Coming of age during South Africa’s struggle-formed transition to democracy, Fatima Hassan was never going to be an ordinary lawyer. After clerking at the country’s Constitutional Court, she led legal action against the Thabo Mbeki administration’s policy of AIDS denialism. She served in government as a special adviser to anti-apartheid hero Barbara Hogan, who became South Africa’s Minister of Health and later Minister of Public Enterprises.

After serving as director of the Open Society Foundation in South Africa, Hassan founded the Health Justice Initiative in 2020. The organization presses for an ‘inclusive, equitable public health system, locally and globally, both during and beyond the pandemic’.