About me

Since 2023 I have been a grant officer at the Gates Foundation, where I collaborate with governments and technical partners to accelerate health reforms, improve the performance of primary health care systems, and generate more and better evidence on health systems in numerous countries, including Argentina, Brazil, Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Nigeria, and Pakistan.

Prior to joining the Gates Foundation, I served as a technical advisor with the Strategic Purchasing for Primary Health Care (SP4PHC) project in Uganda, implemented by Health Systems Insight (previously ThinkWell), where I supported government efforts to (1) to embed performance-based financing in the country’s intergovernmental fiscal transfer system, and (2) to purchase priority reproductive, maternal, and child health services from private providers.

I had the privilege of teaching graduate-level health financing at The George Washington University Milken Institute School of Public Health with Dr Marty Makinen from 2019 to 2024. Marty and I originally developed the course with Ben Picillo in 2017, when we were Public Health Practitioners in Residence at the American University School of International Service.

I also previously maintained an independent consulting business, where my research and advisory activities focused on the design, implementation, and reform of publicly financed health coverage schemes, including through strategic health purchasing and evidence-informed priority setting. In 2020–21, I led the first effort to estimate the global resource needs to achieve basic levels of water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) and waste management services in health care facilities. You can learn more about my Projects and Publications.

My freelancing began after nearly five years at Results for Development, where I worked on technical assistance initiatives funded by the Gates Foundation, The Global Fund, UNAIDS, and USAID. During that time I served as the health financing lead for USAID’s Act to End Neglected Tropical Diseases | East program and managed R4D’s work in South Africa and Vietnam under USAID’s Health Finance & Governance Project. I also co-led R4D’s portfolio on the sustainability, integration, and transition and donor-funded health programs, overseeing a more than doubling of revenue between 2016 and 2020.

I first encountered health financing while earning my MPH at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, where classmates and I completed an award-winning practicum supporting scale-up of the Aravind Eye Care System’s primary care network in Tamil Nadu, India. Before grad school I served as special assistant to Dr Marianne Fay, then chief economist of the World Bank’s sustainable development network; in that role I launched and managed day-to-day operations of the Green Growth Knowledge Platform. I joined the Bank after spending a year in Beijing as a Luce Scholar at Renmin University of China, where I explored intersections of US and Chinese security interests in Asia and the Middle East, lectured on global governance, and helped to administer the Contemporary China Studies Program.

Before that I supported Dr Lynn Eden and Professor Scott Sagan at the Center for International Security and Cooperation with a range of research and administrative initiatives, including leading the reaccreditation process for the Center’s undergraduate honors program. That role built on my undergraduate work in international relations at Stanford University, where, under the brilliant mentorship of Professors Sagan and Stephen Stedman, I received the William J. Perry Award for my thesis on the use and efficacy of economic sanctions in inter-state disputes.

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