Dr. Michael Birt is Director of the Center for Sustainable Health at Arizona State University’s Biodesign Institute and Professor in the W.P. Carey School of Business. Dr. Birt is also Executive Director of the Pacific Health Summit and holds the position of Affiliate Investigator at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. Previously, he was Vice President, Health and Society and Director of the Center for Health and Aging (CHA) at The National Bureau of Asian Research (NBR).

Prior to founding CHA, Dr. Birt had extensive experience in the private sector and the academic world as well as nonprofits. In his academic career, Dr. Birt was an Assistant Professor at the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies at the University of Washington, an Assistant Professor at Wellesley College, and a Fellow at the Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies at Harvard University. He has served as a visiting professor at Keio University under a faculty grant from the Japan Foundation and as a nominated recipient of a Ministry of Education faculty appointment at Hitotsubashi University. He has published peer-reviewed articles in his field’s preeminent journal, The Journal of Japanese Studies. He received his PhD in East Asian Studies from Princeton University and is fluent in spoken and written Japanese. He also holds a Certificate in Gerontology from the University of Washington.

Dr. Birt’s private sector experience includes the successful launch, development, and stock sale of a leading U.S.-Asia biomedical business development company, a U.S.-registered corporation with offices in Japan, Korea, and Taiwan. He also founded Infoplan Consulting, a division of McCann-Erickson Hakuhodo, a leading advertising and market research firm located in Tokyo. He has consulted for many of the world’s leading healthcare, medical technology, and consumer product companies. He is co-author of Negotiating the Gray Maze: The Business of Medicine in Japan (1997) and has written articles for the Asian Wall Street Journal and the Journal of the American Chamber of Commerce in Japan, as well as numerous industry consulting reports.

Dr. Birt also personally funded and led the Pacific Health Alliance, a nonprofit 501(c)(3) corporation that focused on the development of educational exchange and collaboration programs between U.S. and Japanese healthcare delivery systems in the field of hospital infection control.