As one of the youngest and first Indian Fellows of The American College of Healthcare Executives (ACHE), Kavita Narayan has more than twenty years of combined experience as a hospital and health systems architect and thought leader in the United States and India. She currently serves as Technical Advisor to the National Human Resources for Health Cell, an internal think-tank that she worked to establish in 2016 within India’s Ministry of Health and Family Welfare. Most recently, this structure has been further enhanced to undertake system transformation activities pertaining to the Ministry, as part of the Prime Minister’s Mission Karmayogi program. Her relentless championing since her return to India for recognition and regulatory reform of allied professionals to enable a more equitable, efficient health system, has resulted in the enactment of the National Commission for Allied and Healthcare professions Act 2021. In addition to improving access to affordable care at all levels, this reform aims to formally recognize and create local and global opportunities for a large variety of allied and health care professionals. Her other critical policy contributions have been in the areas of skill development strategy for the health sector, the establishment of the National Medical Commission, ongoing reforms in nursing regulation among several others. Since March 2020, Kavita’s major technical thrust has also been to bolster the health system’s capacity building efforts for COVID response by coordinating with key stakeholders and states to train, deploy and leverage critical resources dynamically; workforce, drugs and recently vaccines. She has also led specific efforts on behaviour change communication and mental health management strategies during the pandemic, among others. She has been inducted as a Fellow of the Ananta Aspen Centre’s Kamalnayan Bajaj Fellowship and is also a member of the Lancet COVID-19 Commission Regional Task Force for India.