POPULATION COUNCIL - Key Persons

Ali M. Mir

Job Titles:

Associate
Medical Doctor
Associate / Islamabad, Pakistan
Vice President of the Population Association of Pakistan

Ali M. Mir is an associate in the Population Council's Pakistan office. He serves as director of programs and works to expand access to family planning services through research, training, and advocacy. From 2011-2012, Mir directed the Council's large-scale USAID funded FALAH project, a multifaceted intervention that increased family planning use by 9 percentage points in focus districts by emphasizing the benefits of birth spacing to women's and children's health. In the area of capacity-building, as part of a Packard Foundation-funded activity, Mir developed several training programs for mid-career professionals in conducting social science research. When he joined the Population Council in 1998, Mir led a training program aimed at introducing a reproductive health-focused framework to government health and population managers. Currently he is providing oversight to a National Advocacy and Media Campaign on Population Related Issues and Need for Birth Spacing Services supported by UNFPA, aimed at changing the current complacency around population issues. Mir is vice president of the Population Association of Pakistan and a member of the American Public Health Association, the Royal Society for Health, the Pakistan Medical Association, the Mother and Children Welfare Association of Pakistan, the International Union for Scientific Study of Population, the Human Resource Development Network, the International AIDS Society, and the Society of Obstetricians and Gynecologists of Pakistan. He seeks out opportunities to share research findings with policymakers, program managers, and other researchers, and has authored two books, published numerous research publications, and presented at many scientific conferences and meetings. Mir is a medical doctor and holds an MPH from the University of Leeds, where he was supported by a Chevening scholarship awarded by the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office to outstanding scholars with leadership potential. He has also completed several postgraduate training courses, including the International Family Planning Leadership Program at the Public Health Institute in Santa Cruz, CA (supported by a Packard-Gates fellowship), the Strategic Leadership in Reproductive Health program at Johns Hopkins University (supported by a Gates fellowship), and a Harvard University executive training program in Health Management. Mir is an adjunct faculty member of the Health Services Academy, Government of Pakistan and committee member of Courses for Sociology at Allama Iqbal Open University Islamabad. He is also an external reviewer for STI guidelines development by the World Health Organization. He has authored two books for medical students on basic epidemiology and medical demography and has several national and international research publications to his credit.

Angel del Valle

Job Titles:

Guatemala Country Representative
Guatemala Country Representative / Guatemala City, Guatemala

Angel del Valle is the country representative of the Population Council's Guatemala office and senior research officer. He joined the Council in 2010 as the monitoring and evaluation specialist for the Abriendo Oportunidades program, focused on improving the lives of indigenous girls in Guatemala. Del Valle specializes in anthropological approaches to social research and has led experimental and qualitative evaluations of programs designed to empower girls in Guatemala, Honduras, Belize, El Salvador, and Mexico. From 2012-2018, del Valle coordinated efforts with the local government and multilateral agencies to evaluate, refine, and expand programs that focused on the prevention of gender-based violence against indigenous girls in Guatemala. In the same period, he also provided technical assistance on girl-centered and youth programs implanted by United Nations agencies, international NGOs, and community-based organizations. Del Valle holds a Bachelor of Arts in anthropology and a Master of Arts in social sciences from Universidad del Valle de Guatemala, where he teaches courses on qualitative and participatory methods in social research.

Annabel Erulkar

Job Titles:

Senior Associate, International Programs
Senior Associate, International Programs / Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
Social Scientist

Annabel Erulkar is a social scientist with over 20 years' experience in sub-Saharan Africa. Her work focuses on research and programs related to adolescents, with a special emphasis on gender, child marriage, and child labor. She heads the Population Council's office in Ethiopia and is principal investigator for several multicountry projects on the continent. She was the principal investigator for the Berhane Hewan program, named best UNFPA "good practice" for adolescents and youth and cited by US First Lady Michelle Obama. Erulkar has authored more than 80 reports and journal articles related to adolescence in sub-Saharan Africa, including child marriage, child labor, schooling, livelihoods, gender-based violence, sexual behavior, reproductive health, and "youth-friendly" services. She has coordinated large adolescent projects in Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zimbabwe. Her work on child marriage and child domestic work has attracted international attention. She has testified in UK Parliament on the topic of child marriage and has hosted field visits and learning tours from Melinda Gates, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Mary Robinson, Gro Brundtland, and numerous parliamentarians and members of congress. Before joining the Council in 1995, Erulkar was responsible for research and management information systems at the Family Planning Association of Kenya, the country's largest nongovernmental family planning organization. She holds an MSc in population sciences from Harvard University and a PhD in social statistics from the University of Southampton, United Kingdom.

