Board of Directors

Joel Lamstein serves as chair of the Global Health Council's Board of Directors. He is founder and president of John Snow Inc, an international public health consulting group, and he is also president of World Education. Lamstein is on the faculty of the Harvard School of Public Health and teaches organizational strategy, nonprofit management, international development and strategic management. He received his BS in math and physics from the University of Michigan, and attended the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.  Term expires 2012. 

Valerie Nkamgang Bemo, MD, MPH, a native of Cameroon, is a senior program officer of special initiatives in the global development division at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, where she is responsible for the emergency response portfolio. Before joining the foundation, she held various roles at the International Rescue Committee, most recently serving as senior technical advisor for health in the Democratic Republic of Congo and West Africa. She also worked with various NGO and had extensive involvement in Aceh, Indonesia, Côte d’Ivoire, Sierra Leone, Mauritania, Kenya and Chad. Dr. Bemo received her medical degree from the University of Côte d'Ivoire, her epidemiology diploma at the University of Paris, and her MPH from Madrid Autonome University. Term expires 2013. 

Alvaro Bermejo, MD, MPH, serves as secretary of the Global Health Council's Board of Directors. Dr. Bermejo, a Spanish national born in London, is the executive director of the International AIDS Alliance, Europe’s largest NGO dedicated to fighting HIV/AIDS. The Alliance, where Bermejo has been since 2004, supports local and community organizations in 30 countries to take action on AIDS. Dr. Bermejo’s career has been steeped in humanitarian assistance, most notably at the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies and AECI, Spain’s overseas aid agency. Bermejo received his medical degree from the University of Madrid and his diploma in Tropical Medicine and Hygiene from the University of Barcelona. He also received his MPH from Leeds University. Term expires 2013. 

George F. Brown, MD, MPH, a native of Canada, recently retired as director of health equity at the Rockefeller Foundations, where he focused on support to public-private partnerships to accelerate the development of drugs and vaccines for neglected diseases, AIDS prevention and care, and efforts to address problems of human resources for health. He has served as resident advisor in family planning to the governments of Tunisia and Morocco, and as special advisor in population to the Canadian International Development Agency, where he established Canada's development assistance program in population. He was director for population and health sciences at the International Development Research Centre in Ottawa, as well as vice president of international programs at the Population Council. Dr. Brown received his MD from the University of Toronto, and his MPH from Harvard. Term expires 2012. 

The Rev. Dr. Joan Brown Campbell is an ordained minister and a leader in the ecumenical interfaith movement. She is currently director of the Department of Religion at the historic Chautauqua Institution in New York. The Rev. Dr. Campbell served for a decade as the secretary to the National Council of Churches, USA. She was the first woman to be named executive director of the World Council of Churches. She worked with Martin Luther King and brought him to her own congregation in Cleveland; she served as a key election monitor in the election of Nelson Mandela as president of South Africa. She was previously a member of the U.S. State Department's advisory committee on Religious Freedom Abroad, and continues her commitment to peace as chair of the Global Women's Peace Initiative. She is particularly dedicated to women's rights and their physical security, and to enhancing the role of women in civil discourse and civil society.  Term expires 2011. 

William Foege, MD, MPH, a native of the U.S., is chair-emeritus of the Global Health Council's Board of Directors. Dr. Foege is a fellow at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and a professor emeritus in the Department of International Health at Emory University's Rollins School of Public Health. He is an epidemiologist who worked in the successful campaign to eradicate smallpox in the 1970s. In 1984, several colleagues and he created the Task Force for Child Survival, a working group for the World Health Organization, UNICEF, the World Bank, UNDP and the Rockefeller Foundation. Dr. Foege has also served as the executive director of The Carter Center. He received his BA from Pacific Lutheran University, his MD from the University of Washington Medical School and his MPH from Harvard University. 

Elizabeth Furst Frank, MBA, is the treasurer of the Global Health Council Board of Directors. She leads strategy and strategic partnerships for AMC Entertainment. Previously, she led global program activities for AmeriCares, including global emergency response, corporate in-kind donor relationships, AmeriCares India and AmeriCares international and U.S. medical assistance partnerships, and global logistics and inventory management. Before that she was Vice President of Corporate Strategic Planning for Time Warner, and spent nine years at McKinsey & Company as a partner in Media and Consumer Practices. Elizabeth graduated from Lehigh University and received a Master’s of Business Administration from Harvard University. Term expires 2013. 

Julio Frenk has served as Dean of the Faculty at the Harvard School of Public Health and the T&G Angelopoulos Professor of Public Health and International Development - a joint appointment between the Harvard Kennedy School of Government and the Harvard School of Public Health. Dr. Frenk served as the Minister of Health of Mexico from 2000 to 2006, where he introduced universal health insurance. He has also held leadership positions at the National Institute of Public Health of Mexico, the Mexican Health Foundation, the World Health Organization, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Carso Health Institute. In September 2008, Dr. Frenk received the Clinton Global Citizen Award for changing "the way practitioners and policy makers across the world think about health." Term expires 2011. 

Gretchen Howard joined Google in 2006 and is currently Director of New Advertising Products. In this role, Gretchen is responsible for Google's New Advertising Product Sales team, which focuses on incubating complex, new ad products working closely with Product Management. Since joining Google in early 2006, Gretchen has managed Sales and Operations teams for AdWords, working to maximize advertiser opportunities such as ROI, retention and customer happiness. Prior to joining Google, Gretchen was VP of Market Development and Field Sales for Fidelity Investments. Before that, Gretchen was a consulting manager for Accenture and Mainspring. Gretchen is a graduate of Williams College and holds a MBA from Harvard Business School. Term expires 2012. 

Jim Kolbe currently serves as a Senior Transatlantic Fellow for the German Marshall Fund United States. He advises on trade matters as well as issues of effectiveness of US assistance to foreign countries, on US-EU relationships, and on migration and its relationship to development. He also serves as an adjunct Professor in the College of Business at the University of Arizona, and serves on a part time basis as strategic consultant with McLarty Associates. For 22 years, Jim Kolbe served in the United States House of Representatives, elected for eleven consecutive terms, from 1985 to 2007. He represented the Eighth (previously designated the Fifth) congressional district, comprising the southeastern part of Arizona with Tucson as the main population area. While in Congress, Jim served for 20 years on the Appropriations Committee of the House of Representatives, responsible for deciding the allocation of the budget and the terms for spending appropriated funds. He was chairman of the Treasury, Post Office and Related Agencies subcommittee for four years, and for the last six years in Congress, he chaired the Foreign Operations, Export Financing and Related Agencies subcommittee. Term expires 2011. 

Reeta Roy, MA, a native of Malaysia, is vice-chair of the Global Health Council's Board of Directors. She is president and CEO of The MasterCard Foundation. She previously was the divisional vice president of global citizenship and policy at Abbott as well as vice president of the Abbott Fund, a philanthropic foundation. Prior to joining Abbott, Roy worked with Bristol-Myers Squibb for more than 10 years in a number of positions that addressed global policy issues, social responsibility, and private-public partnerships. Her tenure at the company included an assignment as director of strategic planning and public affairs of the company's operations in China. Prior to joining the private sector, she worked at the United Nations in New York. Roy is a member of the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief Pediatric Partnership, The Chicago Council on Global Affairs and United Nations Association of the USA. She holds an MA in Law and Diplomacy from The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, and a BA from St. Andrews Presbyterian College. Term expires 2013.