The VRF Board of Directors keeps an eye on the big picture: where we are going, what matters most, and whether we are staying true to the Foundation’s mission.
Our Directors come from science, business and philanthropy, and they all volunteer their time. Each has a personal reason for caring about vitiligo, and they’ve stayed with us for years because of it.
Dmitry Aksenov founded the Vitiligo Research Foundation in 2010 to speed up vitiligo research worldwide, for his daughter and for every family living with the condition.
Born in Pripyat, near Chernobyl, he went on to become one of the most successful real estate developers of his generation.
He’s also a patron of the arts and a pioneer of CultTech, where art meets technology. He founded the CultTech Lab and the IF Innovation Award in Vienna, which recognize international tech projects in the arts.
Prof. Torello Lotti, MD, is a founding Board member of the Vitiligo Research Foundation and Chair of its Board of Directors. He is Professor and Chair of Dermatology and Venereology at Guglielmo Marconi University in Rome, where he also serves as Pro Rector, and is an Academician of the Italian Republic.
A world-renowned dermatologist and long-time leader in vitiligo research, Prof. Lotti was also one of the co-founders of World Vitiligo Day and helped shape the campaign from its earliest days. At VRF, he has played a central role in guiding the Foundation’s scientific direction, international partnerships and global advocacy work.
Anvar Kalimov is a retired senior corporate executive with extensive experience in real estate development, investment and management. Over the course of his career, he held leadership roles in major property and business ventures, bringing a strong background in strategy, governance and organizational growth.
Now based in California, he continues to support VRF with the practical business perspective and long-term judgment that come from decades of executive experience.
These are the doctors and scientists we turn to when we need a straight answer.
They come from around the world and, between them, have seen vitiligo in the clinic, in the lab and through the wider lens of public health. They help us judge which ideas are worth pursuing, keep us honest about the evidence, and connect VRF to the broader scientific community.
Many have also led World Vitiligo Day in their home countries. All volunteer their time.
Prof. Robert A. Schwartz, MD, MPH, is Professor and Head of Dermatology at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School, with additional appointments in Medicine, Pediatrics, Pathology and Preventive Medicine. An internationally recognized dermatologist, author and educator, his work spans dermatologic oncology, infectious disease and global health. He has held leadership roles in numerous international dermatology organizations and serves as Chair of the VRF Scientific Advisory Board.
Prof. Andrew F. Alexis, MD, MPH, is Professor of Clinical Dermatology and Vice-Chair for Diversity and Inclusion at Weill Cornell Medicine and an attending dermatologist at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital. A leading authority on dermatologic conditions in diverse skin types, he has helped advance clinical research and education in skin of color and previously directed the Skin of Color Center in New York for more than 15 years.
Prof. Ivana Binić, MD, PhD, is Full Professor of Dermatovenerology at the Faculty of Medicine, University of Niš, Serbia. Her clinical and academic work spans inflammatory and pigmentary skin disorders, including vitiligo, and she has been actively involved in dermatology education and research across Southeast Europe.
Prof. Binić served as Honorary President of World Vitiligo Day 2020.
Prof. Nellie Konnikov, MD, is Professor of Clinical Dermatology at Boston University and Tufts University School of Medicine and Chief of Dermatology at the VA Boston Healthcare System. A respected clinician, educator and international leader in dermatology, her work spans pigmentary disorders, phototherapy, teledermatology and medical education. She is Immediate Past President of the International Society of Dermatology and brings to VRF broad clinical experience, global perspective and a long-standing commitment to improving dermatologic care.
Prof. Xing-Hua Gao, MD, PhD, is Professor of Dermatology at China Medical University and Director of the Key Laboratory of Immunodermatology in Shenyang. A former Chair of Dermatology at the First Hospital of China Medical University and former President of the Chinese Society of Dermatology, he became President of the Chinese Dermatologist Association in 2025. His research focuses on immunodermatology, atopic dermatitis, vitiligo and cutaneous infections.
He served as Honorary President of World Vitiligo Day 2015.
Srie Prihianti Gondokaryono, MD, PhD, is a dermatologist and educator affiliated with the Faculty of Medicine at Universitas Padjadjaran in Bandung, Indonesia. Her clinical expertise includes pediatric dermatology, allergy and immunology, pigmentary disorders and vitiligo. She has held leadership roles in the Indonesian Society of Dermatology and Venereology and regional pediatric dermatology organizations, and served as Honorary President of World Vitiligo Day 2021.
Prof. John E. Harris, MD, PhD, is the inaugural Chair of Dermatology at Mass General Brigham and a faculty member at Harvard Medical School. A physician-scientist and one of the world’s leading vitiligo researchers, he directs a research program exploring the immunology of vitiligo and translating laboratory discoveries into new treatments. He previously founded the Vitiligo Clinic and Research Center and the Autoimmune Therapeutics Institute at UMass Chan Medical School.
