Challenging Convention, Connecting People and Transforming Healthcare for Lasting Impact
Physician Executive | Global Healthcare Strategist | Founder & Managing Partner, AWNI Advisory LLC
Dr. Ifeyinwa “Ify” Osunkwo is a physician executive, global healthcare strategist and innovator with more than three decades of experience across academic medicine, clinical research, integrated health systems and biopharmaceutical leadership. A natural ideator and bold problem-solver, she thrives in complex environments, ambiguity, and in building programs, teams and operating models where none exist. Her work across the United States, Africa and Europe reflects a distinctive combination of clinical expertise, strategic vision, cultural intelligence and entrepreneurial discipline to deliver measurable healthcare impact.
Her understanding of healthcare began at age seven, observing her mother, a nurse practitioner serving rural communities in Nigeria. By adolescence and under her mother’s supervision and guidance she had acquired practical clinical skills, resourcefulness and the importance of listening to patients. She entered medical school at 15 after a year’s delay due to financial constraints. Those early experiences instilled humility, resourcefulness and a lifelong commitment to listening and learning that has informed her patient-centered leadership.
Dr. Osunkwo has consistently chosen opportunities to build rather than maintain established structures. She was the first intern assigned hematology-oncology coverage during residency, the first Clinical Operations Director at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta’s Egleston campus, the founding Director of Atrium Health’s adult sickle cell disease enterprise and the inaugural Chief Patient Officer at both Forma Therapeutics and Novo Nordisk Rare Disease. Across these roles, she has created direction, structure and capability amid uncertainty.
Her “7Cs” leadership framework, Connect, Collaborate, Coordinate, Communicate, Create, Comply and Continue, emphasizes challenging assumptions, drawing ideas across disciplines, aligning incentives and translating diverse perspectives into action. She believes difficult problems often require not entirely new discoveries but a willingness to question what is accepted and adapt what already works elsewhere.
Dr. Osunkwo began her medical journey at the University of Nigeria where she earned her Doctor of Medicine degree before pursuing a Master of Public Health from Johns Hopkins University. She completed pediatric residency at Rutgers-affiliated institutions and a fellowship in pediatric hematology, oncology and bone marrow transplantation at Columbia University.
At Rutgers Cancer Institute of New Jersey, Emory University and Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, she established herself as a clinician, researcher, educator and program builder. At Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, she expanded a multidisciplinary sickle cell program from approximately 170 to 700 patients and helped reduce missed appointments by 75% through redesigned care and community engagement. She also established the Emory Teen Sceen transition program to advance pediatric-to-adult transition after identifying the rise in mortality among emerging adults with sickle cell disease.
Her research challenged traditional approaches to both treatment and partnership. She observed clinically profound vitamin D deficiency among her patients with chronic pain and this led her to investigate vitamin D supplementation in her patients. She launched an investigator-initiated pilot study and demonstrated fewer pain days and improved physical activity-related quality of life thus establishing vitamin D supplementation as a care delivery standard for individuals living with hemoglobinopathies.
Dr Osunkwo also co-led the ST3P-UP study, which established pediatric clinicians, adult clinicians and community-based organizations as distinct, equally valued research partners and set the standard implementation framework for structured pediatric to adult care transition. Both reflected her conviction that better solutions emerge when evidence and lived experience inform decisions together
At Atrium Health’s Levine Cancer Institute, she built an integrated sickle cell enterprise serving approximately 1,400 adults across three states. Challenging the assumption that frequent hospitalization was inevitable, she connected ambulatory, emergency, inpatient, virtual care, research and community services through standardized pathways and value-based partnerships. Her leadership contributed to a 40% reduction in readmissions, more than $2 million in annual savings year-on-year and an rise in patient satisfaction levels above 90%. She also secured and led more than $14 million in research and program funding, including support from PCORI and federal sources, translating evidence into scalable models of care.
In 2022, Dr Osunkwo expanded her leadership into biotechnology when she joined Forma Therapeutics as Senior Vice President and Chief Patient Officer [CPO], bringing clinical, patient and health-system perspectives to development, regulatory engagement and commercial readiness. As part of the executive team during Forma’s $1.1 billion acquisition by Novo Nordisk, she supported expansion of clinical development partnerships in sub-Saharan Africa and recruitment approaches that reduced patient acquisition costs by approximately 50%. As the inaugural CPO for Novo Nordisk Rare Disease, Dr. Osunkwo built a global advocacy function across bleeding disorders, hemoglobinopathies and growth disorders. She embedded and systematized patient and community insights across research, medical affairs, regulatory strategy, market access and commercialization. Leading a global team and an approximately DKK 15 million budget, she supported ten priority markets while concurrently focusing on community and advocacy partnerships, care pathways and launch readiness. She demonstrated that patient engagement can be an enterprise capability that improves innovation, organizational performance and access.
Across all these settings, she identified a persistent gap: scientific advances often outpace the systems and economic models needed to deliver them. Her approach to partnership is captured in a reflection she shared on LinkedIn: Cross-sectoral partnerships that sustainably deliver innovation at scale should focus on “Not EXTRACTING value from one another but CREATING value that none of us could create alone.”
That principle anchors her next chapter. Through Cornell University’s Executive MBA/MS in Healthcare Leadership at the Johnson Graduate School of Management and Weill Cornell Medicine, she is strengthening the financial, strategic and entrepreneurial capabilities needed to turn clinically effective care into scalable, investable models. She founded AWNI Advisory LLC to put that ambition to work, connecting health systems, life sciences, investors and communities to build sustainable solutions for the many rather than perfecting care for the few. She believes even historically underfunded areas such as sickle cell disease can become economically viable when care outcomes, incentives and financing are designed together.
Her interest in responsible AI reflects the same patient-centered discipline: technology should improve care while safeguarding privacy, transparency, equitable representation and human accountability. As an executive, entrepreneur and mentor, she seeks healthcare ecosystems where innovation, access and financial sustainability reinforce one another.
For Dr. Ify, lasting transformation requires the humility to listen, the courage to challenge conventional thinking and the determination to turn bold ideas into sustainable impact.
