Dr. Mahmood is currently the Special Advisor to the Prime Minister of Malaysia on Public Health, and began her mandate in April 2020. She is also a member of the Government of Malaysia’s Economic Action Council, and is actively engaged in the COVID-19 response and recovery initiatives both on the health, economic and social fronts. In September 2020, she was appointed as a Senior Fellow at the Adrienne Arsht-Rockefeller Foundation Resilience Centre to help them reach the goal of making One Billion people more resilient to climate change, migration, and human security challenges by 2030. 

Prior to this, she was the Under Secretary General for Partnerships at the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) from 2016-2020.  Before joining the IFRC, Dr. Mahmood was the Chief of the World Humanitarian Summit secretariat at the United Nations and prior to that the Chief of the Humanitarian Response Branch at UNFPA; both positions in New York.  From 2006-2009, she was one of 16 members appointed by United Nations Secretary-General to the Inaugural Advisory Group of the Central Emergency Response Fund. She is a renowned humanitarian and founder of MERCY Malaysia.

Dr. Mahmood has held many Board positions in NGOs and INGOs and is the recipient of numerous national and international awards for her contribution to civil society and work in support of marginalized communities, including the first Isa Award for Services to Humanity from the Kingdom of Bahrain. She was also the recipient of the ASEAN Prize in 2019 and the Merdeka Award from Malaysia in 2015.  In October 2020, she was also appointed as a Board of Trustee of the Jeffrey Cheah Foundation in Malaysia.