Prof. Jana Hercogová, MD, PhD, is Professor of Dermatovenereology at Charles University in Prague and a prominent European dermatologist, educator and clinical leader. She has served as President of the European Academy of Dermatology and Venereology and currently leads the Czech Academy of Dermatology and Venereology. Her work spans medical dermatology, clinical research and international dermatology education.
She served as Honorary President of World Vitiligo Day 2016.
Aliya Kassymkhanova, MD, is a dermatologist and vitiligo specialist based at the Vitiligo Center in Almaty, Kazakhstan. Involved in vitiligo research and patient care for more than two decades, she has published extensively, contributed to research on new treatment approaches and founded the Vitiligo School, a patient education and support initiative. She is one of the longest-serving members of the VRF Scientific Advisory Board.
Prof. Konstantin Lomonosov, MD, PhD, is affiliated with the Department of Dermatology and Communicable Diseases at I.M. Sechenov First Moscow State Medical University. Widely regarded as one of Russia’s foremost vitiligo specialists, he has devoted much of his clinical and academic work to vitiligo, pigmentary disorders and the development of new therapeutic approaches. He has served on the VRF Scientific Advisory Board since 2011.
Prof. Jorge Ocampo-Candiani, MD, is Professor and Chair of Dermatology at the University Hospital “Dr. José Eleuterio González” of the Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León in Monterrey, Mexico. One of Latin America’s leading dermatologists, he is President of the 26th World Congress of Dermatology, held in Guadalajara in 2027, and has been elected President-Elect of the International League of Dermatological Societies. He takes up the presidency at the close of the Congress.
Jorge served as Honorary President of World Vitiligo Day 2022 in Mexico, where his campaign brought vitiligo into the Mexican Senate under the theme “Learning to Live with Vitiligo.”
Prof. Davinder Parsad, MD, is Professor of Dermatology, Venereology and Leprology at PGIMER in Chandigarh, India, and an internationally recognized authority on vitiligo and pigmentary disorders. His research spans vitiligo pathogenesis, clinical treatment and regenerative approaches to pigmentation. He is a founder of the Vitiligo Academy of India and has held leadership roles in Asian pigment-cell research.
Prof. Parsad served as Honorary President of World Vitiligo Day in 2014 and again led the global WVD campaign from India in 2026.
Prof. Nguyen Van Thuong, MD, PhD, is a senior dermatologist and educator at Hanoi Medical University and former Director of Vietnam’s National Hospital of Dermatology and Venereology. His academic and clinical work has included pigmentary disorders, inflammatory skin disease and vitiligo, and he continues to contribute to dermatology education and research in Vietnam.
He served as Honorary President of World Vitiligo Day 2019.
Prof. Nino Tsiskarishvili, MD, PhD, is a Georgian dermatologist whose clinical and academic work focuses on vitiligo and other pigmentary disorders. She is Founder and President of the Vitiligo Association of Georgia and has played an active role in dermatology education, research and patient advocacy in Georgia and internationally. She brings to the VRF Scientific Advisory Board extensive experience in pigmentary disorders and a strong commitment to improving care and awareness for people living with vitiligo.
Nobody understands vitiligo quite like the people who live with it every day.
Our Patient Advisory Board brings together patient leaders and advocates from around the world. Many have built support groups, patient organizations and advocacy networks from scratch.
They keep us grounded, remind us who all this work is for, and make sure that what looks good on paper still makes sense in real life. When it doesn’t, they are usually the first to tell us.
Prof. Valarie Molyneaux is Founder and President of VITFriends, one of the longest-running vitiligo patient support organizations in the United States, and Chair of the VRF Patient Advisory Board. For more than two decades, she has built support networks, led national awareness campaigns and advocated for better access to care and research. In 2025 she was appointed to the Massachusetts Rare Disease Council, and in 2026 received the honorary title of Professor Honoris Causa in Health Education and Patient Advocacy.
Abigail Hurrell is CEO of The Vitiligo Society, the UK’s national charity dedicated to supporting people affected by vitiligo. She leads the organisation’s work across patient support, research, advocacy and access to care, and has played an important role in bringing patient evidence into national health-policy discussions. Most recently, she represented the vitiligo community through the NICE appraisal process that led to NHS access to ruxolitinib cream in 2026. She brings to the VRF Patient Advisory Board a strong focus on patient voice, health equity and practical change.