Ashish Bajracharya

Job Titles:

Deputy Director of International Programs / Nairobi, Kenya

Ashish Bajracharya is the Deputy Director of International Programs at the Population Council. He provides leadership and support across the Population Council's country offices in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Middle East, and its affiliated organizations, with the aim of maximizing the Council's positive impact and ensuring that the organization's research and knowledge is effectively influencing national policy and programs globally. He supports, and works closely with, the Director of International Programs and the Vice President of International Programs in the initiation, development, and monitoring of International Programs Division strategies and priorities in countries of Council presence. Bajracharya is a social demographer and behavioral scientist with over 15 years of professional experience specializing in issues related to gender, transitions to adulthood, maternal, sexual and reproductive health, family planning and HIV & AIDS outcomes of vulnerable populations, and rigorous evaluations of health financing and health systems strengthening interventions in LMICs. Over his career, Bajracharya has led and supported research, technical and organizational engagements for the Council in over 15 countries globally, with a primary focus in Asia and Africa. He currently serves in his global leadership role from his base in Nairobi, Kenya, having served in the role from Dhaka, Bangladesh from 2020 to 2023. Between 2015 and 2019, he established and served as the Country Representative of the Population Council's office in Cambodia, and co-led WorkerHealth, a $3.8 million USAID initiative aimed at improving access to reproductive health and family planning services among female garment factory workers in Cambodia. Prior to his appointment in Phnom Penh, he was based at the Council's offices in Dhaka, Bangladesh (2012-2015), Hanoi, Vietnam (2011-2012), and as a Bixby Postdoctoral Fellow in its New York headquarters (2008-2010). Bajracharya has authored or co-authored more than 40 peer reviewed journal articles, research papers, policy reports, and issue briefs, and has published his research in journals such as Demography, The Lancet, Studies in Family Planning, Journal of Adolescent Health and Developmental Psychology. He also serves on expert panels and advisory committees, as a referee for leading peer-reviewed journals in his field and has presented his research at scientific fora and international conferences around the world. In 2017, he was named one of the ‘120 under 40: The New Generation of Family Planning Leaders' by the Bill and Melinda Gates Institute of Population and Reproductive Health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, recognizing him as a young leader under the age of 40 in the field of family planning and reproductive health. Bajracharya received his Ph.D. in Policy Analysis and Management from Cornell University in 2008 where he specialized in social demography and human development. He is a native of Nepal.

Beth Kangwana

Job Titles:

Executive Director, Population Council Kenya
Executive Director, Population Council Kenya / Nairobi, Kenya

Beth Kangwana is a public health epidemiologist with over 15 years of experience in health-related research, management, and development. Since 2018, she has provided global and national technical leadership and support to a breadth of research initiatives in the Population Council's Kenya office, including efforts related to sexual and reproductive health and rights; HIV; and maternal, child, and adolescent health and well-being. Kangwana co-leads the Population Council's Mental Health Strategic Research Initiative, which has developed and is implementing a progressive strategy to amplify and strengthen the impact of the Council's work in this area. As an Editorial Committee member of the Council's global journal Studies in Family Planning, she contributes to the assessment of scholarly articles on adolescent sexual and reproductive health and informs both the editorial process and decisions related to topics of interest. Since joining the Council, Kangwana has brought innovative ideas and provided intellectual and technical leadership in the design and implementation of research efforts in Kenya with a clear goal of ensuring the impact of the Council's work. As a co-investigator on the Adolescent Girls Initiative-Kenya, a complex multisectoral program that tested layered packages of interventions designed to improve the health and well-being of adolescents in Kenya, Kangwana has focused her efforts on enabling the scale-up of this approach within county health programmes working closely with county executives. In the same vein, at the national level in Kenya, Kangwana has successfully nurtured relationships with strategic program partners, civil society groups, government representatives, and donors, with the aim of strengthening the Council's partnerships and networks in the region. While much of her work has focused on addressing the complex challenges and underlying cultural barriers that adolescent girls in Kenya face, Kangwana has contributed to several resource mobilization efforts in Kenya on a range of topics including child marriage and sexual and gender-based violence. Kangwana began her research career at KEMRI-Wellcome Trust Research Programme in Kenya-a world-renowned regional institution known for excellence in health research. She also worked at Population Services International, Kenya and Imperial College, London, UK. As an epidemiologist, she led the design and implementation of a cesarean section surgical site infection surveillance system at Butare Referral Hospital in Rwanda, where she built the capacity of medical staff to generate data to inform hospital practices. She also led the evaluation of approaches to improve access to effective and affordable malaria treatment in children under the age of five years, in collaboration with the National Malaria Control Program in Kenya. In October 2021, Kangwana assumed the role of executive director of the Council's Kenya office, bringing diverse leadership experiences and a commitment to creating a collaborative work culture that is fully inclusive of all employees no matter their ethnicity, age, or gender. She has a clear and ambitious vision for growing the Council in Kenya into a renowned center of excellence for research, providing realistic and scalable solutions that will improve the health and well-being of current and future generations. Kangwana has a doctoral degree in public health epidemiology, a master's degree in global health science from the University of Oxford, a certificate in advanced statistical methods in epidemiology from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, UK, and a Bachelor's degree in pharmacy from the School of Pharmacy, University of London, UK.

