Arachu Castro

Arachu Castro is Samuel Z. Stone Chair of Public Health in Latin America and Director of the Collaborative Group for Health Equity in Latin America at Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine. She conducts research on women’s health and reproduction and on early childhood development in contexts of poverty. She received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2010. Before joining Tulane in 2013, she was Associate Professor of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School. She is the Past President of the Society for Medical Anthropology.

Bethany Hedt-Gauthier

Bethany Hedt-Gauthier is a biostatistician and associate professor at Harvard Medical School. She leads a body of research on provision and outcomes of c-section care at rural district hospitals in Rwanda. Bethany received a BS with distinction in mathematics from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill in 1999. Immediately following her undergraduate training, she served three years in the U.S. Peace Corps in Namibia, where she was introduced to the needs and challenges of global public health and the role of research in addressing these gaps. In 2003, she began a PhD program in biostatistics at Harvard School of Public Health. During this training, she took a leave of absence to complete a fellowship in strategic information at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Malawi. She received her PhD in 2008 and completed a two-year postdoctoral fellowship in the same department in 2010.

Brian Heuser

Brian Heuser is an Assistant Professor of the Practice of International Education Policy in the Department of Leadership, Policy and Organizations at Peabody College of Vanderbilt University. He has research and work experience in more than 30 countries, including as a US Embassy Policy Specialist in the Republic Georgia, where he worked on issues related to scientific and academic research conducted by tertiary institutions of the post-Soviet region. His research includes the role of universities in creating economic development, issues related to the relationships between global health policy and education policy, and cross-national differences in higher education functions.

Jana Zindell

As Ubuntu Pathways’ Chief Strategy Officer, Jana Zindell oversees the strategic development, impact measurement, and implementation of all programs. Over her 15 years at the organization, Jana has professionalized the grassroots service delivery model, creating a global blueprint for community transformation. She has been instrumental in the creation of all aspects of the model. She has led the creation of a comprehensive pathway of interventions taking orphans and vulnerable children from cradle to career, drove complex organizational change, and guided the development of Ubuntu's capacity building program, a globally recognized best practice in recruitment, empowerment, and retention in low-resource settings. In 2010, Jana spearheaded the design and building of the Ubuntu Centre, a 24,000 square foot, state-of-the-art building that houses a mother-and-child clinic, an early childhood wing, and job skills training hub. Jana is a passionate advocate of contextualized, locally-driven poverty solutions as well as the importance of staff development, creating a learning culture, and the value of intrapreneurship. She writes and speaks regularly about these topics. She currently leads the Ubuntu Advisory, the consulting arm of Ubuntu Pathways. The Ubuntu Advisory provides consulting, training and coaching to organizations that wish to grow responsibily and deepen impact by applying the principles of the Ubuntu Model.

Moderator: Paul Ellingstad

Managing Partner, PTI Advisors Paul advises and accompanies leaders who want to innovate and grow by effectively navigating breakthrough change. He is a veteran of the technology sector and worked at iconic brands Gateway, Compaq and HP. Paul is now Managing Partner at PTI Advisors, where he works with clients in all three sectors, especially on the growing importance of sustainability and responsible business in society. He is a lifelong learner and a systems thinker. He is passionate about mentoring and believes that mentors normally learn more than they can ever possibly teach. Paul is a fellow in the Aspen Institute’s Business & Society Program, he serves as a director on several boards, he is a youth leadership advocate and a life-long member of the Scouting movement.

Andrea Coleman

Andrea Coleman is co-founder of Riders for Health and founder of Two Wheels for Life. She has worked for 30 years to show that a systematic approach to managing motorcycles and motorized vehicles in Africa means health care can be delivered predictably and reliably, however harsh the conditions and however remote the community. Andrea’s motorcycle racing life and her work in promotion and sports management provided her with a practical outlook and a set of skills that have helped to guide the financial and advocacy development work of Riders for Health. Andrea has been a fellow of the Skoll Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship since 2005 and is a senior fellow of Ashoka. In 2016 Andrea founded Two Wheels for Life which supports the work of Riders for Health in 7 programs in Africa.

