Mandeep Virk-Baker

Dr. Mandeep K. Virk-Baker has extensive public health research and administration experience and has served high-level state and academic leadership positions. With more than two decades leading work in public health, community nutrition, community outreach, health promotion, and as a public health scientist trained at the National Cancer Institute (NCI), Dr. Virk-Baker is deeply passionate about improving public health.

As a first-generation college student, Dr. Virk-Baker received a Bachelor of Science, and a Master of Food and Nutrition degrees from the Panjab University Chandigarh, India. She received her doctoral degree in Nutrition Sciences from the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Dr. Virk-Baker graduated with the Howered E. Sauberlich Endowed Chair Award for excellence in nutrition science research, and the Nell Mondy award for her graduate research examining the link between soy metabolism and breast cancer risk. As a Cancer Prevention postdoctoral Fellow at the NCI, Dr. Virk-Baker received a Master of Public Health, and Global Health graduate certificate from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Alongside her research at the NCI, Dr. Virk-Baker completed a Dietetic Internship Program and received her Registered Dietitian credential from the Commission on Dietetic Registration. Recently, Dr. Virk-Baker was named as the Fellow of the Academy of Nutrition & Dietetics. Dr. Virk-Baker has an extensive background in health policy and public health research, has published in several peer-reviewed journals, and has received several awards for her research work. Dr. Virk-Baker completed the Cancer Prevention post-doctoral fellowship and Sallie Rosen Kaplan post-doctoral leadership fellowship at the National Institutes of Health and worked with the US Surgeon General Office of Science and Policy.

As a first-generation refugee growing up in an agricultural family in India and experiences as an immigrant to the United States have shaped Dr. Virk-Baker’s passion and vision for an inclusive society where everyone is accepted and cherished. Dr. Virk-Baker’s lived experiences as an immigrant woman of color, public health research work at the NIH, and high-level leadership roles in Virginia and Maryland have propelled her towards this larger-than-life vision. Dr. Virk-Baker’s vision is to create and support a society where we are all humans first, and together we are much stronger than the descriptors that divide and categorize us.

As the Founder and CEO of National Origin Alliance Inc, a 501C3 non-profit organization, Dr. Virk-Baker is committed to eradicating national origin discrimination via collective impact and championing diversity and inclusion, and social justice. A society where everyone has an equal opportunity to pursue their dreams and succeed in their careers regardless of their place or country of origin.