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Dr Zsuzsanna Jakab, Deputy Director-General

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A native of Hungary, Dr Jakab was appointed as Deputy Director-General in 2019 after serving as WHO Regional Director for Europe since 2010. She has held a number of high-profile national and international public health policy positions in the last three decades, including as the founding Director of the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control in Stockholm, Sweden.

Between 2005 and 2010, she built the centre into an internationally respected centre of excellence in the fight against infectious diseases.

Delegation of authority from WHO Director-General

Chef de Cabinet

Dr Catharina Boehme, Chef de Cabinet

Dr Catharina Boehme assumed the role of Chef de Cabinet at WHO in March 2021. She was the Chief Executive Officer of FIND, the international alliance for diagnostics, for eight years.  Under her leadership, the organization improved access to diagnosis for more than 100 million people in low- and middle-income countries and tackled major emerging challenges such as AMR, infectious disease outbreaks and noncommunicable diseases. As co-convener of the Access to COVID-19 Tools Accelerator, she has been widely featured in the press, driving equitable access to testing.

Dr Boehme is a trained medical doctor with diplomas in public health and management (IMD) and received her academic training in Germany, France and the United States of America. Early in her career, she worked in Ghana and Tanzania, focusing on clinical research to eliminate tuberculosis. She has served in several WHO and global advisory bodies, participated in two Lancet Commissions and published several hundred peer-reviewed publications.

Delegation of authority from WHO Director-General 

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Executive Directors

Ms Jane Ellison, Executive Director for External Relations and Governance

Jane Ellison was most recently WHO's Deputy Director-General for Corporate Operations. From the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, she has more than 30 years of experience in politics, commerce and change management in both the public and private sectors. She was previously Special Parliamentary Adviser to the United Kingdom’s Chancellor of the Exchequer. In addition, as a Member of Parliament of the United Kingdom from 2010 to 2017, she served as the country’s Public Health Minister from 2013 to 2016 and as Minister of State at Her Majesty’s Treasury from 2016 to 2017. 

As Public Health Minister, she was involved in the UK’s response to the 2014–2015 Ebola outbreak and represented the Government of the United Kingdom in World Health Assemblies. During her time in Parliament she played a pivotal role in advancing health issues including founding the first All-Party Parliamentary Group on Female Genital Mutilation in 2011 and taking forward the UK’s plain packaging of tobacco legislation. Prior to becoming a Member of Parliament she worked in the private sector for the John Lewis Partnership. Ms Ellison has a degree in Politics, Philosophy and Economics from Oxford University.

Delegation of authority from WHO Director-General

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Dr Michael Ryan, Executive Director, WHO Health Emergencies Programme

Dr Mike Ryan has been at the forefront of managing acute risks to global health for nearly 25 years. He served as Assistant Director-General for Emergency Preparedness and Response in WHO's Health Emergencies Programme from 2017 to 2019.

Dr Ryan first joined WHO in 1996, with the newly established unit to respond to emerging and epidemic disease threats. He has worked in conflict affected countries and led many responses to high impact epidemics. He is a founding member of the Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network (GOARN), which has aided the response to hundreds of disease outbreaks around the world. He served as Coordinator of Epidemic Response (2000-2003), Operational Coordinator of WHO’s response to the SARS outbreak (2003), and as WHO’s Director of Global Alert and Response (2005-2011),

He was a Senior Advisor on Polio Eradication for the Global Polio Eradication Initiative from 2013 to 2017, deploying to countries in the Middle East.

He completed medical training at the National University of Ireland, Galway, a Master’s in Public Health at University College Dublin, and specialist training in communicable disease control at the Health Protection Agency in London and the European Programme for Intervention Epidemiology Training.

