Secretariat
The GFF Secretariat is responsible for managing the daily work of the GFF, including the GFF Multidonor Trust Fund; analytical work and technical assistance to GFF-supported country platforms, programs, and projects; engagement with global donors, partners, and stakeholders; results monitoring and reporting; and knowledge and learning.
The GFF Secretariat team is comprised of diverse experts in areas such as health systems, health financing, civil registration and vital statistics, maternal and child health, nutrition, family planning, private sector engagement, communications, knowledge and learning, and monitoring and evaluation, as well as secondees from GFF partner organizations.
Contact: GFFSecretariat@worldbank.org
Lisa holds a master’s degree in social sciences from Goethe University and a master’s in public health from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. Fluent in German, French, and English, she also possesses a good command of Spanish. Lisa comes to the GFF Secretariat as a secondee from GIZ and is based in Washington, DC.
many health projects and analytical works as well as policy dialogue in countries such as Mali, Chad, Cameroon, Central Africa Republic, and Gabon.
He has over 20 years of experience in public health and health system strengthening, including more than 10 years with the government of Cameroon, before joining the World Bank in 2015.
In her spare time, Leila is actively involved in leading The World Bank Women for Development Staff Alliance and contributes to the Bank’s Mental Health Strategy Implementation Committee. Additionally, she serves as an adjunct professor of international and comparative law at the George Washington University Law School. She has served in legal advisory roles with international NGOs, with the UN, including UN ESCWA’s Centre of Women and Law and Commissioner in the Office of the Prime Minister of Morocco.
Leila holds a doctorate law from the United Kingdom and completed her legal studies in Morocco and in George Washington University Law School and Georgetown University. She is trilingual in English, French, and Arabic. She is currently on developmental assignment with the GFF Secretariat.
Brendan began his career working on HIV prevention and impact mitigation efforts in Swaziland with the U.S. Peace Corps and the National Emergency Response Council on HIV and AIDS. Brendan received his undergraduate degree from St. Lawrence University and his master's degree from University College Dublin.
Brendan is currently based in Kampala, Uganda.
Before joining the GFF, he worked at the Technical Agency for Information on Hospital Care (ATIH) in France where he contributed to the maintenance of the French DRGs system and to the experimentation of bundle payments for surgery. He supported the department of health systems financing and governance at the World Health Organization (WHO) in developing a strategy for setting up a community of practice (CoP) on anti-corruption, transparency and accountability in health, a topic he addressed in his doctoral thesis. With WHO, Hyacinthe also participated in updating the National Health Accounts 1995–2010 of 13 Regional Office for the Americas (AMRO) Caribbean countries and in the production of the expenditure profile of AMRO countries.
As a consultant with Vital Strategies, Hyacinthe contributed to the implementation of the data to policy (D2P) program in Cameroon, leading all the sessions on health economic evaluation.
Prior to that, she held senior technical advisory positions at HQ in newborn health, in Ethiopia as the Child Health lead and South Africa focused on Pediatric and Adolescent HIV Prevention, Care and Treatment. Prior to USAID she spent three years as a working pediatrician in Lesotho with Baylor College of Medicine and worked at HQ level for Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation and UNICEF.
Smita has experience in senior management as well as in several elements of RMNCAH, health system resilience, pharmaceutical systems, community health and multisectoral programming.
Ed is a supply chain expert and trusted advisor to governments and international donors in public health commodity security and medicines access. In addition to 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 — Africa’s Public Health Supply Chain Institution. 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 micromasters credential from MIT.
Before the WB/GFF, Supriya worked for USAID’s Office of Maternal and Child Health and Nutrition in Implementation Research; worked for five years for Population Services International/Greenstar Social Marketing as a General Manager for Program Support and with the Aga Khan Foundation in Pakistan ; and worked with Doctors of the World/USA, as Country Director for FYR Kosovo during and after the war. She started her career in public health as an Epidemiologist with the Chicago Department of Public Health during the early years of the AIDS epidemic. Supriya holds a PhD in population and health/demography from Johns Hopkins University and an MPH in Sociomedical Sciences from Columbia University.
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.