Global Financing Facility

Juan Pablo Uribe, MD, is the Global Director for Health Nutrition and Population at the World Bank and Director of the Global Financing Facility for Women Children and Adolescents (GFF). Previously, Mr. Uribe was the CEO of Healthcare Providers for UnitedHealthcare/Banmédica for Chile and Peru and served from 2018 to 2019 as Minister of Health and Social Protection of Colombia. Prior to that, he was the Director General of the Fundación Santa Fe de Bogotá, a leading organization in Colombia working in health care, health education and public health.  Between 2009 and 2011, he was the World Bank´s Health Sector Manager for East Asia and the Pacific. In his career, first as a medical doctor specializing in public health and public administration, and later in both public and private sector organizations, Mr. Uribe has contributed significantly to the development of public health, health systems and public policies. 

Luc Laviolette, a Canadian national, is the Head of Secretariat for the Global Financing Facility for Women, Children and Adolescents (GFF). Mr. Laviolette led the GFF’s Country Programs from 2017-2020 where he was instrumental in shaping the GFF’s 2021-2025 strategy. He returns to the GFF after most recently leading the World Bank’s human development portfolio for the Maghreb Region and Malta. From 2013 to 2017, he was Program Leader for Human Development for the Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of Congo and Republic of Congo, based in Kinshasa, where he coordinated World Bank investments in health, nutrition, population, education, social protection, gender and fragility. He joined the World Bank as Senior Nutrition Specialist in the South Asia Region in 2009, initially based in New Delhi, India and then in Islamabad, Pakistan. Prior to joining the World Bank, he held several positions including Regional Director for Asia in the non-profit organization Nutrition International, and various positions at the Canadian International Development Agency. He also worked as Counselor to the Executive Director for Canada, China, Spain, Korea and Kuwait at the African Development Bank, based in Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire and worked at the International Development Research Centre in Canada.

Aissa Santos supports the development, implementation, monitoring, and assessment of the strategic communications and external relations team priorities. Before joining the GFF, she worked as a program assistant for Human Resources operations for the World Bank and in the HNP Global Practice. Prior to working at the World Bank, she worked as a mission coordinator for the United Nations Development Programme in the Philippines.

Aisha Kaga joins the GFF through a developmental assignment to support the Knowledge and learning (K&L) team with K&L Program operationalization. She started her career working in the Africa Region at the World Bank office in Nigeria and has over 20 years of experience in providing operations, executive and administrative support. Prior to joining GFF, she worked as Senior Program Assistant supporting the Health and Nutrition team in the Nigeria Country Office. She previously worked as Senior Executive Assistant with three Country Directors in Nigeria and supported the Nigeria CMU in performing administrative duties and a range of operations in portfolio monitoring.

Alison Morgan provides technical expertise across the GFF’s maternal and newborn health portfolio. Prior to joining the GFF Alison was an Associate Professor at the University of Melbourne, Australia where she led the Maternal, Sexual & Reproductive Health Unit at the Nossal Institute for Global Health. She has over 25 years’ experience in global health research and development practice spanning Africa, Asia and the Pacific, with a focus on maternal and newborn health, health systems strengthening and capacity development of health workers.

Dr. Amir Hagos is passionate about quality, accessible, affordable, and equitable health care as a fundamental human right and a non-negotiable moral imperative. He served at various positions both on the government and private philanthropies, his recent assignment in the government was a Minister of Health of federal democratic republic of Ethiopia. Under his tenure at the Ministry of Health in various capacities, he has been leading the health sector to implement the transformation plan by pioneering new initiatives, setting ambitious goals, devising innovative approaches, and executing major multisectoral collaboration to expand health care access to tens of millions of Ethiopians. These efforts have improved the population’s health status and health systems performance of the country. He holds an MD from Addis Ababa university and MPH in University of Western cape.

Anna Conn supports GFF countries to strengthen domestic investment in their health systems. As a member of the health financing team, she works across governments and development partners to track and assess domestic and external resources available for health to inform budgeting and planning processes. She also acts as the results liaison for the team and supports continuous data monitoring and learning across the portfolio. Prior to joining GFF, Anna lived and worked in Abuja, Nigeria collaborating with government to strengthen immunization financing systems with the Clinton Health Access Initiative. She has also supported resource mapping expenditure tracking efforts in Burkina Faso. Her expertise includes program monitoring and evaluation, strategic and operational planning, policy memo development, data analytics and visualization, as well as donor coordination.

