Jaspal Sandhu, Ph.D

Jaspal Sandhu is a distinguished leader in design, social entrepreneurship, and health equity. As Hopelab’s Executive Vice President, he provides strategic direction across the organization, leading a multidisciplinary team with expertise in venture investment, translational research, design strategy, and youth co-creation.

Jaspal teaches courses bridging public health, engineering, and business at UC Berkeley, where he served as the Fung Fellowship’s faculty lead from 2016-2021 and created the first-ever human-centered design course in a school of public health. For 12 years before joining Hopelab, Jaspal was managing partner at Gobee, a global design consultancy that he co-founded to spark social innovation. Gobee’s work in 25 countries included developing next-generation medical devices for newborns and infants in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, launching an incubator for domestic violence prevention, and building human-centered design capacity in 20 health care safety net clinics and hospitals in the U.S. In his early career, he worked in product engineering roles for Nokia and Intel, and conducted research on rural health care technology as a Fulbright scholar to Mongolia. He holds a Ph.D. in design from UC Berkeley and master’s and bachelor’s degrees in engineering from M.I.T.

He is currently exploring the role of art in advocacy and community building. Learn more about Jaspal and his work in technology and well-being here.