Neil Vora

Neil Vora, MD, is the Executive Director for the Preventing Pandemics at the Source Coalition (PPATS) and Orchestrator in Residence at Integral. He served for nearly a decade with the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), including as an Epidemic Intelligence Service officer and a Commander in the US Public Health Service. Neil deployed for CDC to Liberia in 2014 and to the Democratic Republic of the Congo in 2019 to assist in the responses to the two largest Ebola outbreaks ever. He also led the investigation of a newly discovered smallpox-like virus in the country of Georgia in 2013. In 2020, Neil was asked by New York City (NYC) Mayor Bill de Blasio to develop and lead NYC’s COVID-19 contact tracing program, through which he oversaw a team of over 3,000 staff that traced more than 700,000 affected New Yorkers. He is currently a Co-Chair of the Lancet/PPATS Commission on Prevention of Viral Spillover and an Associate Editor at CDC’s Emerging Infectious Diseases journal. He was previously a Presidential Leadership Scholar. He still sees patients in a public tuberculosis clinic in New York City. He has published more than 100 articles in leading outlets such as the New York Times, Nature, New England Journal of Medicine, and The Lancet. In 2023, he delivered a TED talk on how stopping deforestation is a critical intervention for preventing pandemics and mitigating climate change. In 2025, he was named to the TIME100 Next “World’s Most Influential Rising Stars” list. Outside of work, Neil loves to train in Brazilian jiu jitsu.