Dr. Marie Charles

Dr. Marie Charles MD MIA FRGS FRSPH is a medical doctor and entrepreneur with a highly distinguished background in international business, finance and international relations and is widely regarded as one of the world’s most successful high impact entrepreneurs and key innovator in the fields of healthcare, finance, energy and the environment.

Initially groomed to run one of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies in Europe, Dr. Charles chose instead to found a series of her own international healthcare enterprises, all of which have gone on to become global leaders in their respective fields, collectively active in over 42 countries.   

She has more than 20 years of experience founding, managing and growing multinational companies and organisations, operating in more than 40 countries, which have all gone onto become global leaders in their respective fields.

Dr Charles is executive chair of Tiger Global Holdings, chair and managing general partner of the Tiger Healthcare Group and of Tiger Healthcare Private Equity and executive chair of Tiger Environmental Technologies.

The Tiger Group is a private Hong Kong-based consortium which specialises in high-yield, high-impact healthcare, energy, and environmental transactions in the world’s fastest-growing economies, as well as transactions that result in a convergence of human and planetary health.

As a founding industry practitioner, innovator, and acknowledged global authority on high-yield, high-impact investing, she has played a leading role in redefining healthcare, environmental and energy investing and profitability in the global private equity industry.

The international media has variously described her as the “Joan of Arc of 21st Century Medicine”, “A doctor without borders”, “one of the key innovators in global healthcare” “one of the world’s most successful high impact entrepreneurs” 

Dr Charles is also the founder and chair of the internationally renowned philanthropic organisation Global Medic Force. As the global leader in clinical skills rapid transfer to emerging nations, Global Medic Force deploys over 2,150 specially recruited and highly trained volunteer medical experts from over 18 Western nations, to train tens of thousands of healthcare workers in developing nations across 4 continents, regardless of how remote, hostile and demanding the local conditions. This represents more than 30,000 years of medical expertise, or a $USD 8 billion value in medical human capital transfer.

For over 15 years, Global Medic Force has set the international standard by which all others in the healthcare space are judged.

In her capacity as the founder of Global Medic Force, for almost 20 years she has deployed to many of the most isolated, inaccessible and often very hostile regions across 4 continents. This includes war zones, conflict zones, disaster zones and the epicentre of pandemics (such as SARS)  including in the most isolated and remote rural areas of Vietnam, China, Cambodia, Kiribati, Thailand, Nepal, South Africa, Surinam, Burundi, Rwanda, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Philippines, Botswana, Lesotho, Côte d’Ivoire, Ethiopia, Democratic Republic of Congo, Nigeria, Honduras, Congo Brazzaville, Uganda and many others.

In 2007 she received the Medal of Honour from the President of Vietnam for having saved more lives in that country than any other physician in history.

There is no government on earth that possesses a volunteer medical resource equal to that created by Dr Marie Charles, and as such she has also been credited with having saved millions of lives throughout the developing world.

Dr Charles work in high impact private equity and finance as well as her personal global philanthropy has regularly been featured and referenced in the international media. This includes in bestselling and award winning industry defining books, feature news articles and interviews, international professional medical journals, and she has been the subject of television and radio documentaries including for the BBC and PBS network.

Additionally she is a regular columnist on high-yield, high-impact investing in one of the most affluential magazines in Europe.

As part of her ongoing professional commitments, Dr Marie Charles is regularly featured at many of the world’s most prestigious international conferences and speaking engagements, including specialised closed presentations sessions which include but are not limited to: the United Nations, the Credit Suisse Global Investment Forum, Harvard University, Oxford University, the Annual Asian Private Equity & Venture Capital Forum, Yale University, the Aspen Institute, Heineken, the Royal Geographical Society, Johns Hopkins, the Entrepreneurs Summit, the World Health Organisation, JP Morgan Chase, Pfizer, the Zurich Family Office Investment Forum, Duke University, the NHS, the IFC, USAID, Brown University, Bristol Myers Squibb, Columbia University, the Global Philanthropy Forum, Morgan Stanley, UCLA, Renaissance Weekends Group, UBS, Merck, Cornell University, ASHOKA, the National Defence Academy of Vietnam, Wellcome Trust, J&J Foundation and many others.

Dr Charles is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Medicine, Fellow of the Royal Society for Public Health, Fellow of the Royal Society for Tropical Medicine & Hygiene, Fellow of the Aspen Institute, Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, a member of the International Institute for strategic Studies and an Associate of the Royal College of Physicians.

Her personal interests include classic aviation, specifically World War 1 and World War 2 vintage combat fighter aircraft, and expedition diving as a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and medical doctor. She is a qualified Close Circuit Rebreather Technical Diver, Master Diver, Emergency First Responder Diver, Rescue Diver, Deep Diver and Enriched Air/Nitrox Diver.

Dr Charles holds an MD degree from KU Leuven and a Masters in International Affairs from Columbia University in New York, where she became fluent in English as her sixth language. She has also served as an Adjunct Professor at the Columbia University School of International Relations and Public Affairs (SIPA) in New York and as the COO of the University of Amsterdam International Antiviral Therapy Evaluation Centre.