Jody Ranck is an independent consultant and principal investigator at the Public Health Institute in Oakland, where he is helping create a new Public Health Innovation Center that will develop social media, mobile tools, and social innovation strategies to rethink public health practice. He is also a consultant with the UN Economic Commission for Africa and Stanford University School of Medicine, where he assists in creating new global health innovation and design programs. He has held executive positions with The Institute for the Future and the foundation world and frequently consults with the Rockefeller Foundation, for which he helped lead a global summit on eHealth in Bellagio, Italy. He completed his doctoral studies in health policy and administration at UC Berkeley, his master's degree in international relations and economics at Johns Hopkins University, and his bachelor's degree in biology at Ithaca College. His academic honors also include a Fulbright Scholarship under the tutelage of Grameen Bank in the early 1990s. He blogs occasionally about innovation, health, and African studies. Some of his most recent works include "Public Health 2.0: Re-mixing Public Health" and "Social Innovation and the Rise of Open Health," which look at how social media can drive new approaches to public health practice.