Delegation of authority from WHO Director-General

Dr Soumya Swaminathan, Chief Scientist

Dr Soumya Swaminathan was appointed WHO’s first Chief Scientist in March 2019. A paediatrician from India and a globally recognized researcher on tuberculosis and HIV, she brings with her 30 years of experience in clinical care and research and has worked throughout her career to translate research into impactful programmes. Dr Swaminathan was Secretary to the Government of India for Health Research and Director General of the Indian Council of Medical Research from 2015 to 2017. In that position, she focused on bringing science and evidence into health policy making, building research capacity in Indian medical schools and forging south-south partnerships in health sciences. From 2009 to 2011, she also served as Coordinator of the UNICEF/UNDP/World Bank/WHO Special Programme for Research and Training in Tropical Diseases in Geneva.

She received her academic training in India, the United Kingdom, and the United States of America, and has published more than 350 peer-reviewed publications and book chapters. She is an elected Foreign Fellow of the US National Academy of Medicine and a Fellow of all three science academies in India. The Science division’s role is to ensure that WHO stays ahead of the curve and leverages advances in science and technology for public health and clinical care, as well as ensuring that the norms, standards and guidelines produced by WHO are scientifically excellent, relevant and timely. Her vision is to ensure that WHO is at the cutting edge of science and is able to translate new knowledge into meaningful impact on population health worldwide.

Assistant Directors-General

Dr Samira Asma, Assistant Director-General, for Data, Analytics and Delivery

Dr Samira Asma, from the United States of America, is the Assistant Director-General for Data, Analytics and Delivery for Impact where she leads the organization’s efforts to establish the results framework for accountability and using timely, reliable and actionable data to drive progress towards the Triple Billion targets and health-related Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Dr Asma brings more than 25 years of experience in building country capacity and meaningful partnerships that lead public health programmes and policies to catalyze substantial and measurable long-term impact.

Dr Asma re-joined WHO in 2018 as the Director for Health Metrics and Measurement and led an organization-wide and multi-partner engagement to develop the 13th General Programme of Work (GPW 13), the WHO results framework and the SDG Global Action Plan with UN partners.

The COVID-19 pandemic has underscored the urgency to strengthen country heath information systems. By aligning with countries and partners, Dr Asma is working to ensure every country has a robust data and health information system, to make health data accessible, and to use data to improve health. These efforts are essential to realizing Dr Tedros’ vision of transforming WHO into a modern, data-driven organization.

Prior to joining WHO, Dr Asma served in leadership positions at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for over two decades. By building successful collaborations, she established global programmes on tobacco control, noncommunicable diseases, environmental health, and injuries.   Dr Asma is recognized for leading the establishment of a reliable, sustained surveillance system for tobacco control in 180 countries, using innovative technologies to monitor health, generating epidemiologic and economic evidence for policy interventions, and launching a global initiative to reduce heart attacks and strokes – all through global networks and partnerships. Dr Asma has contributed to more than 100 publications, books and policy papers on global health and public health surveillance and is internationally recognized as a scientific and policy expert on preventing leading risk factors that cause premature deaths and making a measurable impact in countries.

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Professor Hanan H. Balkhy, Assistant Director-General, Antimicrobial resistance

Professor Balkhy graduated from King Abdulaziz University in Jeddah, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in 1991. She completed her paediatric residency training at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston USA 1993-1996; followed by a paediatric infectious diseases fellowship from 1996-1999 from the Cleveland Clinic Foundation and Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio, USA. 

Prior to her appointment with WHO, she was the Executive Director, Infection Prevention and Control (IPC) at the Ministry of National Guard for 10 years and prior to that, the hospital epidemiologist for 10 years. She also led the establishment of the infectious diseases research department at King Abdulla International Research Centre at King Saud bin Abdulaziz University for Health Sciences in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Professor Balkhy runs the WHO Collaborating Centre for IPC and anti-microbial resistance (AMR) and the Gulf Cooperation Council center for infection control. She is the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Infection and Public Health and has over 200 publications in peer-reviewed journals. 

Professor Balkhy is a member of the WHO Global unit for IPC,and  in addition has served on many WHO committees including: the Advisory Group on Integrated Surveillance and Antimicrobial Resistance (AGISAR), the Strategic and Technical Advisory Group on Antimicrobial Resistance (STAG-AMR), the International Health Regulations review committee (IHR-RC) and the most recent Interagency Coordination Group committee for AMR. 

