Hi, I’m ViNU

Hi, I’m Vinu. I’ve spent my career working alongside communities to transform the systems that shape our health. But over and over, I saw something missing from the conversation: the outsized influence of corporations – and the ways they quietly engineer harm while blaming you and me.

We’re told to eat better, exercise more, try harder. 

Meanwhile, corporations pollute our neighborhoods, underpay our workers, flood our diets with harmful products, and lobby to keep harmful policies in place. And when we get sick, they tell us it’s our fault.

As a public health lecturer, writer, and policy consultant with George Washington University’s Center on Commercial Determinants of Health, I’ve spent years researching how corporate power shows up in every corner of our lives, from the food we eat to the air we breathe to the policies that shape our communities. I’ve co-authored a chapter in the first textbook on this topic and written for the New York Times, Harvard Public Health Review, and the Handbook on the Political Economy of Health Systems, publishing work on public-private partnerships, lobbying, and corporate social responsibility.

But research and writing aren’t enough. I want to help communities not just understand these dynamics, but organize against them.

Before launching GASLIT, I worked on the ground: coordinating Virginia’s statewide bullying prevention program, evaluating the national truth anti-smoking campaign, and managing policy projects at Trust for America’s Health. Through this work, I saw firsthand how policies – and the corporate forces behind them – shape health outcomes long before anyone enters a clinic. I started my public health consulting practice, PoP Health, to work alongside communities to transform these policies and systems.

I created GASLIT to shift the narrative, build civic muscle, and reclaim the power that’s been stripped from our communities. Because if we’re going to transform health, we have to transform power. And no one can do that alone.

I believe this isn’t a partisan fight. Right, left, or center – for too long, corporations have won while communities have lost. The game is rigged. But together, we can unrig it.

I hold a Doctor of Public Health from George Washington University, a Master of Science in Public Health from Harvard, and undergraduate degrees in Biomedical Engineering and Economics from the University of Virginia. I’m also a proud parent, neighbor, and voter – because this fight for health is both personal and collective. 

So let’s do this. Together.