Dr. Atul Gawande is an acclaimed surgeon, public health leader and writer, and a preeminent voice on improving healthcare. His lessons from the field of medicine have made him one of the country’s most sought-after speakers across all industries. 

As a writer, Dr. Gawande is celebrated for his eloquence, depth of thought and research, and broad influence. He was a longtime staff writer on medicine and science for The New Yorker magazine. He has also written four award-winning New York Times best-sellers: Complications (a National Book Award finalist), Better, The Checklist Manifesto, and the runaway global bestseller, Being Mortal. He is the winner of two National Magazine Awards and the Lewis Thomas Award for writing about science. He is now working on his next book, on the art and science of implementation and behavior change, due out in 2026. 

Gawande was a practicing general and endocrine surgeon at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, the Samuel O. Their Professor of Surgery at Harvard Medical School, and professor of Health Policy & Management at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. He founded Ariadne Labs, a joint center for health systems innovation, and Lifebox, a nonprofit organization making surgery safer globally. From 2018-2020, he was CEO of Haven, the Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway, and JPMorgan Chase healthcare venture. He was also Assistant Administrator, leading the Global Health Bureau, at the U.S. Agency for International Development. In this role, he oversaw all USAID global health programs, including work to end HIV, TB, malaria, and polio; to advance primary health care and maternal and child health; to sustain health systems in conflicts worldwide from Ukraine to Haiti; and to stop 21 deadly disease outbreaks during his tenure. He now returns to the Brigham and Women’s Hospital as the John and Cyndy Fish Professor of Surgery, and to Ariadne Labs as Distinguished Professor in Residence. 

Dr. Gawande’s approach is both comprehensive and universally relevant. With his extensive experience in medicine, he offers valuable insights on a wide array of topics, including making complex decisions, enhancing personal performance, improving organizational effectiveness, and scaling innovation. His work resonates across disciplines, providing actionable guidance for individuals and organizations alike. 

AUTHOR BOOK: Being Mortal  

In Being Mortal, bestselling author Atul Gawande tackles the hardest challenge of his profession: how medicine can not only improve life but also the process of its ending.

Medicine has triumphed in modern times, transforming birth, injury, and infectious disease from harrowing to manageable. But in the inevitable condition of aging and death, the goals of medicine seem too frequently to run counter to the interest of the human spirit. Nursing homes, preoccupied with safety, pin patients into railed beds and wheelchairs. Hospitals isolate the dying, checking for vital signs long after the goals of cure have become moot. Doctors, committed to extending life, continue to carry out devastating procedures that in the end extend suffering.

Gawande, a practicing surgeon, addresses his profession's ultimate limitation, arguing that quality of life is the desired goal for patients and families. Gawande offers examples of freer, more socially fulfilling models for assisting the infirm and dependent elderly, and he explores the varieties of hospice care to demonstrate that a person's last weeks or months may be rich and dignified.

Full of eye-opening research and riveting storytelling, Being Mortal asserts that medicine can comfort and enhance our experience even to the end, providing not only a good life but also a good end.