Announcing Fortify Health's New CEO

By Brendan Eappen, Chair of the Board and Co-Founder at Fortify Health

Early last year, Nikita Patel, Fortify Health’s longstanding Co-founder and CEO, shared her intention to transition out of Fortify Health. In the second half of 2023, Fortify Health launched a competitive CEO search, drawing highly qualified external and internal applicants. This process culminated in the selection of an exceptional new CEO of Fortify Health. Since then, the Board and Nikita have been working to ensure a smooth handover to the next CEO of Fortify Health.

Meet Tony

The Board is delighted to announce the appointment of Tony Senanayake to the role of CEO at Fortify Health. Tony has served as Chief Strategy Officer at Fortify Health since September 2022, overseeing rapid growth in the organization’s programmatic work, including more than 10 times increase in the volume of fortified wheat flour distributed to beneficiaries around India (approximately 18,000 MT in December 2023).

Tony has wide ranging work experience across monitoring and evaluation, management consulting, and law. Tony received his law degree from The University of Queensland and subsequently completed an MBA at Yale University and Masters of Law from University of Sydney. Before joining Fortify Health, Tony worked at IDinsight, where he focused on leveraging data and evidence to alleviate poverty. He sought out a position at Fortify Health in order to bring data and evidence to bear on the direct improvement of lives through the reduction and prevention of iron-deficiency anaemia. 

​Tony brings a wealth of management experience, strategic decision making skills, and institutional knowledge to the role of CEO. He will decisively facilitate Fortify Health’s evolution into its next stage as an increasingly major contributor to the fortification landscape in India, with plans for further rapid scale-up with integrity and purpose. He formally took on the role in January 2024. We are very excited for Tony’s leadership as Fortify Health continues to pursue its mission to enable access to micronutrient-rich wheat flour to reduce and prevent iron deficiency anaemia. 

Tony will be driving forward some major work over the next one year: 

• Engaging with more state government partners to provide fortified wheat flour through large-scale social safety net programs, 
• Rapidly scaling Fortify Health’s open market intervention to over 100 mill partners, reaching more than 4 million beneficiaries, 
• Conducting process and impact evaluations to measure the impact of Fortify Health’s intervention, and
• Developing automated operations systems to support a team of over 60 professionals.

With appreciation to Nikita

When Nikita and I co-founded Fortify Health in 2017, we had many aspirations for how the organization could grow to meaningfully improve population health. As Fortify Health enters its next stage, I’d like to highlight some of the organization’s growth under Nikita’s leadership. We presently have 59 full team members on our India based team, 65 mill partners producing over 18,000 metric tonnes of fortified atta per month, and are working with a government partner to extend our reach.

Nikita has had a tremendous impact on the organization at every stage: crafting its early strategy, establishing key partnerships, securing funding, building a team, and overseeing implementation through the present stage of early scale-up. Nikita’s enduring and trustworthy leadership has played a key role in securing $10 million across 3 GiveWell Incubation grants to reduce anaemia at scale in India. So far, an estimated 2.5 million beneficiaries are consuming fortified flour facilitated by Fortify Health’s programs each month (estimate for December 2023).

Since its inception, countless members of the Fortify Health team have been collectively responsible for the evolution of the organization. In celebrating Nikita’s contributions over the past 6.5 years, we must recognize that among her most critical work has been building a community of exceptional colleagues who have advanced the organization beyond our most ambitious dreams.

Nikita’s person-centered management has been directly responsible for the growth of the incredible team that have made Fortify Health’s vision a reality. Nikita’s genuine care for the people around her is reflected in our collaborative, warm, and fair team culture and further validated by our team satisfaction surveys. She has also expertly managed challenging periods during the organization’s journey, ensuring that the years of investment in Fortify Health could materialize into real health impact.  

With that said, we are incredibly grateful to Nikita for her years of service to Fortify Health. We are excited that she will now be joining Akhil Bansal, Garvita Chawla and me as a member of Fortify Health’s board; in this capacity, Nikita will continue to be actively engaged in providing strategic direction and oversight to Fortify Health. While Nikita will surely be missed, we are all eager to see Fortify Health further its impact under Tony Senanayake’s leadership.

 -  Brendan Eappen, Chair of the Board and Co-Founder at Fortify Health