Current Research and Scholarly Interests
I have extensive experience in the development of global health innovations and in working to test and scale-up health interventions. At Stanford University, I am playing a leading role in developing global women and children’s health research and educational programs, including the establishment of a Global Center for Gender Equality at Stanford University. My research focuses on advancing child health and development in low resource settings and advancing gender equality and health globally, and includes several applications of artificial intelligence. Before joining Stanford, I was Senior Fellow at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF), where I led the development of initiatives to address gender inequalities and empower women and girls. Prior to this role, I served as the BMGF Director of Family Health, leading strategy development and implementation across maternal, newborn and child health, nutrition, and family planning. In this role, I was responsible for investments ranging from scientific discovery to intervention development and delivery of interventions at scale. I worked closely with the Discovery team to shape discovery and development investments and was a co-founder of the Saving Lives at Birth Development Grand Challenge, the Putting Women and Girls at the Center of Development Grand Challenge, and the Healthy Birth, Growth and Development initiative. Based on these experiences, I understand how to identify knowledge gaps and generate evidence of impact for new interventions, and how to utilize evidence to influence the policy dialogue leading to programmatic adoption and scale-up of interventions in low income settings. As Director of Family Health, I also co-led the development and implementation of the BMGF global health strategy for India, which cuts across multiple health and development sectors. Before joining BMGF, I was Associate Professor and Founding Director of the International Center for Advancing Neonatal Health in the Department of International Health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. I led the development of newborn health research, including numerous facility- and community-based maternal and child health research trials. Before joining Johns Hopkins, I was Senior Research Advisor for the $50M Saving Newborn Lives program of Save the Children-US, where I led the development and implementation of the global research strategy for newborn health and survival.