Anurag Kumar supports GFF countries in improving the quantity and quality of their health financing, with a focus on PHC financing and equity. Prior to the GFF, Anurag led the health economics agenda at the Government of India's Policy Commission (NITI Aayog) where he worked on resource mobilization, efficiency of Government spending, health insurance reforms, and governance-related issues. He has health sector experience in several African and Asian countries.

Anju Malhotra is Senior Gender and M&E Advisor at GFF, on secondment from Johns Hopkins University where she is a Professor of International Health. A recognized leader on gender equality, reproductive health, and adolescent rights, Anju headed UNICEF’s work on gender equality, leading the development and implementation of UNICEF’s innovative and highly effective Gender Action Plan. She has been a leader in shaping the SDG target and global movement to end child marriage, in establishing the multi-donor, multi-country global program to end child marriage, and in shaping the research agenda on child marriage and adolescent health. Previously at the International Center for Research on Women (ICRW), Anju led the design and impact evaluations of adolescent sexual and reproductive health programs, the keynote paper for the landmark 2007 Women Deliver conference, and the “Fertility and Empowerment Network.” She holds a Ph.D. in Demography from the University of Michigan.

Anna Astvatsatryan contributes to the digital communications and social media strategy at the GFF, including online and multimedia content development, campaigns, digital marketing and analytics. Before joining the GFF,  Anna worked for the World Bank’s Health Results Innovation Trust Fund, where she supported online communications, and in the private sector, working in digital marketing, search engine optimization and crowdfunding. 

Augustina Nikolova leads the GFF Trust Fund financial management, ensuring compliance with all GFF administrative agreements and World Bank policies and procedures. Previously, Augustina worked with the World Bank’s Japanese trust funds (Policy and Human Resources Development and Japanese Social Development Fund). Her career spans more than 20 years across various corporate and operational units of the World Bank.

Brendan Hayes leads the GFF’s work on the sexual and reproductive health and rights agenda. Before joining the GFF, Brendan worked at Marie Stopes International (MSI), where he led the private-sector service delivery for family planning and reproductive health services, after working four years in MSI’s program in Malawi. Hayes began his career working on HIV prevention and impact mitigation efforts in Swaziland.

Bruno Rivalan manages GFF’s advocacy and engagement with civil society and various global partners.  Bruno has over 10 years of experience in designing and implementing policy and advocacy initiatives, managing external relation teams while building relationships with government entities and the media. Previously, he was the Deputy Executive Director at Global Health Advocates based in France, where he led various advocacy campaigns and policy research related to global health and development and participated in the governance and policy shaping of Global Health Initiatives including Gavi, the Global Fund and UHC2030. 

Cicely Thomas provides technical support to countries in developing and implementing health financing strategies in support of universal health coverage (UHC) and leads GFF’s support for health resource mapping and expenditure tracking. Before joining the GFF, Cicely worked with Results for Development where she led a portfolio of work focused on the integration of private sector in government stewarded mixed health systems; provided technical assistance to countries for health financing reform including around strategic purchasing, benefit package design, and costing and acted as a technical facilitator of the Joint Learning Network for UHC Primary Healthcare Initiative.

Charlotte Pram provides technical support to GFF’s work on Sexual Reproductive Health and Rights and Gender equality. Prior to joining the GFF, Charlotte worked with UNICEF in West and Central Africa on girls’ education. Pram has worked in the field of promoting SRHR and gender equality with UNFPA in Niger and International Planned Parenthood Federation. She has also worked for Expertise France on strengthening public health systems and reforms in Cote d’Ivoire.

Daniel Ochieng joins the GFF as part of the Results team and is responsible for Digital Health and Data Use. Before joining the GFF, Ochieng was a technical researcher for the Digital Public Goods Alliance and previously worked with a USAID Implementing Partner in Kenya as part of the core team in charge of strengthening Health Information Systems and HMIS capacity building through F2F and MoH Virtual Academy. He was instrumental in creating collaboration between MoH (National and County) and County Proximate Universities to provide proximate technical support and capacity building for health workers in line with devolved Health Services in Kenya. Ochieng is also an associate professor of Information Systems at the School of Computing and Informatics, University of Nairobi, Kenya, where he has worked for over 20 Years. Ochieng’s interests include Digital Health, Design Thinking, HCI and Systems Adoption. Daniel holds a Postdoc from KTH (Stockholm, Sweden) and a PhD (Information Systems) from the University of Nairobi, Kenya.

