MSH - Key Persons
Job Titles:
- Principal Technical Advisor for Laboratory Systems
Job Titles:
- Senior Technical Director and Practice Area Lead for Health Policy, Advocacy, and Engagement and Integrated Health Care
Amy Boldosser-Boesch is Senior Technical Director and Practice Area Lead for Health Policy, Advocacy, and Engagement and Integrated Health Care. She oversees MSH's work and teams dedicated to improving women's, children's, and adolescents' health and person-centered primary health care, including the FCI Program of MSH, and leads advocacy and accountability efforts for improved sexual, reproductive, maternal, newborn, and adolescent health and universal health coverage. Boldosser-Boesch is also responsible for managing the Secretariat for the Civil Society Engagement Mechanism of UHC2030, which is hosted at MSH. Previously, she was interim president and CEO, and vice president of global advocacy, at Family Care International (FCI), a non-governmental organization dedicated to making pregnancy and childbirth safer in the developing world, whose programs and staff were integrated into MSH in late 2015.
Boldosser-Boesch has extensive experience in both global and domestic health policy advocacy, with a focus on women's and adolescents' health and rights. Before joining FCI, she was director of local advocacy initiatives at the National Institute for Reproductive Health, led a NYC Department of Health-funded initiative to increase emergency contraception access among adolescents and immigrant women, was program officer and interim deputy director at the International Organization for Adolescents, and worked in the Health Equity program of the Rockefeller Foundation on public health projects in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia. Boldosser-Boesch is an active member of a number of global advocacy initiatives, including the Ending Preventable Maternal Mortality (EPMM) Working Group, the Advance Family Planning Leadership Group, the FP2020 Expert Advisory Community, and serves on the UNFPA Global Advisory Council and the Board of Directors of the Global Health Council. She speaks, reads, and writes Spanish and French at an advanced level. Boldosser-Boesch holds a Master of International Affairs in Human Rights from the Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs.
Job Titles:
- Principal Technical Advisor, Health Economics and Financing
- Project Director of the PHC Performance Management Activity
Colin Gilmartin serves as the Project Director of the PHC Performance Management Activity, supporting district health management teams in Ghana and Rwanda to use routine operational data and leverage catalytic grant funding to implement and regularly monitor results oriented PHC action plans to achieve improved health outcomes. His work has focused on improving PHC resource allocation and system performance and advising ministries of health, non-governmental organizations, and donors in areas of health financing (economic evaluation, investment case development, sustainable financing). Through funding from UNICEF and Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, he has led PHC costing analyses and investment cases for national community health worker programs. Gilmartin began his career working in rural Burkina Faso as a community health development worker with the US Peace Corps and completed his Masters of Science in public health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
Job Titles:
- Senior Principal Technical Advisor, MTaPS Program, Governance and Capacity Development
Dr. Andrew Brown has more than 30 years of experience in health systems with a specialized focus on pharmaceutical systems and human resources development in low- and middle-income countries. He has extensive in-country experience in Africa, Asia, and the Pacific, having worked with a range of international and national stakeholders. His experience includes clinical pharmacy, business, and academia. Before coming to MSH, Dr. Brown was Senior Director of Health Workforce Development at IntraHealth; Workforce Development Specialist with USAID Global Health Supply Chain Program-Procurement and Supply Management; Executive Director of the International Association of Public Health Logisticians; and Executive Manager of the People that Deliver initiative. A pharmacist by background, Dr. Brown obtained his pharmacy degree from Sydney University and completed a post-graduate certificate in adult education and a PhD from the University of Canberra in capacity development of health supply chain cadres in low-income countries.
Job Titles:
- Senior Technical Director and Project Director
Senior Technical Director; Project Director, HS4TB; and Executive Director, JLN for UHC
Dr. Kamiar Khajavi, Senior Technical Director and Project Director for HS4TB, works with our colleagues and external parties on all aspects of health systems financing and policy. In the seven years before joining us, Dr. Khajavi served at USAID as an advisor in the Bureau for Global Health reporting to the Assistant Administrator. His portfolio included health finance, global health policy, and management, workforce and compliance issues. Before USAID, Dr. Khajavi worked as a consultant in the Washington DC office of McKinsey & Co., where he served private and public sector clients. In the more distant past, he was an attending physician (internal medicine) at New York Presbyterian Hospital and on the faculty of the Weil Cornell Medical College. Dr. Khajavi has also worked in financial law and investment banking. He holds a JD and MPH from Columbia University and an MD from the University of Pennsylvania.
