Ankush Sharma

About Ankush Sharma
Ankush Sharma, Co-Founder and COO of Global HEED, Inc. came to the United States as part of California’s immigrant Punjabi Mexican community in Yuba City. Mr. Sharma developed his passion for public health by taking a hands-on approach to battling a variety of different issues that he took an interest in. When he saw tragedy in New Orleans he felt motivated to initiate and lead the first ever CalCorps Alternative Break to the Gulf Coast for Hurricane Katrina Relief. He taught a course through the Democratic Education at Cal program highlighting the social and economic situation in the United States Gulf Coast before and after the onset of Hurricane Katrina and helped to raise over $50,000 for the cause and this short term program turned into the larger KARE program called the Katrina Awareness and Relief Effort (K.A.R.E.). In an effort to create a forum for students to initiate their own global health relief programs he created the Humanitarians for Oppressed Populations in Emergency (H.O.P.E.). Passionate about under-represented and disadvantaged immigrant populations, Mr. Sharma has been an active mentor with the IAM-Intelligent, Aware, and Motivated, an outreach program aimed towards disadvantaged minority high school students throughout California interested in advancing their education at UC Berkeley. Mr. Sharma met Zain Ahmed on a service-learning trip to Guatemala after being inspired by the all-women Board of Directors of Curamericas Guatemala. Since this fateful meeting, the two have been working together to ameliorate infant and maternal health and family planning in Guatemala. They have been working in collaboration with Curamericas Guatemala, a non-profit organization funded for women and children’s health in Central America, to build health centers in rural villages in Guatemala. Mr. Sharma is a student of the Health Careers Program at Harvard University. He currently serves on the Board of Directors of the Hepatitis B Initiative in Boston, working towards liver cancer and hepatitis B awareness among the northern California and Boston Asian and Pacific Islander community. Mr. Sharma has presented Global HEED at the inaugural Clinton Global Initiative University Meeting as well as at the Social Entrepreneurship Conference at the Harvard Business School and is currently the Harvard University Campus Representative for the Clinton Global Initiative University.