Richard Skolnik

Richard Skolnik is the former Director for HNP for the South Asia Region of the World Bank. He taught global health at George Washington and Yale and was the Executive Director of the Harvard PEPFAR program. He is the author of Global Health 101 and the instructor for the Yale/Coursera course Essentials of Global Health.

Sten H. Vermund

Sten H. Vermund is Dean of the Yale School of Public Health, the Anna M.R. Lauder Professor of Public Health, and Professor of Pediatrics at the Yale School of Medicine. He is a pediatrician and infectious disease epidemiologist focused on diseases of low and middle income countries, and on health disparities in the U.S. His work on HIV-HPV interactions among women in a Bronx methadone program motivated a change in the 1993 CDC AIDS case surveillance definition and inspired cervical cancer screening programs launched within global HIV/AIDS programs. His research has focused on health care access, adolescent medicine, prevention of mother-to-child HIV transmission, and reproductive health. He has founded two non-governmental organizations: Centre for Infectious Disease Research in Zambia (CIDRZ) and Friends in Global Health in Mozambique and Nigeria.

Moderator: Marie Martin

Marie Martin is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Health Policy in the Vanderbilt School of Medicine and serves as the Associate Director for Education and Training at the Vanderbilt Institute for Global Health (VIGH). She received her B.A. in English from Vanderbilt University and M.Ed. in International Education Policy from Vanderbilt’s George Peabody College of Education and Human Development. She completed her Ph.D. at Tennessee State University in Public Administration. Her research and teaching interests lie at the intersection of global health, public policy and education with a particular focus on agenda-setting and public finance. Previously, Marie was a Fulbright Scholar to Japan in international education and worked for three years at the Global Education Office at Vanderbilt developing international service-learning programs. Her professional background includes seven years as an assignment editor for CNN.

Scott Corlew

A surgeon, Scott Corlew is now on the faculty at Harvard Medical School's Program in Global Surgery and Social Change, working to increase access to surgical care in low- and lower-middle income countries.  Previously he spent a number of years as CMO of Interplast, now called Resurge International.

Elizabeth Johansen

Elizabeth Johansen is Director of Product Design at Vaxess Technologies, adjunct faculty with the Olin and Babson Colleges Affordable Design and Entrepreneurship Program, and the founder and principal consultant for Spark Health Design. Spark Health Design uses human-centered design to help our clients develop world-class technologies that lead to better health outcomes globally. As an engineering designer, human factors engineer, and program lead, Elizabeth has contributed to seven products launched including Jana Care’s Aina A1c point-of-care diagnostics test app and kit for managing chronic disease in India and SE Asia; and Design that Matters’ Firefly phototherapy device currently treating newborns with jaundice in hospitals in over twenty low and middle-income countries.  

Charles MacCormack

Charles MacCormack is currently Senior Fellow at Interaction, the national association of more than 200 International Non- Governmental Organizations, where he chairs the board on NGO Futures. Most recently he has served as Senior Fellow at Yale University, Advanced Leadership Fellow at Harvard University, and Executive-in Residence at Middlebury College. He was CEO of Save the Children for 18 years and of World Learning/ School for International Training for sixteen years. He is a graduate of Middlebury College and earned his Master's and Ph.D. degrees from Columbia University.

Lisa Russell

Lisa Russell is an Emmy-winning filmmaker with a Masters in Public Health whose work lies at the intersection of arts, social justice and global development. With a unique career spanning nearly 15 years, Lisa has been at the forefront of the global health and development storytelling movement first as a filmmaker by producing films for UN/NGO agencies on a variety of pressing global issues including obstetric fistula and maternal health, the impact of war on young people, climate change and more - and as a UN arts curator where she brings artistic performances and workshops to high level UN events and international gatherings. 

Moderator: Rebecca Hardin

Rebecca Hardin is an environmental and educational anthropologist who has worked primarily in Africa and North America on human/wildlife interactions, corporate/community politics in concession economies, and the links between local and transnational environmental justice movements. She is currently an Associate Professor, School for Environment and Sustainability, University of Michigan, where she directs curricular innovation programs leveraging digital media and software innovation to enhance face to face learning and move curricular materials beyond the classroom to address environmental challenges at civic, professional, and advocacy levels.