Job Titles:
- Principal Technical Advisor, MTaPS Program
Dr. Kwesi E. Eghan provides technical support on program management, Universal Health Coverage, and medicines benefits management in health insurance programs. He has over 25 years of experience managing and implementing health care programs in multiple countries with a solid background in financing and health insurance; management and operational experience in public health (HIV, TB, and malaria), program management, resource mobilization, and grants management. Dr. Eghan was a primary facilitator for the development of the Ghana national health insurance policy framework and the Health Insurance Act (Act 650) of Ghana and served as a board member on the National Health Insurance Council of Ghana as head of the national medicines and tariffs sub-committees of the Health Insurance Authority of Ghana.
Dr. Eghan holds a doctorate in business administration from the University of North Carolina, Charlotte, a master's in business administration, a master's in health and pharmacoeconomics from the Barcelona School of Management at the University of Pompeu Fabra Barcelona, and a bachelor of pharmacy degree. He is a fellow of the Ghana College of Pharmacists.
Job Titles:
- President and Co - Founder of the Institute for Global Health
Dr. Magda Robalo is the president and co-founder of The Institute for Global Health and Development of Guinea-Bissau, which works with a diverse range of partners to achieve sustainable development outcomes. She is a public health physician and infectious disease expert whose career spans more than 30 years in the global health ecosystem.
As a former Minister of Health, high commissioner for the COVID-19 response in Guinea-Bissau, WHO representative, director of communicable diseases at WHO/AFRO, and global managing director of Women in Global Health, Dr. Robalo has spearheaded numerous successful domestic and international initiatives working across governmental, multilateral, and civil society organizations. She has a track record of promoting gender equality and equitable access to quality health care, social justice, ethics, and accountability.
Dr. Robalo has solid knowledge and robust experience with a broad range of public health issues, gender equality, ethics, and governance and serves on several boards and councils, connecting and interacting with a vast network of experts and policymakers in global health.
Dr. Robalo holds an MD from Universidade do Porto, Portugal, with a postgraduate certificate in public health and tropical medicine (Universidade Nova, Portugal) and a master of sciences in epidemiology (Université Laval, Canada).
Job Titles:
- Medical Doctor
- Senior Technical Advisor, TB and HIV and AIDS
Dr. Muluken Melese is a medical doctor and public health professional with more than three decades of clinical, project management, and research experience. Dr. Melese is serving as a senior technical advisor in infectious diseases, focusing on TB and HIV and AIDS, as well as public health emergencies, and supporting countries in Africa and Asia to design strategies, policies, and research. From 2011 to 2016, he served as Chief of Party for MSH's Help Ethiopia Address Low Tuberculosis project. Previously, he was technical director for our HIV/AIDS Care and Support Project. Dr. Melese has extensive medical and project management experience in both the public and private sectors of Ethiopia in the areas of neglected tropical diseases; noncommunicable diseases; maternal, newborn, and child health; emergency medical systems; water, sanitation, and hygiene; and nutrition. He also pioneered the design of the Integrated Eye Care Workers, which includes cataract surgeons and an emergency surgeon group that acts as a health workforce as a task-shifting strategy to alleviate the critically trained health worker shortage in the areas of blindness and maternal health. Dr. Melese has authored or co-authored more than 60 peer-reviewed articles on TB prevention and control, blindness, reproductive health, road traffic accidents, and public health innovations.
Job Titles:
- Global Technical Lead and Cluster Lead for Tuberculosis
- Public Health Expert
Dr. Pedro G. Suarez is a public health expert with nearly 30 years of experience developing, managing, implementing, and advising public health programs focused on TB, leprosy, and TB/HIV control. His work spans across 25 countries, including those in Latin America, the Caribbean, Africa, and the Middle East. Dr. Suarez is our Global Technical Lead and Cluster Lead for Tuberculosis. Since 2004, he has served as MSH's Senior Program Associate for TB and TB/HIV, Global Technical Lead for TB and the Project Director Supervisor for MSH's TB CAP, TB CARE I, Challenge TB, Help Ethiopia Address the Low TB Performance (HEAL TB), and Uganda's TRACK TB projects.
