PRADEEP KAKKATTIL

Director of the Office of Innovation, Joint United Nations Programme

Pradeep Kakkattil serves as the Director of the Office of Innovation at the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS). In this capacity, Mr Kakkattil is responsible for building and implementing an innovation culture designed to generate new and innovative solutions for the broader health and HIV response globally. He is also the co-founder of the Health Innovation Exchange (HIEx), a multilayered platform that connects governments, policy makers, innovators and investors to leverage innovations and technology towards scaling up access to health. Over the last three years HIEx has helped raise over US200m in investments for scaling up health innovations and bridge innovators in the global South and North with ministries of health to facilitate adoption of health technologies to fast-track progress towards SDGs including addressing the COVID pandemic. Pradeep started his career in India as a print and television journalist and filmmaker. He gave up his media career when a close friend tested positive for HIV in the early 1990s and started to respond to the potential threat of HIV to people of his generation. He helped design and develop some of the early interventions with key populations in India. He has since worked in several countries in various capacities and has contributed to health, social empowerment and development.