Nine new international leaders join the World Dementia Council. Members were appointed from Asia, Oceania, Europe, Africa and the Americas. The new council members are drawn from different disciplines in the dementia field. 

Suvarna Alladi is Professor of Neurology, National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences, Bangalore, India. Dr Alladi was a Commonwealth research fellow in cognitive and behavioural neurology at Cambridge UK. She established one of the first memory clinics in India that provided multi-disciplinary care to more than 3000 patients with dementia. Her areas of interest are Frontotemporal dementia, atypical Alzheimer’s disease and vascular cognitive impairment.

Johannes Streffer (MD) is Senior Vice President and Head of Global Clinical Development of Lundbeck and visiting professor in the Department of Biomedical Sciences, University of Antwerp. Johannes is neurologist and psychiatrist; he received is training from the University of Tubingen/ Germany, including his residency in Neurology, before he joined the department of Psychiatry Research at University of Zurich.

Ishtar Govia is an international advisor and award-winning social science researcher with expertise in brain health and mental health across the lifespan. As a highly experienced senior academic, Dr. Govia has held posts at the University of the West Indies, University College London, London School of Economics and Political Science, and the University of Michigan. Her leadership and consulting prioritizes co-development with cross-sectoral government and charitable entities for feasibility and scaling up efforts.

Dr Zul Merali is the Founding Director of the Brain and Mind Institute at the Aga Khan University. He is a neuroscientist and pharmacologist by training (McGill University, University of Ottawa and Wharton), with over 40 years of academic engagement. Has published over 250 peer-reviewed scientific articles. He has successfully used his academic and entrepreneurial ability to help advance forward thinking organizations to transform their approach to mental and brain health, locally, nationally and globally.

Drew Holzapfel serves as the Executive Director of The Global CEO Initiative on Alzheimer’s Disease (CEOi), a coalition of leading corporations investing in Alzheimer’s disease research, treatment and care.  He is also the Chief Operating Officer for the Davos Alzheimer’s Collaborative, a multi-year initiative initiated by CEOi and The World Economic Forum in 2021.  Drew is a Managing Partner at High Lantern Group.  Over the course of his career, Drew has held positions in the federal government and with pharmaceutical companies, including

Arthur W. Toga, Ph.D., is Provost Professor of Ophthalmology, Neurology, Psychiatry and the Behavioral Sciences, Radiology and Biomedical Engineering, and Director of the USC Mark and Mary Stevens Institute of Neuroimaging and Informatics.

Dr. Adesola Ogunniyi is Professor of Medicine at the College of Medicine, University of Ibadan and Consultant Neurologist to the University College Hospital, Ibadan. He received his undergraduate medical education at the University of Ife, Ile-Ife (now Obafemi Awolowo University), residency training at the University College Hospital, Ibadan specializing in neurology, and later had Neuroepidemiology fellowship at the National Institute of Neurological and Communicative Disorders and Stroke, NIH, Bethesda, USA (1986-87).