Khaliya, also known as Princess Khaliya Aga Khan is an advocate for mental health and a Columbia University-trained public health specialist. Through her foundation, Falkora, Khaliya is working to transform society's understanding of mental health issues and push for faster innovation in the field. Her advocacy has earned her a spot on the World Economic Forum's Futures Council on the Future of Health and Healthcare. She was on the braintrust for the Obama White House-sponsored 2016 United State of Women Summit, where she was also a speaker. Other speakers at the daylong event included former President Barack Obama, First Lady Michelle Obama, Warren Buffett and Oprah Winfrey. Khaliya is on the leadership council for the 2017 Solve Global Challenge on Brain Health for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She's also the permanent curator-in-residence on brain health and neurotech for The Near Future Summit. She's been the recipient of multiple awards, including the Middelthon-Candler Peace Prize, alongside Former First Lady Rosalynn Carter, in 2016 and the inaugural Clare Boothe Luce Award for International Service in 2017.
Khaliya and her partner, author, architect and futurist Thomas Ermacora, co-founded Falkora, a not-for-profit mental health and neurotech initiative. The organization aims to catapult mental health to the top of the political agenda both in the United States and internationally and to harness technological innovations to tackle critical mental health issues.
Awards and Appointments
In 2016, Khaliya was the recipient of the National Monuments Foundation's Middelthon-Candler Peace Prize, alongside Former First Lady Rosalynn Carter, who received the Justice Prize. Additionally, the James J. Dudley Luce Foundation awarded her the first annual Clare Boothe Luce Award for International Service in 2017. In 2016, she was appointed to The World Economic Forum's Expert Advisory Global Futures Council on the Future of Health and Healthcare. Other members include Dame Sally Davies, Chief Medical Officer for England, and Peter Piot, the co-discoverer of the Ebola virus and Time's 2014 Person of the Year, and others. Khaliya sits on the advisory committee for the world's leading accelerator for neuroscience apps, NeuroLaunch. Khaliya was also on the founding board and continues to sit on the advisory board of Nexus Youth Summit, a global initiative aimed at pairing promising young social entrepreneurs with the communities and capital needed to bring their projects to scale. Nexus has hosted over 20 summits across six continents and has thousands of members from around the world. Khaliya was also on the founding board of Venture for America, a non-profit that pairs recent graduates with startups in economically depressed areas of the U.S. Since its inception in 2011, Venture for America has placed more than 500 fellows in 18 cities nationwide. Khaliya is an investor in and director of partnerships for Guardian Circle, a personal security app that was recently awarded the distinction of being the exclusive API provider for the Anu and Navaan Jain XPrize for Women's Safety.
Education
Khaliya studied International Politics, European Studies, and Computer Science at New York University, graduating Cum Laude and with Departmental Honors in 1999. As part of her focus on Europe, she spent a year at Institut d'Etudes Politiques in Paris and a semester at the Centro Linguistico di Firenze in Florence, Italy. At Columbia's Mailman School of Public Health, she focused on urbanism and community health, graduating with honors in 2006.