Carmencita Whonder

Job Titles:

Member of the Board of Trustees
Policy Director at Brownstein Hayatt Faber Schreck

Carmencita Whonder is policy director at Brownstein Hayatt Faber Schreck, the leading lobbying and law firm in the United States. She was previously the staff director for the Senate Subcommittee on Housing, Transportation, and Community Development and the principal advisor on the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee to US Senate Democratic Leader Charles E. Schumer. Whonder was also part of the six-member team to launch the Gates Millennium Scholars Program, a $1 billion education initiative of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Chi-Chi Undie - CTO

Job Titles:

Member of the Global Scientific and Technical Leadership Team
Senior Associate
Technical Director
Co - Chair of the Sexual Violence Research Initiative 's Coordinating Group
Technical Director and Senior Associate / Nairobi, Kenya

Chi-Chi Undie is a senior associate and technical director based in Nairobi. Undie joined the Population Council in 2009, conducting research focused primarily sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) and adolescent girls. Since 2011, she has served as project director for the Council-led Africa Regional SGBV Network-a multicountry, multipartner SGBV response and research initiative in East and Southern Africa. Her work on SGBV has had wide influence on policy and practice, leading to the passage of a resolution calling for the integration of intimate partner violence screening into sexual and reproductive health and HIV and AIDS services throughout East, Central, and Southern Africa. This work has recently been extended to refugee settings in the region, and to address the needs of child survivors of violence. Her more recent research with out-of-school adolescent mothers aims to expand their access to formal education by revitalizing the implementation of Kenya's school re-entry policy for young mothers. Before joining the Council, Undie was a Ford Foundation postdoctoral fellow and an associate research scientist at the African Population and Health Research Center (APHRC). There she led the APHRC's sexuality program and conducted several sexual and reproductive health research projects. Undie is co-chair of the Sexual Violence Research Initiative's Coordinating Group. She holds a BA in French from the University of Calabar, and MA in intercultural communication, and PhD in language, literacy, and culture from the University of Maryland.

Darcy Bradbury

Job Titles:

Member of the Board of Trustees
Chairman / D.E. Shaw
Chairman, Board of Trustees
Managing Director of D. E. Shaw & Co

Darcy Bradbury is a managing director of D. E. Shaw & Co., L.P. an investment and technology development firm. As head of Public Policy, she is responsible for managing government and regulatory affairs for the firm globally. She has over 40 years of experience in finance in the private sector and in government, where she served as assistant secretary for financial markets at the US Treasury and deputy comptroller for the City of New York. Bradbury has held numerous leadership roles in industry organizations and on government advisory boards and is active in civil society as the chair of the board of the Population Council, chair of the board of the Educational Alliance, and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. She received an MBA, with honors, and an AB in social studies, magna cum laude, from Harvard University.

David Serwadda

Job Titles:

Member of the Board of Trustees
Department of Disease Control and Environmental Health / School of Public Health
Professor

David Serwadda is a professor in the Department of Disease Control and Environmental Health at Makerere University School of Public Health in Uganda, where he served as dean from 2003-2009. He is the founder of the Rakai Health Science Program, which has pioneered research on HIV, and is the international principal investigator to the HIV Prevention Trial Network. In 2019 Serwadda was named one of the world's most accomplished scientists living in or focused on the developing world by The World Academy of Sciences, and in 2011 was elected fellow of the National Academy of Medicine.

