ten years and was on the UN team that led the successful World Health Organization smallpox eradication program. He did his undergraduate in Philosophy at the University of Michigan, his MD at Wayne Medical School and went back to do his MPH at the U of M, where he later joined the faculty.

In 1985, while in Ann Arbor, Larry founded the Seva Foundation, an international NGO, whose projects have given back sight to nearly 3 million people worldwide through their work to eliminate preventable and curable blindness. Also in Ann Arbor, he co-founded The Well, a pioneering digital community that holds a special place in the history of online communities and he holds a telecom patent related to online transactions.

He also worked for WHO and UNICEF in polio eradication and blindness and volunteered as a physician during several disasters, including the Asian Tsunami in Sri Lanka and Indonesia, and the Bihar Floods. After the anthrax attacks in the U.S. in 2001, he volunteered as a first responder for CDC’s bio-terrorism effort.

Larry was founding chair of the National Bio-Surveillance Advisory Subcommittee and is a member of the World Economic Forum Global Advisory Council on Catastrophic Risks. He was elected to the Council on Foreign Relations in 2008. His accolades include the TED Prize in 2006, Time magazine’s “100 Most Influential People” and “Top 20 Scientists and Thinkers” (2008), UN Global Leadership Award (2008), Peacemaker Award (2005), and many others.