Embedding Data and Evidence in Global Health Programs 

Lisa Hirschhorn

Lisa Hirschhorn is a Professor in the Departments of Medical Social Sciences and Psychiatry at the Northwestern Feinberg School of Medicine and a member of the Third Coast Center for AIDS Research. Her current work focuses on applying implementation science methods to effectively measure and improve implementation and quality and effectiveness of care in the US and a number of countries in Africa.  Lisa is also Director for Implementation and Improvement Sciences at Ariadne Labs, a partnership between the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Throughout her career, she has been committed to providing training and mentorship for students and junior faculty in the US and in many countries in Africa including Tanzania, Rwanda, and Zimbabwe. Current projects include exploring barriers to pre-exposure prophylaxis for HIV+ women in Chicago, primary health care improvement in low and middle income settings, strengthening quality measurement focusing on people-centered care, and evaluation of quality improvement collaboratives in Africa.

Gary Kreps

Gary L. Kreps is a University Distinguished Professor and Founding Director of the Center for Health and Risk Communication at George Mason University. His research, presented in more than 480 scholarly publications, examines the influences of communication on health outcomes. His multi-methodological, programmatic, community-based studies examine health risks to develop/implement/sustain evidence-based health promotion policies, technologies, and practices. He examines the information needs of vulnerable populations, including those facing serious socioeconomic, cultural, and health challenges. He coordinates the multi-site INSIGHT (International Studies to Investigate Global Health Information Trends) research program. He served as Founding Chief of the Health Communication and Informatics Research Branch at the National Cancer Institute, where he introduced large-scale health communication research programs. He also served as Dean of the School of Communication at Hofstra University, Executive Director of the Greenspun School of Communication at UNLV, and professor at Northern Illinois, Rutgers, Indiana, and Purdue Universities. He is a Fellow of both the American Academy for Health Behavior and the International Communication Association.

Katherine Semrau

Katherine Semrau is an epidemiologist and the Director of the BetterBirth Program at Ariadne Labs, a joint health innovation center at Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health. Her program aims to improve the quality of care, minimize complications, and end the preventable deaths of women and newborns through effective implementation of evidence-based, scalable solutions at the frontline of care. Katherine is an Assistant Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and an Associate Epidemiologist at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital in the Division of Global Health Equity.

David Tovey

David Tovey was Editor in Chief of the Cochrane Library between 2009 and 2019. Cochrane is the largest international organization in the world that is dedicated to the production and publication of high quality systematic reviews of the effects of health care interventions. He was recently awarded the title of Emeritus Editor in Chief. David is currently Chair of the Scientific Advisory Committee of the Center for Biomedical Transparency, an Editorial Adviser and Steering Group member for the COVID-Network Meta-Analysis  project based at the Université de Paris, France, and also has joined the Secretariat of the COVID-END international network.

Moderator: Daniel Palazuelos

Daniel Palazuelos is a global health implementer-educator who holds positions at Harvard Medical School, the Brigham and Women's Hospital, and Partners In Health. He started his career in global health equity by living and working with community health workers in impoverished communities in Chiapas, Mexico, and these grassroots experiences have deeply influenced his approach to addressing the biggest challenges in global health. Over the last decade, he helped to launch Compañeros En Salud - México (Partners In Health's program in Mexico), the Financing Alliance for Health (which helps governments design and fund ambitious, affordable, and at-scale community health programs), and the Community Health Impact Coalition (a five year quality initiative by some of the field’s most innovative implementers to catalyze the adoption of high-impact community health systems design).

Cal Bruns

Cal Bruns spent 20 years on 5 continents as a Creative Director working hard to get people to buy things they didn't really need. Then he founded Matchboxology, Africa's first Human Centered Design firm, where he and his colleagues work very hard to help leaders and organizations improve lives by applying cognitive empathy and collective problem solving. 

Eve Heyn

Eve Heyn is a communications professional specializing in public health both in the U.S. and globally, with public and private sector experience across NGOs, companies and foundations. Eve is managing editor at NewYork-Presbyterian, which includes 10 hospitals, 200 clinics and practices, and a partnership with two world-renowned medical schools, Columbia and Weill Cornell. Eve manages a team of writers, editors and video producers creating original content in the Office of Communications including the Emmy-winning Health Matters website. The team has been on the front lines of producing critical and compelling content around COVID-19.

