The Brown University School of Public Health is pleased to announce that Piyush Tewari will deliver the keynote address at the 2025 School of Public Health Commencement Ceremony on Sunday, May 25.
Tewari is the founder and CEO of SaveLIFE Foundation, a nonprofit in India dedicated to preventing road-crash fatalities and enhancing trauma care, particularly among poor communities. His accomplishments include training 3,000 police personnel and 48,000 Indian citizens in basic trauma life-support skills, as well as improving Delhi’s ambulance response time during COVID-19 by 64%.
In 2014, Tewari successfully petitioned and obtained bans on trucks carrying protruding rods, which were responsible for 9,000 deaths a year. His groundbreaking Zero-Fatality Solutions model, which has reduced road fatalities by up to 58% on India’s Mumbai-Pune Expressway, is now being scaled to 100 highways and districts, demonstrating the power of evidence-based interventions at a national level.
Perhaps most notably, Tewari is recognized for securing India’s Good Samaritan Law in 2016, which protects bystanders from legal repercussions when helping road-crash victims. Nineteenth-century British law required Indian hospitals to record the identities of anyone who brought in a patient in the effort to identify and detain those opposed to the British occupation. The Good Samaritan Law allows bystanders to assist road-crash victims without fear of extended police questioning or prolonged obligations to serve as a court witness.
A Harvard University graduate and Skoll Awardee for Social Innovation (2024), Tewari is a recipient of the Elevate Prize (2023) and the Rolex Award for Enterprise (2010), among others. He has been featured in publications such as The New York Times, National Geographic and Time Magazine for his transformative work.
With a unique combination of vision, grit and leadership, Tewari exemplifies the kind of bold thinking and systemic impact that aligns with the values of Brown University School of Public Health.