Danielle Charlet supports the GFF’s implementation research and evaluation portfolio and results agenda. Before joining the GFF, Danielle worked at University Research Co., LLC. supporting the development and implementation of approaches to identify and prioritize evidence needs, generate and synthesize evidence that is relevant and responsive to needs and facilitate the uptake and use of evidence in decision-making. She has broad global health research experience, with a focus on maternal, newborn, and child health, and health system strengthening.

Devy Damayanti provides administrative and operational support to the external relations and country operation teams. Before joining the GFF, Devy worked in the front office for then Senior Vice President and Special Representative to the United Nations Mahmoud Mohielden, where she was assisting the SVP and Advisers on administrative and logistical matters. Prior to that, she worked at the front office of the Country Director and Administration unit of the World Bank Indonesia country office.

Ed Llewellyn joins the Country Operations team for Supply Chain and Commodities. Ed is a supply chain expert and trusted advisor to governments and international donors in public health commodity security and medicines access. Among a wide range of consulting projects across Africa and a secondment to the NDoH in South Africa, he was on the founding teams of Coca-Cola’s Project Last Mile and the Africa Resource Centre. Ed has also held Regional and Technical Director roles for consultancies and NGOs. Ed holds a master’s degree in Aerospace Engineering from Bristol University and a Supply Chain Micromaster's credential from MIT.

Fanen Verinumbe works on the GFF Portfolio Monitoring team where she supports the monitoring of GFF’s engagement and investments in partner countries and across the portfolio. Prior to joining the GFF, she worked with the World Bank since 2019 where she has supported the design, implementation, and monitoring of a several WB/GFF cofinanced projects in health and through multisectoral projects. She also worked with the government of Nigeria for six years where she supported government’s effort to revitalize PHC service delivery using innovative approaches, including PBF and DFF.

Genesis Samonte supports the results monitoring agenda. Samonte has more than 14 years of experience in disease surveillance, health systems strengthening, establishing and managing health information systems, and crafting strategic information for national and local health program improvement and policy development. Previously she was chief of the National HIV and STI Surveillance and Strategic Information Unit and a monitoring and evaluation specialist for maternal, child, and adolescent health at the Philippine Department of Health. 

Isidore Sieleunou provides technical support and operational activities for country programs. Isidore has more than 20 years’ experience working in public health, health system strengthening programs and health financing in developing countries, including fragile states. Prior to joining the GFF, Isidore worked as technical advisor and consultant for several international organizations including The World Bank, WHO, UNICEF, UNFPA, CDC Atlanta, European Agency for Development and Health, CORDAID, MSF and ICG. Isidore also served as invited lecturer of Public Policy and Health Financing at the Institute of Tropical Medicine in Antwerp and at the University of Dschang in Cameroon.

Jean Rusatira supports the technical and operational team on design, monitoring and implementation of Results Based Financing (RBF) in countries within the GFF portfolio, including HRITF. He has over 15 years of work experience in public financial management, auditing, health financing, monitoring and evaluation of health programs. He has also worked as a consultant for RBF health programs designed to address the demand and supply-sides barriers to maternal, neonatal, child and adolescent health services. 

Jessica Brown supports the GFF results monitoring team in accessing, visualizing, and using data to monitor program effectiveness and inform implementation decisions. She is a data analyst and results monitoring specialist with over six years of experience working with public health and development teams to use data to drive improvements in health programs. Prior to joining the GFF, Jessica worked as a consultant for the U.S. Department of State’s Office of the Global AIDS Coordinator where she coordinated an inter-agency team to design and build web-based data visualizations for global HIV monitoring.

John Paul Clark joins the GFF as Lead Health Specialist for Country Operations, overseeing GFF’s portfolio of activities across its 36 partner countries. John Paul has over 35 years of experience and technical leadership in disease control, maternal and child health and health security. Prior to joining the GFF, he was the coordinator of the World Bank’s 16 country Regional Disease Surveillance Systems Enhancement Program—a flagship program for outbreak preparedness and response—and the Bank’s One Health Strategy. Before that, he held senior positions in the US government and World Health Organization.

Karin Gichuhi supports the GFF’s results agenda of the GFF to improve country-level health data collection and management systems, advocacy efforts and policy-making decisions. She is a strategic planning and program development specialist with more than 13 years of international experience in HIV/AIDS, prevention of mother-to-child transmission and maternal and child health in developing countries. She served as a team lead within USAID’s Office of HIV/AIDS, focused on the innovative application of data analysis methodology to inform country approaches, and as associate field director for the USAID–AMPATH Partnership, responsible for the rollout of PMTCT services to a catchment area of 2.2 million people in Kenya.

