Secretariat

Julie Bazolana provides administrative support to the operations teams at the GFF. Prior to this role, she supported World Bank operations within the Country Management Unit (CMU) in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and across several Washington-based units.

She delivered both operational and analytical support throughout the project cycle, including portfolio monitoring, disbursement tracking, quality assurance, and debt management. Additionally, she played an active role in institutional capacity-building by training government counterparts on World Bank financial management procedures and investment project financing (IPF) procurement processes, including system tracking and compliance.

Richa joins the external relations team, where she will help drive the development and implementation of the GFF’s strategic communication plans and work program. A storyteller at heart, she aims to communicate the progress and results in GFF partner countries through people-focused narratives.

Richa started her World Bank career in 2016 in Nepal, overseeing communications and outreach for the country team. In 2020, she moved to Washington, DC, to take up a role with the Bank’s Engagement & Partnerships Unit, focusing on civil society engagement, knowledge management, and risk monitoring. Prior to joining the Bank, Richa worked with Save the Children and WWF, building a career in strategic and crisis communications, advocacy and media engagement.

She holds a master’s degree in English literature and an MPhil in literature & linguistics.

Away from work, Richa loves spending time with her family and reviewing books. Her anthology of short stories for young adults, Fifteen & Three Quarters, was published in 2011.

Tianying Chen supports the financial reporting of the GFF Trust Fund. With a background in the Bank’s Trust Fund Policy unit spanning five years, she has provided advisory services to operational units on effectively managing trust funds in accordance with World Bank policies and procedures. Prior to joining the GFF, she accumulated five years of experience in business planning and budgeting in the Bank. She is currently on developmental assignment with the GFF Secretariat.

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.

Lisa Diarra is part of the country operations team supporting countries to identify their reproductive, maternal, newborn, child, and adolescent health priorities and to design and implement GFF country contributions. With over 15 years of expertise in health system strengthening and advocacy for sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR), she brings extensive expertise in enhancing healthcare systems and advocating for SRHR, particularly in West and Central Africa. Before joining the GFF, she led the GIZ health project ProSanté in Togo, aimed at reducing maternal and child mortality rates. Her diverse experience includes various roles within GIZ projects and a secondment to PSI Mali.

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.

Jean Claude provides support to design and implement country program activities. Before joining the GFF he worked as task team leader for the World Bank, where he led preparation and implementation of
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.

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.

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 US$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.

Mohammad Tawab Hashemi has more than 17 years of experience in public health. He has worked in a wide range of countries, including Afghanistan, Pakistan and Tajikistan. He led multidonor-financed Afghanistan health projects and technically supported the performance-based financing program in Tajikistan and contracting NGOs in Pakistan.

Before joining the Bank, Tawab 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 sectors.

Brendan Hayes is a senior health specialist who joined the GFF Secretariat in 2017 and is the Lead for Country Operations at the GFF. His work focuses on expanding GFF investments in health systems and service delivery platforms to improve sexual and reproductive health and rights and access to high quality RMNCAH and nutrition interventions. Before joining the GFF, Brendan spent eight years working for MSI Reproductive Choices, where he led on private sector service delivery of family planning and reproductive health services. Prior to that role, he spent four years working in MSI’s affiliate — Banja La Mtsogolo — in Malawi.

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.

Hyacinthe supports GFF’s work at the global and country level on various health financing issues, including equity, resource tracking, and review of reform implementation.

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.

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. 

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 (CMU) and provided operational assistance with the Environment and Natural Resources Global Practice. She has experience in operations monitoring, organizing the World Bank president's and senior management visits, workshops, study tours, seminars and portfolio review meetings.

Smita is a pediatrician and preventive medicine specialist with 20+ years of experience in global health and international development with over a decade of country-based work. Prior to joining the GFF, she worked with USAID for 13 years, most recently as the USAID country director in Lesotho.

Prior to that, she held senior technical advisory positions at USAID headquarters 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 works in the country operations workstream supporting GFF focal points and relevant World Bank teams to identify financing and technical assistance interventions that will strengthen supply chain systems. He is responsible for development and implementation of the GFF's commodities and supply chain strengthening strategy to improve access to health services and nutrition for mothers, children and adolescents. At regional and global level Ed represents GFF in cross-funder fora to align on strategy and governance of supply chain system investments.

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.

Supriya is a senior health specialist who joined the Africa Region of the World Bank in 2017, giving cross support to the GFF over the first six years, then mapped to the GFF as of July 2023. She worked primarily in West and Central Africa in the capacity of a family planning/sexual and reproductive health specialist and demographer. At the GFF, Supriya has been a key member of the reproductive, maternal, newborn, child and adolescent health and nutrition (RMNCAH-N) technical team, advancing a breadth of technical assistance across the portfolio with deep engagement in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Moreover, she leads the GFF’s service delivery redesign portfolio, climate and health work, and high-quality health systems work program.

Before joining the World Bank/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.

