Wellcome Trust Director Jeremy Farrar is not the typical charitable foundation chief.
A world-class neurologist, research scientist and professor of tropical medicine, he built his career on the other side of the funding equation. Most recently, this was as head of the Wellcome-funded Oxford University Clinical Research Unit in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, where he lived and worked for 18 years before the Trust lured him to London in October 2013.
On top of a nomadic upbringing — born in Singapore, Farrar spent most of his childhood in Asia and the Middle East, before a degree in medicine brought him to University College London — those years in Vietnam instilled in him a passionately global view that he is keen to infuse throughout the foundation.