Dr. Mahmood is a medical professional with more than two decades of experience managing crises in health, disasters and conflict settings. She is currently Professor and Executive Director of the Sunway Centre for Planetary Health at Sunway University in Malaysia. She holds advisory council roles in the Government of Malaysia in Climate and Higher Education. She is also an Adjunct Professor at the Universiti of Malaya, the Sustainability Advisor at Air Asia, and the national advisor of the Malaysian Red Crescent Society. Globally, she is a member of the board of Roche in Switzerland and the Norwegian Refugee Council, a member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Future Council of Responsible Resource Use and a Global Ambassador for the Humanitarian Grand Bargain. She currently co-chairs the World Economic Forum Steering Committee on Climate and Health. She is a strong advocate of planetary health and sustainability and actively advises on Environment, Social and Governance in the advisory and board roles she holds.

Previous appointments include the Under Secretary General for Partnerships at the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), Chief of the World Humanitarian Summit secretariat at the United Nations, and Chief of the Humanitarian Response Branch at UNFPA. She was the Special Advisor to the Prime Minister of Malaysia on Public Health. She was the first Pro Chancellor of Heriot Watt University in Malaysia. She is the founder of MERCY Malaysia, a leading southern-based international humanitarian organisation.

She is the recipient of numerous national and international awards including the most prestigious Malaysian Merdeka Award in 2015 and the ASEAN Prize in 2019, for her contribution to peace, community development and humanitarian work. She also received the inaugural Isa Award for Humanity in 2013 from the Kingdom of Bahrain and the Gandhi- King-Ikeda Award for community development and peace building from Morehouse College, USA. More recently, she was awarded the Wu Lien-Teh Award for Leadership in Public Health 2023.

Dr Mahmood graduated as a Doctor of Medicine (MD) from the National University of Malaysia, has a Masters in Obstetrics and Gynecology from the same university and is a Fellow of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists United Kingdom. She also completed executive education at the International Management and Development Centre, IMD Lausanne and University California Berkeley Law.