David Bray Wins the 2023-2024 Distinguished Achievement Award
David A. Bray, PhD, is driven by a paradox: new technologies and data can transform the world for the better and improve health. They can also threaten safety and privacy, upend industries, scramble geopolitics, and worsen socioeconomic disparities. He devotes his daily energies to working alongside leaders at the top echelons of government and business, anticipating and navigating these changes to maximize benefit for people around the world.
Bray earned his bachelor’s degree at Emory College in 2001. That fall, he began his MPH in Biostatistics shortly after starting work at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Bioterrorism Preparedness and Response Program. His first day of class at Rollins was scheduled for the afternoon of September 11. Rising to the challenge, he led the program’s technology response during the aftermath of the terrorist attacks. Soon after that crisis came the first cases of anthrax in Florida. As IT chief, he provided leadership during SARS and other public health crises and was nominated in 2003 for Federal Employee of the Year for the National Center for Infectious Disease.
It soon became clear to him that the biggest threat of biological agents is how long it can take to characterize, develop treatment, and perform remediation, spurring him to dream up an “immune system for the planet” – a system that could detect a novel pathogen in the air, water, or soil of the Earth and rapidly sequence its DNA or RNA and overcome the limits of waiting for countries to alert the international community of outbreaks within their borders.
These formative experiences of public health crisis management shaped his career and his identity. His graduate studies were a critical part of his personal journey of shifting from only responding to crises to anticipating the future and getting out in front. He was an early adopter of the “Agile Manifesto,” but often butted heads with those who insisted on five-year enterprise planning and three-year budget cycles.
“The bioterrorists won’t wait for us to get our IT system online before they attack,” he pressed. He says anyone trying to do the right thing in public health preparedness is likely to encounter resistance, but it is important to remember that things can go from normal operations to non-normal in two to three hours.
Bray credits his time at Rollins for teaching him to see what he calls “systems of systems.”
“We are in an interconnected world, and navigating the next decade is extremely critical. We face issues that have remained unsolved for the past decades, because we have been trying to solve them as point solutions rather than systems,” he says.
Rollins deepened his commitment to facilitating nonpartisan dialogue and empowering diverse stakeholders as solution co-creators for organizational transformation. He used these skills during a deployment to Afghanistan in 2009 as a nonpartisan scientist to advise on humanitarian and strategy issues and in a leadership position with the Federal Communications Commission to modernize IT systems.
Today, Bray is a distinguished fellow and co-chair of the Alfred Lee Loomis Innovation Council at the non-partisan Henry L. Stimson Center, a D.C.-based nonprofit that conducts research to develop technology-based solutions to solve some of the world’s biggest problems. He is also a distinguished fellow with Business Executives for National Security, and he is principal at LeadDoAdapt Ventures, Inc. He earned his PhD from Emory’s Goizueta Business School to deepen his expertise in navigating disruptive global events.
Bray focuses on improving national security and data security, countering the spread of disinformation online, AI, quantum computing, cybersecurity, resilient supply chains, commercial and defense space endeavors, bioterrorism preparedness and response, and more. Among his many public health accomplishments, he is proud to have designed new telemedicine interfaces, developed space-based forest fire forecasting prototypes for the Department of Defense, and directed the successful Bipartisan Commission on the Geopolitical Impacts of New Technologies and Data endorsed by four Members of Congress and hand-delivered to the president in 2021.
Bray is never too busy to help the next generation of Rollins students. Recently, he partnered with the school to offer a webinar series entitled “Our Public Health Future Starts Now.” He leveraged his network to convene panelists and served as moderator for engaging discussions on generative AI, satellites and remote sensing, and more.
You’ll often find him at the World Economic Forum, the United Nations, other top-tier universities, and all over the globe advising governments, Fortune 500 companies, and start-ups. He has built an unparalleled network and brings a public health lens to projects with global implications. Bray is known by colleagues, clients, and friends as selfless, nonpartisan, and cool-minded under pressure. Clients rely on him to help think entirely beyond what is currently possible. He embodies Rollins’ mission and stands out for the nontraditional ways he applies his public health training. He reminds us that “public health is always having to adapt to new challenges but also new opportunities. The systems lens that emphasizes community perspectives will be invaluable whatever the future holds.”