Dr. Suarez' technical areas of expertise include directly observed treatment, short-course (DOTS) program implementation for both adult and children; TB leadership and management; strategic planning and advocacy for TB control; DOTS policy and strategy; TB and TB/HIV clinical diagnosis and treatment; TB program assessment, norms, guidelines, and service protocols; MDR-TB program planning and implementation; TB surveillance; operational research; TB drug management; quality assurance and performance improvement; supervision, and monitoring and evaluation for TB control; human capacity development; TB/HIV program coordination; case detection in key populations; and special issues for TB control.
Prior to MSH, Dr. Suarez transformed the Peruvian National TB Program and worked as a consultant for national and international organizations, including WHO, the PAHO, Koninklijke Nederlandse Chemische Vereniging (KNCV), and the Canadian Lung Association. For 14 years he also served as a public health professor at the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos, Faculty of Medicine in Lima, Peru.
Job Titles:
- Senior Principal Technical Advisor for Local Capacity Strengthening
Job Titles:
- Technical Strategy Lead, MTaPS Program, Francophone Africa
Dr. Seydou Doumbia is based in Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire. He has 20 years of experience in strategic leadership and management of larger health programs in complex environments, including strengthening health systems and direct assistance to Ministries of Health across Africa. He provided leadership and high-level management in the design and implementation of the most complete supply chain management systems project in PMI- and PEPFAR-focus countries, managing all malaria, HIV and AIDS, and family planning relief supplies from product selection to active distribution to all major health institutions in many developing countries in Africa. Previously, Dr. Doumbia was a Principal Technical Advisor on the MSH led, USAID-funded Systems for Improved Access to Pharmaceuticals and Services (SIAPS) project. Before rejoining MSH, Dr. Doumbia served for two years as a Senior Supply Chain Advisor in USAID/DRC in the Office of Health. He has a doctorate of pharmacy with a specialization in public health.
Job Titles:
- Senior Principal
- Technical Advisor
- Senior Principal Technical Advisor, MTaPS Program, Research
Dr. Tamara Hafner, a Senior Principal Technical Advisor in the USAID MTaPS Program, serves as the program's research advisor and technical strategy lead for the Cross Bureau portfolio. Prior to joining MTaPS, she worked overseas as an independent consultant helping donor-funded global health programs define program strategies and develop assessment guides and tools for health systems strengthening. As an assistant professor in the School of Public Affairs at American University, Dr. Hafner taught courses in international development policy and research methods and conducted research on issues related to innovation, trade, and access to medicines. Dr. Hafner holds a BS in zoology and biochemistry from the University of the West Indies and an MS in environmental biology from SUNY-ESF. She worked in bioprocess development in the pharmaceutical industry before returning to the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University to earn her PhD in public administration, with a concentration in global health policy and science and technology policy.
Job Titles:
- Senior Director, Pandemic Preparedness and Response
Job Titles:
- Technical Strategy Lead for Asia, Middle East, Europe, and Latin America
- Technical Strategy Lead, MTaPS Program, Asia
Dr. Luis Gustavo do Valle Bastos is the Technical Strategy Lead for Asia, Middle East, Europe, and Latin America. Before joining MTaPS, he worked with the United Nations Office for Project Services/StopTB Partnership's Global Drug Facility in Geneva, Switzerland. He oversaw the technical support to 50+ countries in strengthening procurement and supply management practices for tuberculosis (TB) medicines and diagnostics. Before that, Dr. Bastos worked for 10+ years as a physician in Brazil and senior technical advisor for MSH in Brazil and Arlington, VA. He was instrumental in assessing and updating the Brazilian TB guidelines on diagnosis, treatment, and prevention for health care facilities. He had a significant role in developing a web-based platform (e-TB Manager) that manages TB and drug-resistant TB and is adapted and implemented in 10 countries in Africa, Asia, and Eastern Europe. Dr. Bastos led the development and implementation of an electronic desktop tool (QuanTB) for quantification, forecasting, and early warning of TB medicines, deployed in several countries. He has a master's degree in lung diseases. Dr. Bastos has medical and technical expertise in infectious diseases, case and program management, technical assistance, capacity building, pharmaceutical management, and health system strengthening. He is fluent in English, Portuguese, and Spanish.