Dela Nai

Job Titles:

Acting Country Representative / Accra, Ghana
Associate I and Acting Ghana Country Representative

Dela Nai is a social demographer and sociologist by training. Her work focuses on family planning, adolescent sexual and reproductive health, and engaging with decisionmakers to bring to scale successful programs and interventions. Since joining the Ghana office in September 2014, Dela has led the implementation of studies and interventions, including the introduction of a subcutaneous contraceptive injection (DMPA-SC), community and provider-driven social accountability in family planning, situational analysis of adolescent girls and young women, and ending child marriage. She has also served as principal investigator on studies assessing the feasibility of training private pharmacy staff to offer family planning services in Senegal and fertility-related knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors among 12-19 year olds in Burkina Faso. Prior to joining the Population Council Ghana office, Dela was a Fred H. Bixby postdoctoral fellow for two years in the Council's Zambia office where she supported the Adolescent Girls Empowerment Program (AGEP). Dela holds an MS and a PhD in development sociology and social demography from Cornell University, and a BA in sociology & anthropology from Agnes Scott College. She is a member of the Union for African Population Studies and serves as the treasurer on the 2015-2019 Council. Dela is fluent in French, proficient in Spanish, and has a good grasp of Ghanian languages including Twi, Ga, and Ewe.

Dele Abegunde

Job Titles:

Acting Nigeria Country Director

Edith Asibey

Job Titles:

Member of the Board of Trustees
Asibey Consulting / New York, USA
Communication Strategist

Edith Asibey is an advocacy and communication strategist. She is the founder of Asibey Consulting, a firm that partners with organizations to improve how they take audiences from intention to action. Asibey previously served as a humanitarian worker with UNICEF, stationed in Brazil, and as chief communications officer at The Atlantic Philanthropies in New York. Edith is a lecturer in the Master in Nonprofit Management Program at Columbia University in New York.

Erin Brown

Job Titles:

Director of Resource Mobilization / Washington DC, United States

Erin Brown oversees the Population Council's business development team and builds strong partnerships, engages key donors, and positions the organization to deliver on its mission. Before joining the Council, Brown was director of Resource Mobilization for Child Protection and Education at Save the Children US, where she raised over $500 million in US government funding to implement programs in child protection and girls' education in development and fragile contexts. She is an expert in business development systems and competitive opportunities. Prior to joining Save the Children, Brown co-founded BroderickHaight Consulting, which provides business development consulting to nonprofit and for-profit organizations. Brown previously served as senior grant writer at the Guttmacher Institute. Brown received a Master of Public Policy from the University of Chicago and a Bachelor of Arts with Honors from Williams College. She lives in Maryland with her family.

Fatou Bintou Mbow

Job Titles:

Representative
Senegal Country Representative
Senegal Country Representative / Dakar, Senegal

Fatou Bintou Mbow is the Senegal country representative at the Population Council where she manages the implementation of the country's adolescence, sexual and reproductive health, and HIV research and program activities. Her technical and administrative support-including maintaining and strengthening relationships with critical stakeholders in Senegal and francophone Africa-ensures the efficiency and effectiveness of the Council's research and policy efforts. Since October 2014, Mbow has served as a program officer and senior researcher at the Population Council office in Dakar. During this period she has worked on projects to address research priorities, including the DFID STEP UP project, the Hewlett Foundation work on policy change to advance sexual and reproductive health and rights, and the USAID-funded Evidence Project study on increasing the role of private pharmacies in the provision of family planning. Mbow has provided technical assistance in the development, implementation, and evaluation of reproductive health and family planning programs and research-both quantitative and qualitative-with a focus on family planning. More generally, she has provided support for research utilization and innovations for program and policy change to improve reproductive health outcomes in Senegal and beyond within the Ouagadougou Partnership for Francophone Africa. Mbow is also actively involved in the Global Financing Facility process in Senegal, representing the Population Council in this important national platform. Mbow is trained in sociology with two Master of Science and Technology degrees on social interventions and development from the University of Caen in Normandy, France. She has collaborated with the Council as an independent consultant for many years and worked with key institutions in Senegal in reproductive health, HIV/AIDS prevention, and adolescent development.

