Dr Mahmood is a Malaysian medical professional and currently Executive Director of the Sunway Centre for Planetary Health at Sunway University in Malaysia. She has more than two decades of experience in crisis management globally and worked in conflict, disasters and health crises.

Her previous appointments include Special Advisor to the former Prime Minister of Malaysia on Public Health during the height of the COVID pandemic. She was formally the Under Secretary General for Partnerhsips at the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies in Geneva, with a broad mandate on policy, innovation, resource mobilization and global communications. Prior to that she was at the United Nations as Chief of the World Humanitarian Summit and Humanitarian Response Branch at the UN Population Fund. She is the founder of MERCY Malaysia, a southern born medical humanitarian NGO working globally.

She has several key advisory roles on Malaysia’s Climate Action Council and the Consultative Council on Foreign Policy and Economic Advisory Council. She was appointed as Senior Fellow at the Adrienne Arscht - Rockefeller Resilience Centre in August 2020.

Her current board roles include the Employers Providence Fund, ALAM Foundation (environmental education as an arm of Malaysia’s National Development Bank) and is currently on the board of Roche.

Dr Mahmood has received numerous national and global awards including the prestigious Merdeka Award of Malaysia in 2015 and three Royal Awards for her services to the nation and communities in need. She was also the first recipient of the Isa Award for Humanity by the Kingdom of Bahrain in 2013, and was also a recipient of the Gandhi-King-Ikeda Award from Morehouse College, USA.