David Aylward

David Aylward is the Senior Advisor, Global Health and Technology, at Ashoka, the 30-year-old international network of social entrepreneurs. He leads two related efforts: a team seeking to solve malnutrition, and Ashoka’s Health for All initiative.  Both initiatives seek to transform the lives of people at the base of the pyramid through new combinations of citizen, public and private organizations, using new disruptively innovative approaches, enabled by modern information and communications technologies, especially wireless and big data. Until March 2011, he was the first Executive Director of the mHealth Alliance. The Alliance is dedicated to enabling quality health, and the delivery of quality health, to the farthest reaches of wireless networks. Its founding partners are the United Nations Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, Vodafone Group Foundation, PEPFAR, HP, and the GSM Association. David has forty years of experience in public policy, information technology, communications, and finance in both the public and private sectors. As Chief Counsel and Staff Director from 1981 to 1985, he led the staff of the House Telecommunications and Finance Subcommittee during the advent of competition in telecommunications, the breakup of AT&T, the emergence of the cable television industry, and the introduction of electronic and competitive securities trading. Prior to joining the mHealth Alliance, he was a Director and Chief Strategist of the non-profit 100 organization COMCARE Emergency Response Alliance, which he founded in 1998. At COMCARE, David helped develop a new vision and interoperable architecture for domestic emergency response of all kinds, including medical, based on modern information technology, broadband, and wireless. He has managed and been a founding owner of radio and satellite companies, and represented a wide range of information, communications, finance and other clients.  David has a BA in Government from Dartmouth College, and a JD with High Honors from George Washington University Law School.