Georgina Yidanpoa Caswell

Job Titles:

Member of the Board of Trustees
Head of Programmes at the Global Network of People Living

Georgina Yidanpoa Caswell is head of Programmes at the Global Network of People Living with HIV (GNP+), based in Cape Town, South Africa. Georgina supports all GNP+ programs, pushing for the human rights and leadership of people living with HIV, ending stigma, and advocating for quality treatment and good health and well-being for all. She is a gender advocate who champions meaningful youth participation, leadership, and mentorship and has previously managed large-scale youth sexual and reproductive health and rights programs.

Getachew Teshome Eregata

Job Titles:

Country Director / Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
Ethiopia Country Director
Public Health Expert

Getachew Teshome Eregata is a public health expert with more than 25 years of experience in international health, program formulation, and management; public health research, monitoring and evaluation, and capacity development interventions; primarily in low and middle-income countries. Most recently, Eregata was a Health Advisor with the Foreign, Commonwealth, & Development Office (FCDO) in Ethiopia, where he led and advised several health initiatives and managed implementing partner relationships. In previous positions-including as a World Health Organization consultant and as Chief of Staff and Advisor to the State Minister, Ethiopia Ministry of Health-his experience includes coordinating complex research projects involving health economists, public health specialists, epidemiologists, clinical specialists, and politicians.   Eregata has in-depth knowledge and experience managing large health portfolios in Ethiopia, including the provision of technical support in the fields of global health security, health systems strengthening, HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria prevention and control, reproductive health, nutrition, and emergency program management. His career extends from serving with indigenous and international implementing organizations in Ethiopia, to managing and monitoring programs of major donor agencies including the US Government (USAID/PEPFAR), FCDO, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS Tuberculosis and Malaria (GFATM), and the GAVI Alliance in various countries. In 2019, Eregata played a critical role in developing and finalizing the Essential Health Services Package of Ethiopia. He has written or contributed to several peer-reviewed manuscripts, technical reports, and international conference presentations.  Eregata holds a PhD in Health Economics from the University of Bergen in Norway, an MPH in Epidemiology from Jimma University in Ethiopia, and a BSc in Environmental Health from Jimma University.

Harriet Birungi

Job Titles:

Member of the Executive Team
Vice President of International Programs
Vice President of International Programs / Nairobi, Kenya

Harriet Birungi is the vice president of International Programs at the Population Council, responsible for maximizing the value of the Council's international presence by operating in an even more globally collaborative and inclusive way and increasing the resources and decisionmaking in the Council's international offices, affiliate organizations, and the places we seek to have impact. Birungi was previously the director of the Population Council's office in Kenya. Birungi, a medical anthropologist, began her research career in 1988 at the Makerere Institute of Social Research in Uganda, where she coordinated policy and academic research. She joined the Council in 2000, and for nine years, worked as an associate managing the development, implementation, and monitoring of the FRONTIERS program in anglophone Africa to improve the quality of reproductive health services. From 2008-2012, she directed the Council's USAID-funded AIDS, Population, and Health Integrated Assistance (APHIA) II Operations Research project in Kenya. Birungi also directed the STEP UP (Strengthening Evidence for Programming on Unintended Pregnancy) Research Program Consortium with research activities in Bangladesh, India, Ghana, Kenya, and Senegal. Birungi's research evaluates the intersection between medicine and sexuality, particularly as both areas are the focus of governmental regulations. She also seeks to uncover and address the most pressing reproductive health needs of adolescents. Birungi is a member of the Scientific and Technical Advisory Group of the World Health Organization, Department of Reproductive Health and Research. She has served on the High-Level Group of key African regional leaders on adolescent sexual and reproductive health, education, and rights and on the Advisory Committee for the Joint WOTRO/MFS II Evaluation of International Lobbying and Advocacy. She has published extensively and presented at numerous international conferences. Birungi holds a BA in social sciences from Makerere University, Uganda; an MA in development studies from the Institute of Social Studies, The Hague, The Netherlands; and a PhD in medical anthropology from the University of Copenhagen, Denmark.

