Nisha Gupta is Director of the Centre for Health Economics at NCAER.

An international development executive, behavioural scientist, and retired U.S. diplomat, she brings over two decades of experience in global public health across Asia, the Middle East, and Africa. As a commissioned member of the American Foreign Service, she held multi-year postings in Vietnam, South Africa, Thailand, Jordan, the Kyrgyz Republic, and India.

Ms Gupta’s work sits at the intersection of public health, policy, science, and implementation. She has led large-scale, evidence-based initiatives that strengthened health and education sectors, and delivered measurable, life-saving outcomes. Her key achievements include building a regional infectious disease portfolio spanning twelve Asian countries, negotiating a landmark accelerator grant to expand education in Central Asia, and directing the largest bilateral health investment globally, focused on HIV prevention and treatment in South Africa. Passionate about resilient, data-driven health systems, she is widely recognised for building cross-sector coalitions and advancing scalable, sustainable interventions.

She holds a graduate degree in Global Health and Epidemiology from the Yale University and an undergraduate degree in Political Science and Biology from Columbia University.