With her broad spectrum of responsibilities, she has been able to develop the expertise in managing and leading both her teams of infection preventioninsts on one hand and research teams in the fields of AMR and MERS-CoV on the other. She has received two research awards from her institution acknowledging her leading role in her field. Most recently she has been given the European Society of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases (ESCMID) Fellows honorary title. 

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Professor Agnès Buzyn, Executive Director, WHO Academy

WHO
Professor Agnès Buzyn

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Agnès Buzyn is the Executive Director of the WHO Academy. Prior to that she was the Director-General’s Envoy for Multilateral Affairs. Professor Buzyn served as the French Minister of Solidarity and Health from 2017 to 2020 before joining WHO. In 2016, she was appointed Chairman of the French Authority for Health (HAS) in charge of notably Health Technology Assessment. Between 2011 and 2016, Professor Buzyn served as the Executive President of the French National Cancer Institute (INCa). During that mandate, she wrote and implemented the national cancer control plan 2014-2019. In the same period, she represented the French government at the governing council of the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) and in 2015 was elected Vice-President of the IARC. From 2008 to 2013, Professor Buzyn chaired the Executive Board of the French Radioprotection and Nuclear Safety Institute (IRSN).

Agnès Buzyn was a Professor of Hematology at the University Pierre-and-Marie-Curie in Paris. She spent a large part of her career as an academic hematologist and clinician at the University Paris Descartes Necker Hospital, where she was in charge, between 1992 and 2011, of the adult hematology intensive care and bone marrow transplants unit. Before that, starting back in 1995, she carried out research at the National Institute of Health and Medical Research (INSERM) where she headed a team on tumor immunology. Professor Buzyn also served as faculty professor at that hospital. She received an M.D. from University Pierre-and-Marie-Curie in Paris and a Ph.D. in immunology from the University Paris Descartes.

Delegation of authority from WHO Director-General

Dr Ibrahima Socé Fall, Assistant Director-General, Emergency Response

Doctor Ibrahima Socé Fall is the Assistant Director-General for Emergencies Response. He was previously the Regional Emergencies Director for WHO in the African Region. Dr Fall has worked as the WHO Representative in Mali before being appointed by the UN Secretary General as Ebola Crisis Manager and Head of UN mission for Ebola Emergency Response in Mali in November 2014. He returned to WHO in March 2015 as Director of the Health Security and Emergencies Cluster in the Regional Office after a successful mission in leading partners’ support to interrupting Ebola virus disease transmission in Mali.. He largely contributed the reform of WHO’s work in emergencies from design to implementation following his contribution to ending Ebola in West Africa.

Dr Fall was WHO Representative in Mali in the midst of the political and humanitarian crisis when WHO needed strong leadership and expertise to deal with complex emergencies. Prior to this role, Dr Fall was Regional Advisor in the WHO Regional Office for Africa in charge of strategic planning for the malaria programme as well as chair of the Roll Back Malaria Partnership’s strategic planning workstream at global level. He also coordinated capacity building for countries to access financing of the Global Fund to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. Dr Fall joined WHO in November 2003 as coordinator of the malaria intercountry support teams in the African Region.

Dr Fall also served as a member of the experts group that led the introduction and implementation of the Roll Back Malaria Partnership, which was launched in 1998 by WHO, UNICEF, UNDP and the World Bank. 

Before joining WHO, Dr Fall has occupied many positions in Senegal including head of epidemics and communicable diseases control, immunization at provincial level, Member of the National Malaria Control Program steering committee, and Lecturer in Public Health at the Dakar University.

Dr Fall was trained as a military physician and has over 25 years’ experience in medical practice and Public Health. He has earned a doctorate in medicine, a Master’s in Public Health from Dakar University (UCAD), and a doctorate in Public Health jointly from Tulane University, Payson Center for International Development in the USA and UCAD, a Master of Science in International Development from Tulane University and a post-graduate diploma in tropical medicine and epidemiology in France at Aix-Marseille University and the Institute of Tropical Medicine of the French Army. Dr Fall is also a fellow of the Faculty of Public Health of the Royal College of Physicians of the United Kingdom.