Henock Markos

Job Titles:

Lead Manager of Population Council ( PC ) Ethiopia
Senior Program Manager / Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

Henock Markos serves as the lead manager of Population Council (PC) Ethiopia program interventions, including those related to girls' education, child domestic workers, girls' migration and trafficking, and brokers, as well as other projects in development. His position cuts across all the programs and research currently implemented by PC-Ethiopia. He primarily leads the implementation of Council programs and supports the country director and other researchers in the implementation of research activities. Markos oversees the design and delivery of innovative programs and research data-collection activities with the utmost quality and timeliness. This involves monitoring, supporting, and supervising program officers, administrative assistants, and partner organizations in the delivery of project activities for the timely and effective implementation of a range of projects/interventions of PC-Ethiopia. Markos joined the Council with eighteen years of work experience. Before joining the Council, he worked with local and international NGOs coordinating and leading education and youth development-focused programs. Markos has a certification in Qualitative Research Methods for the Impact of Education from Driestar University in the Netherlands and an advanced certificate in PMEL (Planning, Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning) in Theory of Change from the Red een Kind and Woord en Daad Institutions in the Netherlands. He has a Master of Arts degree in Educational Policy and Planning and a BSc in Business Education from Addis Ababa University. He also attended the International Class on Education at the Driestar Teachers University in the Netherlands and received a certificate fulfilling five ECTS (EU standard) criteria.

Imran Ahmed

Job Titles:

Manager of Global Finance and Operations
Manager, Global Finance and Operations / Islamabad, Pakistan

Imran Ahmed is the Manager of Global Finance and Operations for the Population Council in Pakistan. His primary responsibility is to ensure the effectiveness and efficiency of the financial accounting systems and to improve financial processes and accounting classifications for analysis and reporting. In addition, he provides support and training to international office management and finance staff. In his dual role as the Director of Administration, Finance and Human Resources for the Pakistan office, Ahmed oversees the finance and administration departments and resource mobilization activities. His responsibilities include directing and managing finances, operations, human resources, and administration to support the Council's strategic goals. Ahmed has an MBA in Finance and holds certifications as a Human Resources and Project Management professional.

Jack DeWaard

Job Titles:

Member of the Global Scientific and Technical Leadership Team
Scientific Director
Senior Associate
Expert
Scientific Director and Senior Associate / Washington DC, United States

Jack DeWaard provides overall scientific leadership for Social and Behavioral Science Research at the Population Council to tackle pressing social, economic, health, and climate issues worldwide. He oversees research activities, quality, and learning, as well as provides strategic direction for the Council's Population, Environmental Risks, and the Climate Crisis (PERCC) initiative. DeWaard is also an external affiliate in the Center for Studies in Demography and Ecology at the University of Washington. Before joining the Council, DeWaard was an associate professor in the Department of Sociology and graduate faculty of Population Studies in the Minnesota Population Center at the University of Minnesota, where he was also a faculty affiliate in the Hubert H. Humphrey School of Public Affairs, the Institute on the Environment, and the Life Course Center. DeWaard is an expert on human migration in the areas of migration systems and networks, climate and environmental migration and displacement, and inequality and incorporation. He is the author of numerous peer-reviewed journal articles, book chapters, textbooks on research methods, and science communications. DeWaard is a member of the editorial board for Demography, an academic journal covering issues related to population and demography. DeWaard holds a PhD in sociology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, an MA in sociology from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and a BA in sociology and philosophy from Seattle Pacific University. You can read his CV. Scientific Director Jack DeWaard highlights what the Population Council is doing to help guide, inform, and improve climate-related investment strategies worldwide.

Jaleel Ahmad

Job Titles:

Senior Program Officer
Social Worker
Senior Program Officer / New Delhi, India

Jaleel Ahmad is a senior program officer at the Population Council. As a public health researcher for more than 13 years, he is involved in the evaluation of large-scale programs integrating maternal and child health and nutrition and sanitation with women's self-help groups (SHGs) in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh. Ahmad conducts needs-based assessments and studies social behavior change and communication, women's empowerment, and gender-based violence. Ahmad is responsible for generating evidence and disseminating it to stakeholders, as well as for building professional relationships with government departments and nongovernmental organizations. He has successfully piloted quality assurance projects to improve maternal and child health services in public health systems, which were later scaled up in all of the districts of Maharashtra state in India. He was also instrumental in the development of a family planning counseling tool for community health workers. Before joining the Council in 2007, Ahmad was complaint cell in-charge of the National Commission for Women within the Government of India. He assisted in the investigation of several cases of violence and also worked as a counselor, dealing with thousands of matrimonial disputes through the commission during his four years of employment. He was responsible for documenting case studies of gender-based violence and was instrumental in forming a crisis intervention center. He was ultimately appointed as nodal officer for Delhi to assist the Delhi police in the rehabilitation of rape survivors. Ahmad has presented two scientific papers internationally and is author of more than 10 peer-reviewed papers, technical reports, policy briefs, and book chapters. Ahmad is a trained social worker with a master's degree in social work (MSW) and a master's degree in public administration. He has also completed an Advanced Diploma in Public Health from Jamia Millia Islamia University in New Delhi, India.

