Atul Gawande

Gawande was born in Brooklyn, New York. He is the son of two Indian immigrants to the United States, both of whom were physicians. When he was young, his family moved to Athens, Ohio. He then earned a bachelor’s degree in biology and political science from Stanford University in 1987 and joined Al Gore’s presidential campaign in 1988. He then became a Rhodes Scholar and earned an M.A. in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics at Oxford. After beginning Harvard Medical School in 1990, Gawande took a brief break to become Bill Clinton’s healthcare lieutenant during the 1992 campaign and then became a senior advisor in the Department of Health and Human Services after Clinton’s inauguration. He returned to medical school in 1993 and then graduated in 1995. Subsequently, Gawande earned a Master of Public health from the Harvard School of Public Health in 1999. After beginning his residency, Gawande began writing for Slate and then contributing to The New Yorker, leading him to write his first book, Complications, in 2002. In 2006, he became a MacArthur Fellow for his work investigating modern surgical practices and medical ethics. In 2007, he became director of the WHO’s effort to reduce surgical deaths. He wrote his second book, Better, in 2007, and then his third, The Checklist Manifesto, in 2009. He published Being Mortal in 2014, which became a #1 New York Times bestseller. In June 2018, he became the CEO for Haven Healthcare, formed by Warren Buffett, Jeff Bezos, and Jamie Dimon. He stepped down from the position in May 2020, and Joe Biden appointed him to his COVID-19 task force in Fall 2020. He is currently a surgeon at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston and lives with his wife Kathleen and three children in Newtown, Massachusetts.