Luis Castanheira Pinto leads the knowledge and learning program for the GFF. Pinto has dedicated most of his 20 years professional career to the fields of learning, knowledge, education and competence development. Luis worked with a wide variety of stakeholders, from NGO’s, to national administrations, multinational companies and international organizations. Before joining the GFF, he worked for the European Commission / European Environment Agency as an Organizational Learning and Knowledge Innovation Expert.

Maletela Tuoane-Nkhasi leads the GFF’s work on civil registration and vital statistics (CRVS). She provides advice and strategic direction to the development and operationalization of the business plan in support of strengthening CRVS systems in low- and lower-middle income countries. She is also responsible for providing advocacy and accountability for change and creating mechanisms to exchange and share technical knowledge and expertise on CRVS. Previously she was an executive manager in charge of health and vital statistics at Statistics South Africa, where she led the acquisition, processing, analysis and dissemination of statistics covering vital events from the South African civil registration system. 

Marie Yenko provides administrative and operational support to the GFF Practice Manager and governance team. Prior to joining the GFF, Marie worked for the World Bank’s Trade and Competitiveness Global Practice and the Poverty Reduction and Economic Management Vice President’s front office on resource management, communications, and knowledge and learning. Before joining the Bank, she was assistant to the ambassador at the Philippine Embassy in Washington, D.C. and corporate communications manager of Glaxo SmithKline in the Philippines.

Mariel Palomino joins the External Relations team as a Partnership Specialist. Prior to joining the GFF, Mariel worked on advancing community-led projects in the Caribbean and social inclusion programs in Asia, Africa and Latin America. At UNDP, she supported its resource mobilization strategy with the IDB, ADB and explored potential channels of collaboration with other International Financial institutions such as the China Development Bank. At the UN Foundation, Mariel directly engaged with the private sector and UN agencies regarding their involvement with the Every Woman Every Child Initiative. Her background in health is particularly related to UHC and private sector engagement in global health innovations and multi-stakeholder health programs such as The Global Fund. For the last couple of years she has been monitoring WB and IDB projects, focusing on their environmental and social risks, grievance redress mechanisms and safeguards adherence. Most recently, she monitored WB COVID-19 projects in Africa and Latin America and the impacts of the COVID-19 crisis in maternal, child and adolescents health funding and programming.

Mohammad Tawab Hashemi has more than 17 years of experience in public health. He has worked in a wide range of countries, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Tajikistan. He led multi donor financed Afghanistan health projects and technically supported the Performance-Based Financing program in Tajikistan and contracting NGOs in Pakistan. Before joining the Bank, Hashemi worked at the Ministry of Health of Afghanistan as the Grant and Contract Management specialist and has a rich experience working with the Non-Government and the Public sector.

Munirat Ogunlayi provides technical support to GFF’s work on RMNCAH-N and Sexual Reproductive Health and Rights in Bangladesh and Nigeria. Prior to joining GFF, she managed the health portfolio for the World Bank Liberia country office, worked with DFID as HIV and AIDS Adviser and UNDP as team leader for the HIV unit, Senior consultant Monitoring and Evaluation at ITAD Limited UK, Stewardship and Coordination Manager for Options UK, and served as Technical lead for the Voices for Change Gender program in Nigeria. 

Nadege Thadey joined the GFF on a development assignment to support the Country Investment Summary (CIS) process and the monitoring of the GFF portfolio. She has started her career working in the Africa Region at the World bank and has 25 years of experience in providing executive and administrative support. She previously worked from the Office of the Vice President for Human Development at the World Bank where she supported three Vice Presidents over the past five years. Prior to that, she was in the US Executive Director’s Office where she supported the Executive Director (ED) and Alternate ED.

Nansia Constantinou leads the GFF’s communications program. Constantinou brings 14 years of experience in designing and implementing innovative communications strategies for the World Bank, holding positions in across several sectors and focusing on advocacy, campaigns, stakeholder engagement, leadership communications, and brand management. Previously she led communications for the Energy Sector Management Assistance Program (ESMAP) and the Malaria Booster Program in Africa.

