FORA.tv Speaker - Joxel Garcia

Joxel Garcia became deputy director of the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) in August 2003. Born in Puerto Rico, he was trained as a gynecological surgeon at the island's Ponce School of Medicine and earned an MBA from the University of Hartford in Connecticut. "I thought I was only going to be an academic and in private practice," he says, "but then I realized that academics and private practice by themselves cannot change the world." He served as Connecticut's commissioner of public health from 1999 to 2003. He is married, with two children.