Dr. Awele Elumelu is a leading voice in African health care. As the chairperson of Avon Healthcare Limited, Nigeria’s leading health insurance provider, and the founder and CEO of Avon Medical Practice, a growing network of full-service clinics and onsite facilities with corporate institutions, she is focused on expanding and improving access to quality health care in Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation. In January 2018, Dr. Elumelu was appointed as a private sector champion for Immunisation in Africa by Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance.

Dr. Ayoade Olatunbosun-Alakija is a visionary, innovative leader, and influencer in global health and humanitarian development. Ayoade currently serves as special envoy and co-chair to the World Health Organization’s Access to COVID-19 Tools Accelerator, co-chair of the African Union’s African Vaccine Delivery Alliance and founder of Nigeria’s Emergency Coordination Centre, as well as the former chief humanitarian coordinator for Nigeria. She is currently spearheading an initiative to create safe learning and teaching environments in Nigeria or the CASTLE initiative.

Dr. Barry Finette is a professor of pediatrics, microbiology, and molecular genetics at the University of Vermont College of Medicine and an attending and teaching physician in the Pediatric Inpatient and Critical Care Division at the University of Vermont Medical Center’s children’s hospital. He is also the co-founder and president of THINKMD, PBC and has over 35 years of experience as a pediatrician. He has participated in numerous research, medical global health and humanitarian projects, as well as capacity building and disaster relief missions in multiple countries.

Dr. Ben Nkechika is the director general/CEO at the Delta State Contributory Health Commission in Nigeria. He was previously the managing director of Almond Healthcare Services Limited and the managing director of KGDN Technologies Limited. He was the pioneer medical director of the Delta Specialist Hospital and the pioneer medical doctor at the Nigeria Liquefied Natural Gas Company in Bonny island. Nkechika was a field medical officer at Schlumberger Oil Service Company for several years where he developed the interest for rural health care services.

Dr. Bernice Dahn is the former health minister of Liberia and former chief medical officer for the Ministry of Health.

Dr. Bilal A. Mateen is the inaugural chief AI officer at PATH, an INGO focused on achieving health equity through innovation. He trained as a physician in the United Kingdom and continues to work as an academic in the field of AI4Health, leading a portfolio of more than a quarter of a billion in digital health-focused grants and contracts.

Dr. Bruce Agins is an infectious disease physician and professor at the University of California San Francisco in the Institute for Global Health Sciences, Division of epidemiology, and former medical director of the New York State Department of Health AIDS Institute. Since 2002, he has directed HEALTHQUAL, a capacity-building initiative supporting development of sustainable quality management programs in Ministries of Health. He received his M.D. from Case Western Reserve University and his B.A. in anthropology from Haverford College.

Dr. Burmaa Alexander serves as the head of the influenza surveillance division at The National Center for Communicable Diseases, Ministry of Health, Mongolia. The National Influenza Center has responsibilities for epidemiological, laboratory surveillance, and clinical management for all acute and chronic infectious diseases across Mongolia. Alexander has been at the NCCD since 2002 and started as an epidemiologist. A pediatrician by training, she is a graduate of Irkutsk Medical University.

Dr. Chikwe Ihekweazu is the assistant director general at the World Health Organization for surveillance and health emergency intelligence and leads the WHO Hub for Pandemic and Epidemic Intelligence, based in Berlin, Germany. Previously, Ihekweazu was the first director general of the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control. He acted as interim director of the West Africa Regional Centre for Surveillance and Disease Control through 2017. He trained as an infectious disease epidemiologist and has over 25 years of experience working in senior public health and leadership positions in national public health institutes.

Dr. Chiseche Salome Mibenge is the director for Gender Initiatives at Episcopal Relief & Development, responsible for the design and implementation of the gender strategy and policy for international development programs and humanitarian response. Chiseche is the author of “Sex and International Tribunals: The Erasure of Gender from the War Narrative” (Penn Press.) She is a board member of the Global Interfaith Network for People of all Sexes, Sexual Orientations, and Gender Identities. For two decades, she served as a human rights educator with Utrecht University, Stanford University, and CUNY. Chiseche earned her Ph.D. from Utrecht University in 2010.