Patrick Hoang-Vu Eozenou has over 15 years of experience in development economics, microeconomics, and health economics with a focus on Sub-Saharan Africa. Before joining the bank, Patrick was a post-doctoral fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute in Washington DC working on evaluating the impact of nutrition and agricultural interventions. He has strong publication record in peer reviewed journals (e.g. Journal of Development Economics, Journal of Development Studies, Lancet Global Health, Oxford Review of Economic Policy, Health Systems & Reforms) and led the World Bank engagement on the joint WB-WHO global monitoring of Universal Health Coverage (UHC) since 2017.

Petra Vergeer is the GFF Portfolio Manager. She has worked with the GFF since the design of the GFF business model and supported frontrunner countries as Focal Point, providing technical support to countries on GFF processes and supported design and implementation, including on results-based financing. Petra subsequently was the GFF Lead for Knowledge & Learning and the Result Based Financing (RBF) portfolio. Petra has more than 25 years’ experience working in public health and health system strengthening programs in low-income countries, including fragile states.

Nargis Maqsudova has more than 15 years of experience in the fields of health policy, strengthening of health systems, human resources for health, and national regulatory authorities in Tajikistan. Before joining the GFF in 2020, Nargis worked as a Health Systems Strengthening Professional Officer at the WHO Country Office in Tajikistan, Head of International Relations Department at the Tajik State Medical University, Project Coordinator for the SDC and USAID funded projects, and has a broad experience working with the Public and Non-Government sectors.

Peter Hansen leads GFF’s Results workstream. Previously, Peter co-led Results for Development’s health portfolio and served as director of the Health Systems Strengthening Accelerator. He also worked at the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, where he led a department responsible for accelerating the introduction and scale up of innovations and ensuring scientific and technical quality of investments totaling nearly $4 billion per year in over 100 countries. He also worked at Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, where he led the monitoring and evaluation function and investments in strengthening country data systems and capacities.

Sandhya Krishnan provides administrative and operational support to the technical team. Prior to joining the GFF, Sandhya was based in the India country office with the Country Management unit and provided operational assistance with the Environment and Natural Resources global practice. She has experience in operations monitoring, organizing President’s and Senior Management visits/ workshops/ study tours/ seminars and portfolio review meetings.

Sneha Kanneganti leads the GFF’s private sector engagement, which includes innovative financing, private sector partnerships, and technical assistance to country governments on private sector issues in health systems. Prior to joining the GFF, she was with the Global Health Investments team at the International Finance Corporation and worked with the World Bank on developing its private sector strategy for health. 

Stephanie Saulsbury supports the GFF’s donor and partner engagement and is the task manager for the GFF’s Investors Group and Trust Fund Committee agendas. Before joining the GFF, she worked for various nonprofit organizations and foundations, including the Communication Consortium Media Center, the UN Foundation, and the Kaiser Family Foundation. Her work has focused on public health policy and advocacy and women’s and girl’s empowerment, both globally and domestically.

Sudanthi Hettiarachchi supports the country programs lead with portfolio management and tracking. Before joining the GFF, she worked with the World Bank’s East Asia and Pacific health team where she monitored the lending and advisory services & analytics portfolio, provided quality assurance and supported the management and administration of the Integrating Donor-Financed Health Programs Multi-Donor Trust Fund. She has also worked in the Bank’s Transport sector, where she helped manage and administer the Global Road Safety Facility.

Supriya Madhavan provides technical assistance on analytical and operational work to advance the demographic dividend and improve quality of care around reproductive, maternal, newborn, child, and adolescent health. Before joining the GFF, Supriya worked at USAID to promote implementation research and delivery science to support maternal child health service delivery in lower- and middle-income countries. She has extensive experience working in Central, South, and Southeast Asia; the Balkans; and Sub-Saharan Africa.

Tashrik Ahmed is a epidemiology, health systems, and disease surveillance specialist with more than ten years of experience in monitoring and evaluation, applied research, and international program development. His research and advisory activities in the USA, Africa, and Asia focus on establishing disease surveillance programs during health emergencies, community health workers, and promoting data use within health systems. As a results specialist with the Global Financing Facility for Women, Children, and Adolescents, Tashrik works with countries to improve routine data for decision-making and measure RMNCH outcomes. Tashrik has held full-time and consulting roles with numerous global health and development organizations, including Johns Hopkins University, the DC Department of Health, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and the World Bank Research Group. Tashrik holds a Ph.D. from the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health and an MPH from The George Washington University’s Milken Institute School of Public Health.

Vineetha Menon supports the GFF Trust Fund financials to ensures compliance with the GFF administrative agreements and World Bank policies and procedures. Her career spans more than 10 years with the World Bank, during which she was part of the World Bank’s Trust Fund Division, based in Chennai.