Dr Rola Hallam
Saving lives on the frontlines
Award-winning doctor, humanitarian, campaigner, speaker,
entrepreneur and trauma-informed life coach.
Rola has been a doctor for 18 years - well all her life really. She specialises in anaesthesia and global health and has worked across the globe on the frontlines of health care in the UK, Sub-Saharan Africa and Syria during the last decade of war.
She has been honoured with several awards and is also the first Syrian TED Fellow and founder of CanDo - a humanitarian organisation supporting frontline health and aid workers to save children’s lives in their war-devastated communities. She has helped build 7 hospitals in Syria, including the first ever crowdfunded hospital, all together reaching over 4 million people.
She is a tireless campaigner for the protection of healthcare and children caught up in conflict, as well as for the critical need to focus on the health and wellbeing of frontline health and aid workers.
Rola is sought after as a transformational speaker who has shared global stages with presidents, celebrities and grassroots activists. Her online talks have been viewed over 11 million times, inspiring thousands to become changemakers.
Her work has been published in The Lancet and featured across the media including the New York Times, The Daily Show and in two BBC documentaries.
‘I was born a doctor. I have always known it was my calling but what I didn’t know was that my home country of Syria would shatter into a thousand little pieces, tearing millions of lives apart and that I would be using my medical skills as a humanitarian.’
‘I was born a doctor.’
Watch Rola’s talk about her journey below.