Delegation of authority from WHO Director-General

Dr Jaouad Mahjour, Assistant Director-General, Emergency Preparedness and International Health Regulations

Dr Jaouad Mahjour most recently served as the Director of WHO's Country Health Emergency Preparedness & International Health Regulations Department.  A national from Morocco, he holds a Doctorate of Medicine from the Faculty of Medicine and Pharmacy in Rabat, Morocco, and a Master degree in Public Health.  

Dr Mahjour is a public health specialist with over 30 years of experience in designing, implementing and evaluating diseases control programmes at national and international levels.  

He joined WHO as the Country Representative to Lebanon in 2005.  In 2007, he took up the position of Director, Communicable Diseases Control in the Eastern Mediterranean Regional Office.  In 2014, he became Director of Programme Management, and was Acting Regional Director for the Eastern Mediterranean Region from October 2017 to May 2018.  Over the last 10 years, Dr Mahjour has been leading the implementation of the International Health Regulations 2005, and overall health security and outbreak prevention and control programmes in the WHO Eastern Mediterranean Region Office.  

Before joining WHO, Dr Mahjour was the Director of Epidemiology and Diseases Control in the Ministry of Health of Morocco.

Dr Chikwe Ihekweazu, Assistant Director General for the Division of Health Emergency Intelligence and Surveillance Systems in the Emergencies Programme 

Dr Chikwe Ihekweazu is an Assistant Director General for the Division of Health Emergency Intelligence and Surveillance Systems in the Emergencies Programme of the World Health Organization (WHO), leading the WHO Hub for Pandemic and Epidemic Intelligence.

Prior to this, Dr Ihekweazu was the first Director General of the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) and led the agency between 2016 and 2021. He led the transformation of the agency to one of the leading national public health agencies in the world, working closely with the Africa Centre for Disease Control. He acted as Interim Director of the West Africa Regional Centre for Surveillance and Disease Control from January to December 2017.

Dr Ihekweazu trained as an infectious disease epidemiologist and has over 25 years’ experience working in senior public health and leadership positions in several National Public Health Institutes, including NCDC, South African National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD), the United Kingdom’s Health Protection Agency, and Germany’s Robert Koch Institute (RKI). Dr Ihekweazu has led several short-term engagements for WHO, mainly in response to major infectious disease outbreaks around the world. He was part of the first WHO COVID-19 international mission on COVID19 to China, in February 2020, and member of the Presidential Task Force for the COVID in Nigeria.

Dr Ihekweazu is a graduate of the College of Medicine, University of Nigeria and has a Masters in Public Health (MPH) from the Heinrich-Heine University, Dusseldorf, Germany. In 2003, he was awarded a Fellowship for the European Programme for Intervention Epidemiology Training (EPIET) and subsequently completed his Public Health specialization United Kingdom's Faculty for Public Health. He is widely published in medical peer review journals mostly on infectious disease outbreaks, surveillance and response systems. 

Delegation of authority from WHO Director-General

Dr Ren Minghui, Assistant Director-General, Universal Health Coverage / Communicable and Noncommunicable Diseases

Dr Ren Minghui serves as Assistant Director-General for Universal Health Coverage/ Communicable and Noncommunicable Diseases at WHO headquarters. In this role, he oversees a complex portfolio of technical programmes covering HIV, viral hepatitis, tuberculosis, malaria, neglected tropical diseases, sexually transmitted infections, noncommunicable diseases, mental health and substance use.

He currently represents WHO on the boards of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria, UNAIDS, and UNITAID. Prior to his appointment as Assistant Director-General, he spent nearly 30 years working in public health, including as Director-General for International Cooperation in the National Health and Family Planning Commission of the People’s Republic of China. In China, his work initially focused on health policy and health reform, and later on international health cooperation and global health governance.

