Amrita Bhowmick
Chief Community Officer
Health Union
Zeroing in on What Matters
In 2010, before online health communities were popular, Amrita Bhowmick began her crusade to positively leverage technology, specifically condition-specific websites and social media, to engage people living with challenging health conditions in meaningful ways. An accomplished pharmaceutical marketer, with an advanced degree and passion for public health, Amrita is truly a pioneer of online health communities. But her drive to leverage the power of social media for good, coupled with her ability to lead and positively influence those around her, also makes her an ideal mentor.
“It’s extremely impressive how much time she spends thinking about where different individuals fit best,” says one of the leaders in Amrita’s team, who also adds that it is no small feat considering her team’s size. “She is always considering interests they’ve outwardly expressed, their goals, and other preferences. She also has an uncanny ability to identify natural talent and skills that people might not even see in themselves.”
At every level and across the organization, Amrita is highly regarded as a passionate, caring person who strongly considers and advocates for the needs of her team and the people within Health Union’s communities. Importantly, her leadership also extends beyond her team. Amrita identified that having a formalized Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Program is important for a company like Health Union that is hyper-focused on helping people. Amrita worked closely with the rest of the leadership team and representatives from each team company-wide throughout 2019 to create an initiative that aligns with Health Union’s core values. She came into the planning process with clear ideas for what the CSR program would entail—programs to serve the local community via food drives and other initiatives, as well as various programs to support the members of Health Union’s communities.
As an adjunct professor in the Department of Health Behavior at the University of North Carolina’s Gillings School of Global Public Health, Amrita further influences academic research in this area, imparting her real-world knowledge and experience. And all of that doesn’t even include the millions of people who live with chronic conditions who have been positively impacted by the online community model Amrita created.
