The 2014 Ebola outbreak in West Africa was unlike anything the world had faced, so it demanded an approach that went beyond the “traditional insular ways” of the United Nations, according to the man who coordinated the U.N. response, Tony Banbury.
Banbury, now the chief philanthropy officer at Vulcan Inc. in Seattle, remembered how he slashed red tape and broke the norms of interagency process.
"I had no concern whatsoever about dividing lines. It was just like, ‘We need smart people around the table figuring this out,’” he said Tuesday at the Clinton Global Initiative in New York. His team “grew exponentially, just like Ebola.”