Dr Ren is a medical doctor and holds a Master of Public Health and a PhD in Social Medicine and Health. 

Delegation of authority from WHO Director-General

Dr Mariângela Batista Galvão Simão, Assistant Director-General, Access to Medicines and Health Products

Dr Mariângela Batista Galvão Simão from Brazil was most recently WHO Assistant Director-General for Drug Access, Vaccines and Pharmaceuticals. She was Director of Community Support, Social Justice and Inclusion at UNAIDS. In addition to her work at UNAIDS, she brings more than 30 years of experience working in the Brazilian public health system and has played an active role in enhancing access and decentralizing health services in the country.

Between 2006 and 2010, she served as Director of the National STD/AIDS and Viral Hepatitis Department in the Brazilian Ministry of Health, where she led successful price negotiations with pharmaceutical companies to lower the price of HIV medication. During this time, she also represented the Brazilian Ministry of Health in the negotiations that led to the constitution of UNITAID in 2006, including its governing body, where she served as a board member until 2008. She was trained as a paediatrician in Brazil and holds an MSc degree in public health from University of London, United Kingdom.

Delegation of authority from WHO Director-General

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Mr Stewart Simonson, Assistant Director-General, WHO’s office at the United Nations in New York

Mr Stewart Simonson, from United States of America, was most recently Assistant Director-General for General Management. He brings more than 20 years of experience in corporate governance, risk management and administration that spans across the government, nongovernmental and private sectors. His past roles include serving as Senior Vice President and General Counsel to the Futures Group Global LLC, and most recently, as Legal Advisor for the Crudem Foundation, where he functioned as legal counsel to the foundation and technical advisor to its partner hospital in Haiti.

From 2001 to 2006, he served in the United States Department of Health and Human Services in different capacities, including as Assistant Secretary for Public Health Emergency Preparedness. In this role, he served as the Secretary’s principal advisor on matters related to bioterrorism and other public health emergencies and coordinated the development of the United States government’s position on the revision of the International Health Regulations. He has degrees in law and political science.

Delegation of authority from WHO Director-General

Mr Raul Thomas, Assistant Director-General, Business Operations

A native of Trinidad and Tobago, Mr Thomas holds a Master’s degree in Organizational Management and a Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration.

Employed for 20 years with the World Health Organization, Mr. Thomas has served in the regions of the Americas, Western Pacific, Eastern Mediterranean and Africa, as well as with the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC). Areas of Mr Thomas' expertise are budget, finance, administration, audit, risk management, accountability and compliance, and general management. His experience with WHO has also included managing administrative and security responses to environmental disasters, emergencies and high risk areas of civil unrest and conflict.

Mr Thomas began work with WHO in the Regional Office for the Americas, serving in budget and finance capacities in Washington D.C. for four years and representing that office as Administrative Officer in the PAHO/WHO U.S.-Mexico Border Office in El Paso, Texas, for two years. From 2001 to 2006, he held the position of Budget and Finance Officer at IARC in Lyon, France, and then at the Regional Office for the Western Pacific in Manila, Philippines.

Mr Thomas served as Director of Administration in Manila and then in the Regional Office for Eastern Mediterranean in Cairo, Egypt, from 2006 to 2013. He joined the Regional Office for Africa in Brazzaville, Congo, in December 2013 as Director, General Management.

Prior to his employment with WHO, Mr. Thomas worked for two years for the United Nations Development Programme in New York City.

Dr Naoko Yamamoto, Assistant Director-General, Universal Health Coverage / Healthier Populations

Dr Naoko Yamamoto was most recently WHO's Assistant Director-General for Universal Health Coverage and Health Systems. Dr Yamamoto brings nearly 30 years of experience working on health in Japan and served as Senior Assistant Minister for Global Heath in Japan’s Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare. In this capacity, she was heavily involved in Japan’s global health leadership, including hosting and organizing the International Conference on Universal Health Coverage in 2015 and supporting the compilation of the G7 Ise-Shima Vision for Global Health and Kobe Communique of the G7 Health Ministers’ Meeting in 2016, both of which highlighted the importance of promoting universal health coverage.

