Ajay Dhankhar, PhD, has served as the Chief Corporate Development & Strategy Officer of Smith & Nephew since June 2025. Dr. Dhankhar founded Bluish Capital in July 2024, a strategy and financial advisory firm focused on deploying growth capital to support high quality, recently FDA approved assets, and served as its Managing Partner until his appointment to Smith & Nephew. From July 2022 to June 2024, Dr. Dhankhar served as a Managing Director in the Financial Advisory Healthcare Group of Lazard Ltd, where he was the Global Head of Medical Technology, Diagnostics and Tools. Prior to joining Lazard, Dr. Dhankhar held multiple leadership roles at McKinsey & Company over a span of 25 years, including, most recently, Senior Partner, as well as Global Head of Strategy and M&A for Life Sciences and Global Head of Life Sciences R&D.
Dr. Dhankhar has a B.S. in Physics and Computer Science from Angelo State University and a PhD in Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry from Yale University.