Jaykumar works at the intersection of human rights and global health.

As a litigator, he has freed a man from death row. As the fifteenth lawyer to take up the case, he helped free another man serving life, by hunting through the toughest prisons of New York for the real killer. He represented the student leaders of Tiananmen Square against the former Premier of China, and helped win longshot victories on behalf of victims of the Bosnian genocide and environmental activists from Nigeria.

In public health, he has helped reduce the world’s most widespread form of malnutrition at scale, by taking salt “double fortified” with iron and iodine to tens of millions of people and billions of meals. And he and colleagues seek to create a world of medicine for all, via an open source paradigm for pharma.  He co-founded and chairs the Open Source Pharma Foundation.

Newsweek named him one of “America’s 50 Greatest Disruptors: Visionaries Who Are Changing the World.” He received the William Rogers Award, the Brown Alumni Association’s highest honor, given to one graduate per year, and was selected for the Worthy 100.

His work has been profiled in The New Yorker, Fast Company, New York magazine, and The Times of India. He has held prior academic positions at Harvard and McGill, and has advised major philanthropies and the Government of Canada Privy Council on innovation. He holds a JD and a Master of International Affairs from Columbia, and completed a BA and one year of medical school at Brown.