Dr. Desirée Cox, MD, MPhil, PhD is the first Bahamian Rhodes Scholar and the first woman from the British Caribbean region to receive this prestigious award. She is a medical doctor and a polymath who has also earned her masters and doctorate degrees in the humanities as well as being a visual artist, poet, author and jazz singer/songwriter. She is the CEO and Founder of The HEALinc, a Future Health Research and Development (R&D) Organization with a mission of advancing the future of healthcare through cutting-edge technology, mentorship of future leaders, education on scientific breakthroughs and creative healing products. The annual HEALinc Future Health Summit is HEALinc’s signature educational event. Dr. Desiree lives in New York and The Bahamas.

Raised in the poor ‘Over-the-Hill’ community of Nassau, Bahamas, Dr. Desirée left The Bahamas after high school to attend McGill University in Montreal, Canada where she studied chemistry and quantum mechanics. She won the Rhodes Scholarship in 1987 which led to her studying to become a medical doctor at Oxford University in the UK. While in medical school she won the Pembroke College Collection Prize and the Radcliff Infirmary Essay Prize. After completing her medical degree, she studied and received her Master of Philosophy degree (MPhil) and doctorate (PhD) from Cambridge University, UK.

Dr. Desirée’s career has spanned clinical medicine as a psychiatrist in London, as well as academia and healthcare consulting and she is recognized as a thought-leader in advanced technologies of regenerative medicine and healthy longevity. She has served as an Honorary Professor of Biomedical Sciences at Rutgers University in New Jersey, USA and an Honorary Professor of Creativity, Health & Wellbeing at the University of Exeter. In 2017 she was honored by Oxford University as one of 6 alumni whose photographs hang in the Great Hall of Pembroke College, Oxford. In 2018 she was awarded the International Advocacy Action Award at the World Stem Cell Summit. Described as a Renaissance Woman by the British Medical Journal, Dr. Desirée’s life-long passion for connecting the dots between creativity and overall health has contributed to her art being featured in British Vogue, House and Garden as well as Tatler in 2022.

Over the past decade, Dr. Desirée has spearheaded the development of a prototype ethics and regulatory ecosystem for accelerated global access to regenerative medicines outside of the US (OUS). Having implemented this system in The Bahamas since 2015, she now leads the efforts to expand this legal and regulatory framework to include advanced longevity, stem cell and gene therapies. At the 40th Independence Celebrations in 2013, the Bahamas Government honored Dr. Cox by issuing a 70-cent stamp in her honor. In 2023, The Bahamas Government granted her the Golden Jubilee Independence Award of Supreme Honor, an award bestowed on 101 individuals over the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries who represent the ‘Best Blood’ of the country since its inception.