Michelle Kreger

Michelle Kreger leads IDEO.org’s Global Health Practice. In this role, she works closely with IDEO.org's designers and partners to bring new solutions into the world that help people manage their health and wellness. She has collaborated with the Global Health team to design programs, products and services in over a dozen countries. She believes deeply in the power of design to transform and energize the social sector, and has designed adolescent reproductive health programs in Zambia, Kenya, Benin and Cote D’Ivoire, vaccine delivery innovations for the global context, and mental health service experiences in the United States. Prior to IDEO.org, Michelle led Kiva's global portfolio and was responsible for Kiva's expansion to multiple countries in Latin America, Africa, and the Middle East. She also led Kiva Labs, an innovation team within the organization that pioneered crowd-funded lending to social enterprises across the globe.

Rebecca Wear Robinson

Rebecca Wear Robinson is a social marketing consultant and the Executive Director of Make the Minute Matter, a nonprofit dedicated to ending the global epidemic of drowning.  She has been instrumental in developing global communication strategies for the drowning prevention field and is currently on the Steering Committee to develop and communicate a water safety plan for the U.S.  Rebecca has a master’s degree in International Management, Marketing, and Economics from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University and a master’s degree in Organizational and Social Psychology from the London School of Economics.

Moderator: Tricia Bolender

Tricia Bolender works with leaders and organizations who are changing the world.  Her experience in supporting leaders spans globally, from the Middle East, Asia, and Africa to North America.  Her coaching bridges head and heart, helping clients lead courageously and be more loyal to their dreams than to their fears.  Prior to executive coaching, she was part of the senior leadership team at LifeSpring Hospitals, a chain of maternity hospitals providing high quality, respectful care to low-income women in India.  She received her BA from Harvard University, MBA from Columbia Business School and MA in International Affairs from Columbia University. 

 Agnes Binagwaho

Agnes Binagwaho is the Vice Chancellor and Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Global Health Equity, an initiative of Partners In Health focused on changing the way health care is delivered around the world by training the next generation of global health professionals who strive to deliver more equitable, quality health services for all. She is a Rwandan pediatrician who worked for 20 years in the public health sector in Rwanda, first as the Executive Secretary of Rwanda's National AIDS Control Commission, then as Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Health, and then for five years as Minister of Health. Professor Binagwaho serves as Senior Advisor to the Director General of the World Health Organization and, since 2016, she has been a member of the United States National Academy of Medicine and, since 2017, a fellow of the African Academy of Sciences.

In Conversation with Rebecca Hardin

Rebecca Hardin is an environmental and educational anthropologist who has worked primarily in Africa and North America on human/wildlife interactions, corporate/community politics in concession economies, and the links between local and transnational environmental justice movements. She is currently an Associate Professor, School for Environment and Sustainability, University of Michigan, where she directs curricular innovation programs leveraging digital media and software innovation to enhance face to face learning and move curricular materials beyond the classroom to address environmental challenges at civic, professional, and advocacy levels.

Vision and Mission: Purpose-Driven Innovation

The Art of Effective Leadership

Bernice Dahn

Bernice Dahn is the Vice President for Health Sciences at the University of Liberia. She served as the Minister of Health for the Republic of Liberia from 2015-2018. For almost nine years prior, Dr. Dahn served as the Deputy Minister of Health and Chief Medical Officer for the Republic of Liberia. In these roles, she led the re-establishment of the Ministry of Health and the rebuilding of Liberia’s post-conflict health care delivery system. Internationally, she has served as a Board Member of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria and of the World Bank’s Global Financing Facility.

In Conversation with Marie H. Martin

Marie Martin is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Health Policy in the Vanderbilt School of Medicine and serves as the Associate Director for Education and Training at the Vanderbilt Institute for Global Health (VIGH). She received her B.A. in English from Vanderbilt University and M.Ed. in International Education Policy from Vanderbilt’s George Peabody College of Education and Human Development. She completed her Ph.D. at Tennessee State University in Public Administration. Her research and teaching interests lie at the intersection of global health, public policy and education with a particular focus on agenda-setting and public finance. Previously, Marie was a Fulbright Scholar to Japan in international education and worked for three years at the Global Education Office at Vanderbilt developing international service-learning programs. Her professional background includes seven years as an assignment editor for CNN.