Felicia Knaul is the Director of the Miami Institute for the Americas at the University of Miami College of Arts & Sciences, which focuses on policy analysis in all sectors, including the humanities, the arts, and social and economic development. She is also a Professor in the Department of Public Health Sciences at the University of Miami Miller School Of Medicine. Since 2014, Dr. Knaul is Chair of the Lancet Commission on Global Access to Palliative Care and Pain Control.

Before joining the University of Miami faculty in 2015, she was Associate Professor at Harvard Medical School and Director of the Harvard Global Equity Initiative. Dr. Knaul is also Honorary Research Professor of Medical Sciences at the National Institute of Public Health of Mexico and Senior Economist at the Mexican Health Foundation. As a result of her breast cancer experience, in 2008 she founded Cáncer de Mama: Tómatelo a Pecho, a non-profit agency in Mexico that promotes research, advocacy, awareness, and early detection throughout Latin America.
Dr. Knaul has produced more than 170 academic and policy publications, authored and lead-edited academic books, and serves on the advisory board or editorial board of several medical and health care publishers. She received her Ph.D and M.A. in economics from Harvard University.