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Public health leader and surgeon Atul A. Gawande will serve as this year’s Alumni Day speaker, the University announced Wednesday.

The event, hosted annually by the Harvard Alumni Association, will take place on June 6, the week after the Commencement ceremony for the Class of 2025.

Gawande, who graduated from Harvard Medical School and the Harvard School of Public Health, has been a practicing surgeon at Brigham and Women’s Hospital for more than twenty years. He previously served as an assistant administrator for global health in the U.S. Agency for International Development and a member of former President Biden’s Covid-19 Advisory Board.

The announcement follows Abraham Verghese’s selection as the 2025 Commencement speaker. Both Gawande and Verghese are physicians, professors, and bestselling authors with Stanford ties, much like Harvard President Alan M. Garber ’76.

“Atul Gawande is one of the most influential thinkers, writers, and innovators in health and medicine today,” Garber wrote in a Wednesday press release.

“From advancing surgical safety to expanding access to high-quality care worldwide, he brings a deeply humanist perspective to his work and is dedicated to ensuring that health care policies and systems prioritize the people they serve,” he added.

Since his surgical training days, Gawande has been a regular contributor to The New Yorker and has authored four New York Times bestselling books.

Gawande’s research in healthcare innovations has played a key role in redefining surgical safety standards and has shaped the World Health Organization's Surgical Safety Checklist.

HAA Alumni President Moitri Chowdhury Savard ’93 praised Gawande for his “rare gift” and “heart of a storyteller.”

“He shows us that medicine is not just a science but a profoundly human endeavor — one that demands reflection, empathy, and continuous improvement,” Savard wrote. “Through his writing, research, and leadership, he challenges us all to ask: ‘How can we do better?’”

Gawande earned his undergraduate degree from Stanford before obtaining his medical degree and master’s from Harvard. He is a former professor of health policy and management at HSPH and professor of surgery at HMS.

“I’m excited to return to Harvard,” Gawande wrote. “This is a community like no other — in its history, discoveries, and impact.”

“Nothing that I have done since — surgery, innovation, writing, public health — was expected or possible without this place,” he added.

“While the world around him — around us — advances at a rapid pace, he reminds us that true progress isn’t about scientific or technological innovation alone,” Sarah Karmon, executive director of the HAA, wrote in a press release. “We must also rethink how we care for each other.”

Actor and writer Courtney B. Vance ’82, served as the Alumni Day speaker during last year’s ceremonies.