ND Dashdorj in Mongolia

ND Dashdorj is Co-Founder and Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Onom Foundation, which is committed to making a tangible difference in the lives of ordinary Mongols by mitigating early and excess mortalities and by providing access to high quality education for Mongol youngsters. ND is also Co-Founder of Neviom, a company revolutionizing clinical trial data collection, and President of Dobu, an internet of things (IoT) company providing the next generation of comprehensive smart home and office solutions.

Born and raised in the southwestern outskirts of Mongolia, ND has a profound commitment for making a tangible difference in the lives of his fellow Mongols. At the same time, he strongly believes that entrepreneurship is the best vehicle for making a difference. He started his first successful venture in college, from which he earned enough money to pay for his graduate education in the United States. After completing his graduate studies, ND ventured back into entrepreneurship in 2008, experimenting with a model of subsidizing philanthropic actions through a percentage of equity and profits of a for-profit company.

In parallel with his entrepreneurial activities, ND has pushed the frontiers in the scientific arena using ultrafast optical spectroscopy and time-resolved x-ray imaging techniques at leading scientific institutions including the US National Institutes of Health and Argonne National Laboratory, where in 2010 he became a faculty member. He has published over 30 original manuscripts in prominent, peer-reviewed scientific journals, such as the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States. Despite his successes in scientific research, he gave up his academic career in 2013 to pursue his entrepreneurial dreams since he truly believes that he can make a tangible difference via entrepreneurship.

ND is currently co-leading a team at the Onom Foundation that initiated two national programs and three healthcare initiatives targeting communicable and non-communicable diseases that secured more than US$100 million in government funding, has directly impacted over 3.3 million people, and saved over 60,000 lives. He has also played an instrumental role in establishing Onom School, the first-ever non-profit private school in Mongolia, which emphasizes training in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics and has the lowest tuition among all private schools in Mongolia.

ND obtained his doctorate in Physics from Purdue University in 2005 and an MS in Management from Stanford University in 2014. ND is a member of the Public Health Advisory Council at the Linux Foundation.