Job Titles:
- Senior Principal Technical Advisor, MTaPS Program, Maternal, Newborn, and Child Health
Jane Briggs leads MTaPS' maternal, newborn and child health (MNCH) portfolio by providing technical support to initiatives aimed at improving access to and use of medicines for MNCH at the global and country levels. A pharmacist with more than 25 years of experience, Briggs has been with MSH since 2001, primarily working in the area of child health. Prior to joining us, she worked as a research assistant at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine and also worked in Tanzania, Burundi, and Rwanda. She started her career in health and development as a district pharmacist in Tanzania, going from clinic to clinic on a motorbike. In addition to her pharmacy degree, she holds a master's degree in community health. She is a native English speaker and is fluent in French, Spanish, and Swahili.
Job Titles:
- Senior Director, Program Design and Strategy, Innovative Partnerships
Job Titles:
- Senior Principal Technical Advisor, Women's, Children 's, and Adolescents' Health
Job Titles:
- Founder
- Professor of Population and Family Health at Columbia University
Dr. Ahmed Mushtaque Raza Chowdhury is the former vice chair of BRAC, one of the largest development organizations in the world. Previously, he was BRAC's executive director, founding director of the Research and Evaluation Division, and founding dean of the BRAC University James P. Grant School of Public Health.
Dr. Chowdhury is a professor of population and family health at Columbia University and, until recently, was a visiting scholar at the University of Notre Dame. He was also a senior advisor and acting managing director at the Rockefeller Foundation and a research fellow at Harvard University.
Dr. Chowdhury is a founder of two civil society watchdogs: Bangladesh Education Watch and Bangladesh Health Watch. He serves on the boards and committees of 10 organizations.
Dr. Chowdhury has published six books and almost 200 articles in national and international journals. One of his books received the 2018 University Press Ltd (UPL) Award in the category of "Outstanding Impact." His biography, written by Matilal Deb Roy, was published in 2024 (UPL).
Dr. Chowdhury has a PhD from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, an MSc from the London School of Economics, and a BA (Honors) in statistics from the University of Dhaka.
Job Titles:
- Director of Strategy, Business Development
- Director, Strategy, Business Development, and Partnerships
Olumide O. Elegbe, Director of Strategy, Business Development, and Partnerships at MSH, first joined MSH in 2016 as Senior Manager, Corporate and Foundation Relations, working extensively with the private sector to create new partnerships. Elegbe was later appointed Country Representative in Nigeria with a focus on business development, partnerships, and compliance. And in 2019, he was promoted to Portfolio Director, also serving as Director of the pilot division for Global Fund programs and managing operations in the Nigeria country office. Prior to joining MSH, Elegbe served as Associate Director for Partnerships and Senior Strategy Analyst with FHI360, as a public health specialist with the UK National Health Service, and as a consultant on public health assignments in Europe and sub-Saharan Africa. Elegbe speaks Yoruba and Russian fluently, holds a Masters in Public Health in Health Services Management from the London School of Hygiene &Tropical Medicine, and a certificate from Harvard Business School.
Job Titles:
- Senior Principal Technical Advisor, Local Capacity Strengthening
Dr. Regine Alexandre Emilien is a Senior Principal Technical Advisor for Local Capacity Strengthening at MSH. A medical doctor specialized in dermatology and sexually transmitted infections (STIs), Emilien has more than 15 years of experience working closely with governments and NGOs at the national and subnational levels in Haiti and several West African countries. Since joining MSH in 2008, Emilien has held such positions as Capacity Strengthening (CS) Advisor; Principal Technical Advisor in Governance and Organizational Development; Deputy Chief of Party; and Project Director. Prior to joining MSH, she led the Dermatology and STI clinic for a local private health maintenance organization (HMO) in Haiti, where she managed the integration of HIV services. She brings extensive experience and skills in designing and implementing CS tools and approaches and is a Lead Trainer and Facilitator for MSH's Leadership, Management, and Governance (LMG) approach. On the USAID Health Leadership Project (HLP) in Haiti, she oversaw CS support for two local organizations that became the first US Government prime recipients in the Haitian health sector. Emilien is a Fulbright Scholar who holds a Doctor of Medicine (MD) degree from the School of Medicine at the State University of Haiti and a Master of Public Health (MPH) degree from the School of Public Health at Georgia State University. She is fluent in English, French, and Haitian Creole.