Prior to this role, she served in numerous health-related positions within the government of Japan, including as Director General of the Hokkaido Regional Bureau of Health and Welfare, Director of the Health and Medical Division at the Ministry of Defense, and Counsellor to the Permanent Mission of Japan to the United Nations. She holds a medical degree, a PhD in epidemiology and a Masters in Public Health.

Delegation of authority from WHO Director-General

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Dr Princess Nothemba Simelela, Assistant Director-General, Special Advisor to the Director-General, Strategic Priorities

Dr Princess Nothemba (Nono) Simelela, from South Africa, was most recently WHO's Assistant Director-General for Family, Women, Children and Adolescents. She has more than 30 years of experience as an obstetrician, academic, advocate and government official, and has previously served as Special Advisor to the Vice President of the Republic of South Africa on Social Policy, where she supported the multisectoral, government wide response for HIV.

Other previous senior leadership roles held by Dr Simelela include serving as the Chief Executive Officer of the South African National AIDS Council, and as the Director of Technical Knowledge and Support for the International Planned Parenthood Federation.

Dr Simelela has presented and published widely on women’s health and contributed to the development of key guidelines on the prevention of mother-to-child transmission of HIV.

Dr Peter Singer, Special Advisor to the Director-General

Before joining WHO as Special Advisor to the Director General, Dr. Peter Singer from Canada co-founded two innovative, results driven, social impact organizations.  From 2008-2018 Singer was Chief Executive Officer of Grand Challenges Canada.  From 1996-2006 he was Sun Life Financial Chair and Director of the University of Toronto Joint Centre for Bioethics.  He was also Professor of Medicine at University of Toronto and Senior Scientist at University Health Network.

In 2007, Dr. Singer received the Michael Smith Prize as Canada's Health Researcher of the Year in Population Health and Health Services. In 2011, Singer was appointed Officer of the Order of Canada for his contributions to health research and bioethics, and for his dedication to improving the health of people in developing countries. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences (where he was also Foreign Secretary), the U.S. National Academy of Medicine, and The Academy of Sciences for the Developing World (TWAS).

As a researcher, Dr. Singer published over 300 articles, received over $50 million in research grants, and mentored hundreds of students. He studied internal medicine at University of Toronto, medical ethics at University of Chicago, public health at Yale University, and management at Harvard Business School. He served his community as Board Chair of Branksome Hall, an internationally minded school for girls.

Dr Bruce Aylward, Senior Advisor to the Director-General, Organizational Change

Dr Aylward is the Senior Advisor on Organizational Change to the Director-General.  In this capacity he has led the design and implementation of WHO's Transformation Agenda since September 2017. 

In February 2020 Dr Aylward was requested by the Director-General to lead the WHO-China Joint Mission on Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19).

From August 2016 through August 2017, Dr Aylward worked with the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), initially leading the inter-agency process that resulted in the first-ever system-wide activation procedures for major infectious disease emergencies, then establishing and leading OCHA’s Change Management Unit. In that role he took forward a wide-ranging functional review of OCHA to optimize its role, functions, structure and processes for the challenges of the 21st century. 

From December 2015 through July 2016, Dr Aylward led the design and implementation of far-reaching reforms of WHO's work in emergencies, culminating in the launch of a new WHO Health Emergencies Programme.  During this period he also led WHO’s response to a wide range of humanitarian and infectious disease emergencies, including the global response to Zika virus. 

From September 2014 through July 2016 Dr Aylward served as Special Representative of the Director-General for the Ebola Response, directing WHO's 2000+ person response to the West Africa outbreak and providing strategic and technical leadership to the United Nations Emergency Ebola Response (UNMEER). Between the early 1990s and 2014, Dr Aylward served WHO in a variety of leadership positions in the areas of emergencies, disease eradication and vaccines and immunization.