Dr. Maybank has founded and led multiple equity-focused centers and offices, helping institutions move beyond traditional diversity efforts toward deeper transformation. As the inaugural Chief Health Equity Officer and former Senior Vice President at the American Medical Association, Dr. Maybank established the AMA Center for Health Equity, released its landmark equity strategy, produced widely viewed educational content and podcast episodes, and created national initiatives including the Medical Justice in Advocacy Fellowship and Rise to Health Coalition.

Dr. Maybank’s distinguished career also includes serving as Deputy Commissioner and Founding Director of the Center for Health Equity at the NYC Department of Health, Medical Director of the Brooklyn District Public Health Office, and Founding Director of the Suffolk County Office of Minority Health. She has taught MPH and medical students, served on the US Defense Health Board and advised the CDC during COVID-19.

A sought-after speaker and media contributor, Dr. Maybank has been featured on PBS NewsHour and has appeared on MSNBC, BET, Good Morning America and has been interviewed by Oprah Winfrey. In addition to her numerous peer-reviewed publications, she wrote for online media hosting her own columns in the Huffington Post, Ebony.com, and the BKReader. She was a weekly TV medical contributor for international news entity ARISE News and has advised on film projects such as the award-winning documentary Soul Food Junkies by Byron Hurt, further reinforcing the role of culture in shaping health outcomes.

Throughout her career, Dr. Maybank has been a trusted convener—bringing together voices and sectors that rarely sit at the same table, including public health, medicine, arts and culture, policy, community activism, and media. Her approach is grounded in the understanding that all policy is health policy, and that decisions made far beyond clinical settings—across housing, education, labor, transportation, and media—profoundly shape health outcomes. She recognizes that health is influenced not only by medical care, but by where people live, work, play, worship, and how they are seen and valued in society. Through honest dialogue, creative engagement, and courageous truth-telling, Dr. Maybank facilitates conversations that move audiences beyond awareness toward meaningful, sustained action.

Dr. Maybank is known for her ability to translate complex public health issues into compelling, human-centered narratives that resonate across audiences. Her “meet people where they are” communication style—grounded in authenticity, compassion, and radical candor—makes her a uniquely powerful voice on stage. She inspires leaders to confront hard truths while imagining new possibilities for healthier, more connected communities. Dr. Maybank’s thought leadership is deeply informed by her long-standing commitment to the arts and culture as essential drivers of health, healing, and justice. She has consistently leveraged storytelling, visual arts, film, and creative expression to challenge dominant narratives, make injustice visible, elevate community strengths, and inspire collective care and action.

Her engagement with arts and culture has been both strategic and operational. While founding the Office of Minority Health in Suffolk County, Dr. Maybank led the use of Photovoice, an arts-based community advocacy tool rooted in participatory research, placing cameras in the hands of members of the Unkechaug Native Community. The resulting images were exhibited publicly and used to advocate with elected officials, illuminating lived experiences and systemic barriers affecting diabetes care across generations. This early work shaped her enduring belief that creative tools can unlock empathy, understanding, and policy change in ways data alone cannot.

At the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, Dr. Maybank relentlessly challenged narrow, deficit-based narratives about what creates health. She forged groundbreaking partnerships with the arts community and city agencies to reimagine public health spaces and storytelling. Visual artists were engaged to transform government buildings—rebranded as Neighborhood Health Action Centers—into places that reflected dignity, humanity, and cultural innovation. Her team launched initiatives such as What Creates Health?, convening government leaders, artists, activists, and residents to collectively explore health through imagination, spirituality, politics, and place-making.

Her leadership directly contributed to the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs placing its first-ever Artist-in-Residence within the Health Department to amplify birth justice efforts—work that also intersected with her involvement in the removal of the J. Marion Sims statue in Central Park in 2018. Across multiple initiatives, Dr. Maybank used creative video, exhibitions, and immersive storytelling—including Undesign the Redline and #Not62—to elevate neighborhood-centered health efforts and catalyze organizing and systems change.

In all her leadership roles, Dr. Maybank ensured that arts and narrative transformation were central—not peripheral—to institutional strategy. Under her leadership, the AMA became a leading sponsor of Facing Race, the nation’s largest racial justice convening, amplifying the role of arts in advancing health justice. She launched the National Health Equity Grand Rounds: Rewrite the Script, bringing together physicians, writers, artists, and digital media experts to explore how reshaping harmful narratives can transform health outcomes.

Dr. Maybank is also the founder of Novellawells, LLC, a consultancy focused on public health strategy and experiential innovation through culture and the arts. Novellawells partners with nonprofits, cultural institutions, corporations, and global convenings to translate public health frameworks into immersive educational experiences, large-scale initiatives, and compelling narratives that meet people where they are.

One of her newest and most significant endeavors is co-founding Truthlight, a film production company dedicated to illuminating truthful, often invisible narratives of health. Through film, storytelling, and community engagement, Truthlight seeks to shift hearts, minds, and collective will—using narrative as a catalyst for solidarity, structural change, and longer, healthier lives.

These creative pursuits deeply inform Dr. Maybank’s keynote presentations, which often blend data, lived experience, history, and storytelling to inspire action. In her words, narrative is inseparable from power. Her work exposes how dominant narratives shape policy and offers new stories rooted in dignity, joy, and collective possibility. This philosophy underpins her speaking across healthcare, education, philanthropy, government, and cultural institutions.

Across all of her roles and platforms, Dr. Maybank brings a rare ability to connect strategy with soul—demonstrating how arts, culture, and narrative are not ancillary to health, but essential to creating a healthier, more just and humane society. A powerful exploration of how society and cultural dynamics can be leveraged to advance health, Dr. Maybank’s message highlights the vital intersection of health, community, and policy. She advocates for increased collaboration and mutual support to foster strategic thinking and effective change.

Grounded in authenticity, compassion, and radical candor, Dr. Maybank’s presentations deliver an experience that is authentic, compassionate, and unflinchingly honest. She invites people to engage with hard truths in a way that feels human, accessible, and motivating—creating space for reflection while clearly pointing toward action. Through her powerful truth-telling lens, Dr. Maybank builds trust, sparks deeper understanding, and challenges audiences to reimagine how culture, narrative, and community can be leveraged to create healthier, more thriving communities for all. Read Less ^