Nassim Assefi, MD is a physician, global health specialist, health tech strategist, curator of ideas and people, civic activist, and novelist who enjoys living at the intersection of many worlds. Her doctoring is a blend of internal medicine, gynecology, psychiatry, human rights, and public health.  Her consulting work ranges from start-ups to citizen diplomacy, expert medical witness to ending period poverty. Her novels (Aria, published by Harcourt and translated into 5 other languages, and Say I Am You, published by Zeytin Press) explore complex issues like navigating grief without the roadmaps of religion or ritual, humanitarian colonialism, and the lottery of birth.

Nassim typically works as a self-employed consultant juggling various passionate projects. Her current portfolio includes: global strategy and development advisor for a women’s centered peace project in Israel/Palestine called Tomorrow’s Women, Chief Medical Officer for an adolescent girls’ health and rights NGO, Project Soar , technical advising to Zocdoc, Vituity/Google Health, venture capitalists and law firms, writing, speaker coaching, and telemedicine.

Her last full-time job was as a primary care and COVID doctor for the Lummi Tribe in 2021. Her most fun job has been as curator/Director of Stage Content for TEDMED, the health and medicine edition of the TED Conference, leading speaker and performer selection and coaching. In the first class of TEDGlobal Fellows, she remains an active TEDster. She has thrived as an academic at the University of Washington School of Medicine in Seattle and Nagasaki University School of Tropical Medicine and Global Health.

She has done many missions in global health, the most significant of which were in Afghanistan and Cuba. In her spare time, she has been defending refugee/migrant rights, exploring ecovillages along the Mediterranean, speaking, writing, and dreaming up podcast ideas (she was once co-host and producer of The Art of Risk Podcast with Debra Jarvis in the early days of podcasting a decade ago).

A second generation Iranian-American and soloist mother by choice, Nassim has lived in 10 countries on the 5 major continents and speaks more than a handful of languages. She divides her time between the US, Morocco, and Spain. Favorite awards/fellowships include: TED Global, Hedgebrook Writing Residency, University of Washington's Woman of Courage, Jack Straw Writer, and Seattle Metropolitan's Top Doctor.  Nassim is a graduate of Wellesley College, the University of Washington School of Medicine, and Harvard/Brigham and Women's Hospital Internal Medicine Residency Program.

When asked the inevitable "What do you do?" question, Nassim enjoys making up futuristic-sounding job titles like expert generalist, social justice entrepreneur, philomath, and thrillionaire.