James Sailer

Job Titles:

Member of the Executive Team
Interim Co - President and Executive Director, Center for Biomedical Research
Interim Co - President and Executive Director, Center for Biomedical Research / Center for Biomedical Research

James Sailer is Interim Co-President of the Population Council and executive director of the Population Council's Center for Biomedical Research (CBR), which conducts research and develops new methods of contraception, HIV prevention, and STI prevention. Sailer leads and provides strategic direction to the Council's product development program, and supervises a staff of scientists, fellows, and operations professionals at CBR's laboratories on the campus of Rockefeller University. Sailer led the team that received US FDA first-pass approval for Annovera™, a one-year contraceptive vaginal system that is the first and only contraceptive that provides an entire year of protection against unintended pregnancy while fully under a woman's control. Annovera was launched in the US market in 2019. Sailer also leads the Council's Intellectual Asset Management group, which collaborates with pharmaceutical companies to arrange for manufacturing and distribution of Council-developed contraceptives and other products to the global market. In keeping with the Council's mission, these partnerships include provisions to ensure that products are offered to people in less-developed countries at public-sector prices. Over 170 million women around the world use a contraceptive product developed by the Population Council. Previously, Sailer served as the Council's vice president for corporate affairs, overseeing corporate operations, including branding and communications, information services, publishing, human resources, and administration. Sailer served as the chairman of the board of InsideNGO, a membership organization of over 340 international NGOs, and negotiated the 2017 three-way merger between InsideNGO, MANGO, and LINGOs to create Humentum. He is a member of the board and executive committee of the International Contraceptive Access (ICA) Foundation, and a member of the Board of Directors of Vennue, an international nonprofit organization. Before joining the Council in 2004, Sailer was director of performance management for the New York City Department of Education, where he developed an accountability system and sophisticated new methods of analyzing school performance. Earlier in his career, he was chief operating officer at Privista, an internet-based company protecting consumers against identity theft; a senior manager at Accenture; and managing director at West End New Media, a boutique consulting firm. He also is the author of over 20 case studies and teaching notes from his time as a research associate at Harvard Business School. Sailer holds a BA in political science from Swarthmore College and a master's in public policy from the Harvard Kennedy School. In 2019, he was elected to the Alumni Council of Swarthmore College.

Jeffrey M. Spieler

Job Titles:

Member of the Board of Trustees
Consultant in Population and Reproductive Health / Bethesda, USA
Retired Science Advisor in Population and Reproductive Health at USAID

Jeffrey Spieler is a retired science advisor in Population and Reproductive Health at USAID where he was previously the chief of the Research, Technology, and Utilization Division. Spieler has more than four decades of international experience in contraceptive research and development, family planning, and reproductive and maternal health including three decades of scientific leadership experience at USAID, and as a scientist in the Special Programme of Research, Development, and Research Training in Human Reproduction at the World Health Organization where he spent 11 years. He began his career doing research at a pharmaceutical company in New York.

John Bongaarts

Job Titles:

Member of the Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences

Bongaarts is a member of the Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences and the US National Academy of Sciences, and a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He received the Robert J. Lapham Award (1997) and the Mindel Sheps Award (1986) from the Population Association of America, and the Research Career Development Award from the National Institutes of Health (1980), and was named Laureate of the International Union for the Scientific Study of Population (IUSSP) in 2013. Bongaarts chairs the Council's Institutional Review Board and the editorial committee of the Council's journal Studies in Family Planning. He is a member of the editorial committee of the Council's other journal, Population and Development Review.

Jonathan Kagan

Job Titles:

Member of the Board of Trustees
Managing Principal of Corporate Partners
Member of the Synexis Board of Directors

Jonathan Kagan is a managing principal of Corporate Partners in New York. He began his career in the investment banking division of Lazard and subsequently served as a managing director of Corporate Partners I and of Center Partners Management LLC. Kagan has been a member of the Synexis Board of Directors since February 2008, serving as chairman since 2013.