Kunal Sood

Kunal Sood is an executive coach and producer and a known global health expert specialized in global mental health and wellbeing using positive psychology. During his career, he has been focused mainly on the entertainment, healthcare and wellness sectors. He has also served in management and executive roles at two multinational companies in India and the United States, India Forge and Town Sports International; and currently serves on the executive committee at TEDxSF, respectively.

Early life and education
Kunal was born in Chennai, India in 1977. After finishing high school at United World College in Singapore and Saint Kentigern College in Auckland, New Zealand, he moved to the United States, where he earned his B.B.A. in Design Management at the Parsons School of Design in 2004. Later, in 2010, he completed his MA in Counseling Psychology at the California Institute of Integral Studies. In 2011, he earned his MSc in Global Health Sciences at the University of California, San Francisco. In 2013, he finished M.B.A. in Marketing, General Management with a concentration on Innovation and Entrepreneurship at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management.

Work
Upon finishing his undergraduate studies at Parsons the New School for Design, Kunal worked in New York for two years at Town Sports International, also known as New York Sports Club (NYSC). In 2005 he returned to India to work in the family business India Forge. In addition to this he also served as a Clinical Associate at Chennai Kaliappa Hospital in India, with the renowned cardiologist, Dr. TJ Cherian, providing behavioral change and lifestyle modification counseling to underserved patients suffering from heart diseases, diabetes, obesity, and substance abuse.

As of 2012, he serves as a visiting scholar at Partners in Urban Knowledge Action and Research PUKAR, where he works with Harvard, Senior Research Fellow, Dr. Ramnath Subbaraman, and UCSF Principal Investigator, Dr. Jess Ghannam, in conducting evidence-based research, training local staff and researchers to carry out key informant interviews, conduct focus groups, and analyze primary and secondary data as part of the Harvard-HSPH, New York University-NYU, Slum Health Project at PUKAR in Mumbai, India. He is a member of the Advisory Board at The Journal of Global Health, an international student publication at Columbia University released biannually with the mission of facilitating dialogue among students at the medical, graduate, and undergraduate level on innovative solutions to interdisciplinary global health issues from a variety of academic, cultural, and geographic perspectives.

Recently, he has worked as a Clinical Intern for the Institute for Health and Healing, as part of California Pacific Medical Center and conducted capstone research at UCSF Global Health Sciences at the University of California.

Academic and Advisory Boards
Kunal serves as the Associate Dean of International Programs at the Woxsen School of Business, where he is developing a game-changing and internationally competitive curriculum for the next generation of business leaders in India. He also serves as Advisory Board Member at Nexus India and the Alumni Association UCSF School of Medicine and is on the Trustee Committee for Hack Cancer to support the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. He is a producer for the Kellogg Innovation Network (KIN Global), and as an advisor to various start-ups in the Bay Area.

Conferences
On November 10, 2012, Kunal Sood produced and organized a global health focused conference with TEDxSF, held at UCSF Mission Bay, San Francisco, where he served on the Executive Committee of TEDx San Francisco. Kunal co-curated "7 Billion well" in collaboration with UCSF Global Health Sciences to stage first ever TEDx at the University of California San Francisco focused on re-imagining global health. The conference's main event, named "7 Billion Well: Re-imagining Global Health", drew the best thought leaders in medical science, academia, entertainment and technology, bringing the latest multidisciplinary ideas in addressing the most pressing health issues in the modern world, with a goal of securing a new vision in treating the health for the whole population. Kunal also invited Tanvi Shah, a popular Indian playback singer whose music apparently had a healing effect on an autistic child, to speek at the conference.

In September 2013, Sood curated TEDxUNPlaza conference, an independent forum hosted at the United Nations under TED’s motto "Ideas Worth Spreading". The event was organized by the TEDx community with the support of the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA) and the United Nations Office for Partnerships, as a part of DESA’s effort to promote a vision for human progress that goes beyond promoting global agreements. The event was moderated by journalist Joris Luyendijk. In the following week, he addressed to the United Nations General Assembly on the topic of sustainable development. Harry Kraemer, Kellogg School of Management Professor of Management and Strategy, as well as an executive partner at Madison Dearborn Partners, was also featured at the conference, giving his four leadership principles he developed as chairman and CEO of the $9 billion global healthcare company Baxter International.