Job Titles:
- Senior Technical Director and Practice Area Lead for Pharmaceutical Systems Strengthening and Supply Chain Systems
René Berger is a global health, supply chain, and HIV and AIDS expert with more than 25 years of international development experience across sub-Saharan Africa. Previously, Berger was a senior vice president at Chemonics International, Inc., where he provided leadership, management, strategic direction, and oversight of a $9.5 billion, eight-year USAID contract to source, procure, deliver, distribute, and report on HIV, malaria, family planning/reproductive health, and maternal/child health products. Prior to that, Berger managed HIV and AIDS teams out of USAID mission offices in Kenya, Tanzania, and Zambia, as well as work at USAID in Washington, DC. He served in the US Peace Corps in Malawi for two years.
Berger holds a master's of public health in epidemiology and international health from John Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health and a bachelor's degree in biology from the University of California at Santa Cruz.
Job Titles:
- Technical Director of Infectious Diseases and Cluster Lead for HIV and AIDS
Sarah Konopka, MSH's Technical Director of Infectious Diseases and Cluster Lead for HIV and AIDS, has more than 15 years of experience in program design and implementation, research, and policy analysis in HIV and integrated health programs in more than 20 countries. She leads the development and design of MSH's work to strengthen infectious diseases programming, with a focus on HIV, malaria, TB, and other emerging health threats. She also serves as the Health System Strengthening lead for the Reaching Impact, Saturation and Epidemic Control (RISE) project, which is funded by PEPFAR through USAID and led by Jhpiego. She previously served as Technical Director of the MSH-led, USAID-funded African Strategies for Health (ASH) project.
Throughout her career, Konopka has led research and built high-level consensus with USAID Missions, host governments, civil society, the private sector, and multilateral organizations to produce tangible outputs, such as the development and adoption of regional minimum standards for HIV services in southern Africa.
Prior to joining MSH, she worked at the International HIV/AIDS Alliance, providing technical support to Asia- and Eastern Europe-based civil society organizations to manage and implement HIV-related programming for key populations. She served as an HIV and AIDS and Community Health Peace Corps volunteer in Tanzania, where she designed and managed community-based HIV prevention projects.
Konopka holds a master's degree in international development from the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex, UK. Her publications include several peer-reviewed articles on HIV/AIDS as well as research papers and policy briefs on strategic integration and enablers of and barriers to HIV service uptake and usage.
Job Titles:
- Senior Principal Technical Advisor for Malaria, Manage
Thomas Hall, Senior Principal Technical Advisor for Malaria, manages all activities related to malaria, including providing technical assistance and programmatic oversight to integrated health projects, managed by MSH. Additionally, he participates in several international forums on malaria, including Roll Back Malaria working groups and NGO advocacy networks. Hall has extensive technical and programmatic experience in malaria control both in the field and from a headquarters' management perspective and specializes in malaria in pregnancy, community case management, and vector control. Hall has 27 years of public health experience and started his professional career in a malaria control study in coastal Tanzania, funded by USAID and implemented by Johns Hopkins University. He also spent several years as a public health consultant in Tanzania and in the US, before joining the NGO ranks, first with CRS in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and then with World Vision in Washington, DC. Hall joined USAID in 2002, working on the Child Survival and Health Grants Program, and then spent two years in USAID/Djibouti as the Health Team Lead, managing a large rural health infrastructure rehabilitation project. He joined the President's Malaria Initiative (PMI) team in March 2007, where he worked as a Senior Regional Malaria Adviser in the Africa Bureau until joining MSH. Hall has an MPH from Johns Hopkins University and was a US Peace Corps Volunteer, serving two years in Zaire (now DRC) and one year in the Central African Republic.
Job Titles:
- Senior Technical Advisor and Coordinator of the Civil Society Engagement Mechanism for UHC2030
- Senior Technical Advisor, UHC, and Coordinator of the Civil Society Engagement Mechanism for UHC2030
Waiswa Nkwanga is the Senior Technical Advisor and Coordinator of the Civil Society Engagement Mechanism for UHC2030, hosted by MSH. Prior to joining us, Nkwanga was Portfolio Lead and Senior Associate at the ACTION Global Health Partnership at RESULTS, where he led the partnership's advocacy on tuberculosis, the Global Fund, and research and development for global health tools. He holds a MSc in International Development and Humanitarian Emergencies from the London School of Economics and a BA in Political Science from the University of California, Berkeley.