Board of Directors

 

DNDi North America Board of Directors

Chair: Bennett Shapiro, MD, Partner, PureTech Ventures; former Executive Vice President, Merck

Secretary: Hellen Gelband, MHS, Associate Director, Center for Disease Dynamics, Economics & Policy

Treasurer: Joelle Tanguy, MBA, Managing Director, External Relations, GAVI Alliance

Suerie Moon, PhD, Instructor, Harvard School of Public Health; Advisor, Medicines Patent Pool; Member, Board of Directors, Doctors Without Borders/ Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) USA

James Orbinski, MD, Associate Professor of Medicine at University of Toronto; Fellow, Munk Centre for International Studies

Bernard Pécoul, MD, MPH, Executive Director, DNDi

Darin Portnoy, MD, MPH, Family Medicine Attending/Teaching Faculty, Residency Program in Family and Social Medicine, Montefiore Medical Center and Family Health Center; Former President, MSF USA

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DNDi North America Board of Directors - Bios

 

Chair: Bennett Shapiro, MD, Partner, PureTech Ventures; former Executive Vice President, Merck.

Dr. Shapiro was formerly Executive Vice President, Worldwide Licensing and External Research at Merck Research laboratories. Previously at Merck, he held the position of Executive Vice President, Worldwide Basic Research. Prior to entering the pharmaceutical industry, Shapiro was Professor and Chairman of the Department of Biochemistry at the University of Washington. He also held the position of Chief, Section on Cellular Differentiation in the Laboratory of Biochemistry at the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) and was a visiting scientist at the Institut Pasteur earlier in his career. Shapiro presently serves on Boards of several biotechnology companies and non-profit organizations. Shapiro received his MD from Jefferson Medical College in the USA.

Board Secretary: Hellen Gelband, MHS, Associate Director, Center for Disease Dynamics, Economics & Policy

Hellen Gelband is Associate Director of the Center for Disease Dynamics, Economics & Policy, a nonprofit, nonpartisan policy research organization that works in the joint space of biomedical science, economics, and disease modeling. Gelband formerly served as Senior Program Officer with the Institute of Medicine's (IOM) National Cancer Policy Board and Board on Global Health. Major IOM projects included studies of payments for services in clinical trials, palliative care for cancer patients, cancer drug development, the economics of antimalarial drugs, and cancer control in low- and middle-income countries. Previously, she spent 15 years in the Health Program of the former Congressional Office of Technology Assessment, working on a variety of topics including funding for tropical disease research, unconventional treatments for cancer, drug labeling in developing countries, and environmental causes of cancer. She is also an editor with the Cochrane Collaboration Infectious Diseases Group and with the Disease Control Priorities Project. She is a member of the founding board of directors of Bikes for the World.

Board Treasurer: Joelle Tanguy, MBA, Managing Director, External Relations, GAVI

Previously, Tanguy served as Senior Vice President for Global Programs and Partnerships, Global Business Coalition on HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria (GBC), a coalition of more than 220 international companies. A former IT industry, Tanguy left Silicon Valley in 1989 to lead humanitarian medical relief operations in East Africa, Central Asia and the Balkans, often amid political and military turmoil. In 1994, she became U.S. Executive Director of Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders (MSF). In 2001, Tanguy helped launch and develop the Global Alliance for TB Drug Development (TB Alliance). Tanguy is also a Visiting Professor at Bard College's Program on Globalization in New York and has contributed to numerous publications on global health and human rights. Tanguy received her MBA from France's Institut Superieur des Affaires (HEC/ISA) joint program with Stanford University Graduate School of Business.

Suerie Moon, PhD, Instructor, Harvard School of Public Health; Advisor, Medicines Patent Pool; Member, Board of Directors, Doctors Without Borders/ Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) USA

Suerie Moon is Special Advisor to the Dean and Instructor at the Harvard School of Public Health, and Associate Fellow in the Sustainability Science Program at the Center for International Development, Harvard Kennedy School of Government. Her policy work focuses on analyzing the relationship between access to medicines, innovation and intellectual property rights policies, technology transfer, and the implications for global equity in public health. Her scholarly research focuses on global governance, specifically North/South relations, the evolution of international regimes, the political economy of global health, and innovative institutional arrangements for addressing global policy problems. Prior to coming to Harvard, she worked for the Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) international Campaign for Access to Essential Medicines, where she focused on intellectual property rights, equity prices for medicines, and research and development into neglected diseases. She has worked with MSF since 1999, including in New York, Geneva, Paris, Goma (Democratic Republic of the Congo) and Beijing. She has also consulted on access to medicines policies for MSF, Oxfam, the Medicines Patent Pool, UNAIDS, UNITAID and the World Health Organization. Dr. Moon is a member of the Board of Directors of MSF-USA and the expert Proposal Review Committee of UNITAID. She received a BA in History from Yale University, an MPA from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University, and a PhD in Public Policy from Harvard's Kennedy School of Government.

James Orbinski, MD, Associate Professor of Medicine at University of Toronto; Fellow, Munk Centre for International Studies

Dr. Orbinski is a humanitarian advocate and author, and has worked to provide medical relief to victims of many of the world's most disturbing and complex humanitarian emergencies. As president of the Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) International Council, he accepted the 1999 Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of the organization. He worked with MSF in a number of settings – including Goma, Zaire (now Democratic Republic of the Congo) in the fall of 1996 during the refugee crisis; in Kigali during the Rwandan genocide of 1994; and in Baidoa, Somalia during the civil war and famine of 1992-93. He was a founder of the McMaster University Health Reach Program that investigates and promotes the health of children in war zones, and he was a founding member of MSF Canada in 1990. Orbinski received a BA from Trent University, an MD from McMaster University, and an MA in International Relations from the University of Toronto.

Bernard Pécoul, MD, MPH, Executive Director, DNDi

Dr. Pécoul has led DNDi since its founding in 2003. DNDi and its partners have built the largest and most robust R&D portfolio ever for three of the most neglected diseases (leishmaniasis, human African trypanosomiasis, and Chagas disease), and launched ASAQ and ASMQ, two low-cost, non-patented antimalarial combinations. Pécoul played a key role in the formation of DNDi as part of the Access to Essential Medicines Campaign of Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF). Prior to his involvement with the campaign, Pécoul was Executive Director of MSF-France, co-founder of Epicentre, and a MSF field physician in Africa, Latin America, and Asia. Pécoul obtained his MD from the University of Clermont Ferrand and his MPH from Tulane University.

Darin Portnoy, MD, MPH, Family Medicine Attending/Teaching Faculty, Residency Program in Family and Social Medicine, Montefiore Medical Center and Family Health Center; Former President, MSF USA

Darin Portnoy is an attending physician at Montefiore Medical Center and on Faculty at Albert Einstein College of Medicine. Dr. Portnoy has worked for 14 years with Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) as a field doctor and medical coordinator in such places as Uzbekistan, El Salvador, Georgia, Sudan, Liberia, Nigeria, and Ethiopia. From 2004-2008, he was the President of MSF USA and a member of the organization's governing International Council. Prior to that, he served on the organization's Board of Directors beginning in 2001. Presently, he serves on MSF USA's Board of Advisors. In addition to continuing to be involved with MSF, Dr. Portnoy has supported Human Rights Watch in their research on the Zambian prison system, and is President of a Foundation that supports the construction of schools, bridges and water projects in Guatemala. Dr. Portnoy teaches medical students and residents; lectures at universities, grand rounds, and conferences around the country; and has been a course instructor for global health and humanitarian aid courses at Einstein and at Cornell. He received his M.D. and MPH from Tulane University.