Ogo Maduewesi is a Nigerian social entrepreneur, Ashoka Fellow and long-standing patient advocate. She founded the Vitiligo Support and Awareness Foundation (VITSAF), the first patient-led vitiligo organization in Sub-Saharan Africa, and was an early driving force behind what became World Vitiligo Day. Her work has since expanded through The Appearance Positive (TAP), an initiative focused on appearance dignity, psychosocial well-being and the impact of technology and AI on people living with visible differences. She continues to bring a strong African patient perspective to global discussions on vitiligo, stigma and inclusion.
Prof. Adrian Mar, MBBS, FACD, is a Melbourne-based dermatologist with a long-standing clinical interest in vitiligo. He is President of the Vitiligo Association Australia, co-founded the Vitiligo Clinic at the Skin Health Institute, serves as an Adjunct Associate Professor at Monash University and has held senior leadership roles in dermatology at Monash Health. He is also a co-founder of Digital Dermatology, expanding specialist dermatology access through telehealth across Australia.
Jean-Marie Meurant is President of the Vitiligo International Patient Organizations Committee (VIPOC) and Vice President of the Association Française du Vitiligo. A long-time patient advocate, he has helped build international cooperation between vitiligo organizations and works closely with researchers, industry and institutions to strengthen the patient voice in research, policy and access to care.
Prof. Jorge Luis Pérez Hidalgo is Founder and President of VITAmigos, the Vitiligo Support and Research Group based in Holguín, Cuba. Since founding the organization in 2015, he has worked to strengthen patient support, education and research collaboration in Cuba and across Latin America. VITAmigos combines psychological and social support with close cooperation between patients, dermatologists, psychologists and researchers, and maintains a long-standing partnership with VRF.
Lee Thomas is an Emmy Award-winning television broadcaster, author and one of the best-known public voices on living with vitiligo. He is Founder of the VStrong Vitiligo Support Community in Detroit and has spent years using television, public speaking and advocacy to challenge stigma and promote self-acceptance. His TED Talk, “How I help people understand vitiligo,” brought his personal story to a global audience, while his memoir, Turning White, explores his own journey with the condition.
We’re a small team spread across several countries and time zones — some paid staff, some volunteers, and, increasingly, a few AI colleagues who never sleep, never complain about meetings, and still occasionally need supervision.
We run the day-to-day work behind VRF: World Vitiligo Day, patient education, digital tools, research partnerships, communications and everything you see from us online.
Most of us came to vitiligo through personal experience, through someone we care about, or simply by staying with the work long enough for it to become personal. Human judgment still runs the show. The AI just helps us move faster.
Yan Valle is Executive Director of the Vitiligo Research Foundation, Professor of Medicine (h.c.) and a long-time patient advocate who has lived with vitiligo since childhood. He helped establish VRF in 2010 and has led its growth into an international research and advocacy platform spanning patient education, clinical research, digital health and global awareness.
He has played a central role in turning World Vitiligo Day into a global movement and in developing initiatives including the Vitiligo Patient Journey Map and vitiligo.ai. With a background in technology, business and research, his work focuses on turning patient needs, data and new tools into practical programs with measurable impact. He is also the author of "A No-Nonsense Guide to Vitiligo" and was named Vitiligo Innovator of the Year in 2026.
Pujita Saini led the World Vitiligo Day 2026 campaign, hosted in India, shaping its communications, branding and partnerships.
A UK-qualified barrister (LLB First Class Honours, Bar Vocational Studies, LLM from King’s College London), she has worked in international protection, sanctions and cross-border legal coordination across Europe, the Middle East and Asia. For WVD-2026 she led campaign design, content, marketing and sponsor work, and helped create patient-facing initiatives, media programs and the “Mind Meets Skin” symposium.
Philippe (“Phil”) designs and builds VRF’s online projects as a volunteer. His career runs from marketing to IT, with more than a decade spent designing scalable networking and analytics systems, from cloud services and mobile apps to, most recently, smart city solutions. He’s also at home running teams spread across countries, which comes in handy at a foundation that works across time zones.
Yana leads our social media, with Instagram as her main playground, and has been doing it with us since 2021. She plans the content, keeps the tone honest and human, and turns our daily work, research, and advocacy into stories people actually want to follow. Yana is the one who makes sure our posts don’t sound like a press release, but like a smart friend talking — clear, warm, sometimes funny, and always on point.
Ksusha has been in charge of our creative communications since 2021. She shapes the visual style around everything we do and builds campaigns that connect our work with real people, not just “audiences.”
Give her dry text, numbers, or medical jargon — she turns it into simple, memorable visuals and messages that stay in your head. From key visuals and layouts to full campaign concepts, she’s the one making sure our communication looks and feels like us, wherever people see it.
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Copyright (C) Bodolóczki JúliaBy taking a little time to fill in the anonymous questionnaire, you can help researchers better understand and fight vitiligo.