Chris Wolff is Deputy Director, Health Funds and Partnerships within Global Delivery Programs at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Chris leads the team focused on strengthening country partnerships, including the Routine Immunisation Strengthening in Polio High Risk Geographies (RISP) portfolio.

Prior to joining the foundation in 2014, Chris worked for the World Health Organization (WHO) for nearly 15 years, primarily on polio eradication and immunization. His various roles included managing the team providing support to countries responding to polio outbreaks, overseeing one of WHO’s largest global disease surveillance and data networks, providing technical advice and support to dozens of countries on strategies to complete eradication, and working on global policy development related to both vaccine strategies and management of post eradication risks. He started his time at WHO in the Western Pacific Regional Office in Manila, Philippines and then moved to WHO Headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland. Before that, he worked as a fellow at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on tuberculosis monitoring and evaluation systems in Central Asia. Chris also spent some years teaching biology in the Czech Republic, and doing field research in Malawi with Habitat for Humanity.

Chris holds a BS in Biology from Wake Forest University and an MPH from the Emory University Rollins School of Public Health.

Francesco Checchi is a Professor of Epidemiology and International Health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. His main area of expertise is quantitative public health measurement and disease control in crisis (armed conflict, natural disaster, epidemic) settings. He has worked for Save the Children (leading their humanitarian health team), Medecins Sans Frontieres, the World Health Organization and as a consultant for a variety of other agencies. He is also an Associate Fellow of the Royal Institute of International Affairs, Chatham House. He has a special interest in improving public health information availability and use in ongoing crises worldwide as well as governance, accountability and public health decision-making in humanitarian settings.

Anuradha Gupta is a global development leader with a proven track record for transformational impact at both the country and global levels. She is passionate about women, adolescents and children, in particular their health and education. She is currently the Deputy CEO of Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, and through this role she oversees Gavi strategy, policy and country programmes across 73 countries.

Previously Anuradha worked for the Indian Administrative Service for over 30 years in a wide range of leadership positions, from health to urban development, poverty alleviation to security. She played a leading role in India’s efforts to eradicate polio transmission.

Anuradha has assumed an important role in a number of global health initiatives including Co-Chairing the Partnership for Maternal, Neonatal and Child Health (PMNCH), serving as a member of the Steering Committee of the “Child Survival Call to Action” at the invitation of Secretary of State Clinton, Co-Chairing the Stakeholder Group for the London Family Planning Summit 2020, and as a member of the Family Planning 2020 Reference Group.

Anuradha has a Masters in English Literature from Kurukshetra University, an MBA from the University of Wollongong in Australia, as well as Executive Education from Stanford School of Business and Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.

Kate O’Brien is Director of the Immunization, Vaccines and Biologicals Department at the World Health Organization where she is responsible for leading the overall work and strategy of the Department to advance the vision of reducing the health, social and economic burden of vaccine preventable diseases.

Prior to joining WHO she was Professor of International Health and Epidemiology and Executive Director of the International Vaccine Access Center at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Her scientific and policy work domestically and globally has focused on vaccine preventable illnesses, among both children and adults. The work has included surveillance, epidemiology, and vaccine clinical trials of pneumococcal disease; rotavirus; Haemophilus influenzae type b; respiratory syncytial virus and influenza vaccines. She has worked extensively with American Indian populations and in Africa and south Asia, partnering with local scientists and country program staff to develop rigorous scientific evidence and bring it into the vaccine policy arena, thereby accelerating the use and access to life-saving vaccines for children living in low resource countries and settings. She has been honored with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary’s Distinguished Service Award, the Sabin Vaccine Institute Young Investigator Award, the U.S. Presidential Early Career Award in Science and Engineering (PECASE). She served on the WHO Strategic Advisory Group of Experts (SAGE) on Immunization for 6 years and on the Gavi Board.

Dr. O’Brien trained as a pediatric infectious disease physician, epidemiologist and vaccinologist. She earned her BSc in chemistry from University of Toronto (Canada), her MD from McGill University (Canada), and her MPH from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health (US) before completing her training at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as an Epidemic Intelligence Officer, in the Respiratory Diseases Branch.

Helen Rees is the Founder and Executive Director of the Wits Reproductive Health and HIV Institute, University of Witwatersrand in South Africa. She is the Co-Director of the Wits African Leadership Initiative in Vaccinology Excellence (ALIVE), a Professor in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, University of Witwatersrand, and an Honorary Professor in the Faculty of Infectious and Tropical Diseases, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. She is a Fellow of Murray Edwards College, Cambridge University.

Dr Rees is internationally renowned for her policy and research work in vaccines, reproductive health and HIV. She has chaired many national and international committees. She currently chairs the South African Health Products Regulatory Authority (SAHPRA) Board as well as the World Health Organization’s (WHO) African Regional Immunization Technical Advisory Group, the WHO’s IHR Emergency Review Committee on Polio, is Co-Chair of WHO’s Ebola Vaccine Working Group and a member of WHO’s IHR Ebola Emergency Committee. She is the Co-Chair of the South African National Health Data Advisory and Coordination Committee, a member of South Africa’s National Advisory Group on Immunization and a member of the Scientific Advisory Committee of the South African National Institute of Communicable Diseases. She serves on the Boards of the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation (GAVI) and of AVAC. Professor Rees chairs the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovation (CEPI) Scientific Advisory Board and is Chair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s Advisory Group on HPV Vaccines.

Her research interests include HIV/AIDS prevention, STIs, microbicides, HIV and HPV vaccines, and broader issues relating to women’s health.

Rachel Tolhurst is a social scientist with a background in gender, development and health. Her research interests and experience centre on qualitative research on gender and equity in health systems strengthening and the social determinants of health. Her research has included a focus on a range of health areas including maternal and child health, sexual and reproductive health and rights, gender based violence, antimicrobial resistance and communicable and chronic disease (including malaria, tuberculosis, lung disease and HIV).

Rachel is currently the Social Sciences lead for the NIHR Global Health Research Unit on Lung Health and Tuberculosis in Africa at LSTM, and for the Drivers of Antimicrobial Resistance (DRUM) consortium (GCRF). She also leads the gender equitable careers theme on the DELTAS Learning Research Programme, in collaboration with the Capacity Research Unit.

Recent previous research has included leading LSTM’s contributions to two EU-funded consortia - MATIND, which evaluated two demand-side financing approaches to improving maternal health in India, and INPAC, which aimed to test an intervention to improve post-abortion family planning in China - as well as leading MRC-funded social science research exploring the drivers of child marriage in Sudan.