José Luis Castro, FRSA, was appointed in June 2024 as the WHO Director-General Special Envoy for Chronic Respiratory Diseases. He is founder and former President and CEO of Vital Strategies. Mr Castro founded the global health organization Vital Strategies and led it for 20 years. During his tenure, Vital Strategies grew from a small nonprofit focused primarily on lung health to a US$ 100 million organization with a global team of more than 400 working on global health issues, including tobacco control, environmental and climate health, road safety, food policy, overdose prevention, and data for health. The organization now reaches into more than 80 countries, mostly low- and middle-income. Mr Castro served for eight years as the Executive Director of the International Union Against Tuberculosis and Lung Disease, a post he held while also leading Vital Strategies. During his leadership, The Union expanded its global portfolio with offices in 13 countries, staff of more than 600 worldwide, and almost 200 projects in 89 countries. During his tenure, Mr Castro forged new strategic partnerships, including with the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, USAID, the U.K. Department for International Development, and Bloomberg Philanthropies. He served from 2017 to 2019 as the first president of the NCD Alliance, a network of civil society organizations in 170 countries dedicated to combating the global epidemic of noncommunicable diseases. In 2014, Mr Castro co-founded the Global TB Caucus, an international network of over 2300 parliamentarians from 132 countries. Between 1993 and 2001, Mr Castro worked with WHO South-East Asia Regional Office to assist the government of India in the implementation of the largest tuberculosis control programme in the world. Prior to that, during the largest outbreak of multidrug-resistant TB ever to occur in the United States of America, Mr Castro helped build the programme that is still the foundation for TB control in New York City. Mr Castro earned his Master of Public Administration from the University of Pennsylvania and a Bachelor of Arts degree in Political Science from Pace University. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society for Arts and a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the European Respiratory Society and the American Thoracic Society, and serves on the Advisory Board on Dyson College of Arts and Sciences.