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 multidonor, multicountry 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 PhD in demography from the University of Michigan.

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.

Anne-Sophie joined the GFF external relations team in 2023 and supports the GFF’s partnership strategy, including resource mobilization, relations with donors and partnerships with international organizations. She has over 15 years of experience in development and partnerships. She previously worked at the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs as senior advisor to the ambassador for global health. She acted as chief of staff and worked on various issues such as governance and strategy in multilateral funds (Global Fund, Unitaid, UNAIDS, Pandemic Fund), management of the Covid-19 crisis, sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR), gender equality in health, and led the work to draw up France’s new global health strategy. Prior to the French Ministry, she worked 10 years at the City of Paris where she was leading relations with African cities and health cooperation projects.

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 of 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.

Biram Ndiaye is a senior nutrition specialist with over 25 years’ experience in children’s, adolescent, and women’s nutrition, multisectoral nutrition policy and strategy development, public finance for nutrition, strategic management, and implementation of large-scale multisectoral nutrition programs acquired through working in humanitarian and development contexts.

As a senior nutrition specialist within Global Financing Facility (GFF) Secretariat at World Bank, Biram leads the development and oversee the quality of the GFF engagement in nutrition. He provides technical assistance to client countries and World Bank task teams on the integration of nutrition into GFF investment cases, health systems and financing reforms, and associated maternal, child and adolescent health programs and platforms.

Prior to joining GFF Secretariat, Biram worked with UNICEF, as chief of nutrition in Somalia, South Sudan, Tanzania, and Burkina Faso between 2008 and 2023. As the national coordinator of Senegal's National Committee for the Fight Against Malnutrition in the Office of the Prime Minister (2001–2008), Biram supported the formulation of a national multisectoral nutrition policy and managed the Nutrition Enhancement Program. Biram was also country director in Cameroon for the humanitarian organization Action Against Hunger between 1999 and 2001.

Biram holds a PhD in nutrition from Denis Diderot University (Paris, France), a master’s in public health from Royal Tropical Institute (KIT, Amsterdam, Netherlands) and a MSc in the analysis of food policies and practices from Pantheon Sorbonne University (Paris, France). He is a certified strategy planning professional (SPP) from the International Association of Strategy Professionals.

Charlotte Pram provides technical support to GFF’s work on sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) 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 Côte d’Ivoire.

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 and 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 universal health coverage (UHC) and private sector engagement in global health innovations and multistakeholder health programs such as The Global Fund.

For the past few years she has been monitoring World Bank and IDB projects, focusing on their environmental and social risks, grievance redress mechanisms and safeguards adherence. Most recently, she monitored World Bank 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.

Marwa supports the GFF results monitoring agenda by co-managing the GFF Data Portal, which enables strategic data use, digital innovation, and performance tracking across partner countries. She brings over a decade of experience in health systems strengthening, digital health information systems, and equity-focused monitoring, including in fragile and conflict-affected settings (FCV), with a background in clinical medicine and public health.

Previously, Marwa led the analytic work under the Primary Health Care Performance Initiative (PHCPI) at the World Bank and contributed to cross-country assessments and dashboards for primary health care strengthening and policy dialogue. She also worked with Doctors Without Borders (MSF) as an epidemiologist, and at the Johns Hopkins Center for Humanitarian Health on health systems quality and adaptation of monitoring approaches in FCV settings.

Marwa holds a PhD in international health systems and a master’s degree in environmental and population epidemiology, with a focus on risk assessment and public policy. She specializes in leveraging routine data systems to inform equitable health investments.

Camila joined the GFF in February of 2025 to support the private sector engagement strategy in health systems financing and commodities and supply chains; her focus is policy, governance, and regulations. Camila has been a private sector development specialist and project lead with the World Bank since 2011.

Prior to joining the GFF, she led for the Global Indicators Group in the World Bank’s Development Economics Vice Presidency, regional and subnational regulatory assessments to improve private sector business enabling environment in countries. Camila is a lawyer, graduating in the United States with a Master of Laws degree and an MPH in global health policy.

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. 

Diwa Samad is a development economist and healthcare professional with extensive experience in the global health arena. Previously, she worked with GFF as a health economist, leading GFF's work on resource mapping and expenditure tracking (RMET). In that role, she collaborated with various teams to make RMET technical assistance more responsive, focusing on improving the use of data and evidence in country planning, budgeting processes, and strengthening country PFM systems.

Prior to joining the World Bank, Diwa worked as a senior health system specialist at the Global Fund, where she contributed to the Global Fund’s RSSH agenda. In this role, she provided specialized technical support in community health financing approaches, HRH, social contracting with CSOs, and the integration of disease programs within countries' health system structures, particularly in preparation for the Global Fund’s Cycle 7.

Diwa has also served as the deputy health minister and senior health sector reform advisor to the president of Afghanistan. In these roles, she focused on designing national health programs and worked closely with various partners to align resources for program implementation. She also led multisectoral efforts to address social determinants of health.

Diwa holds a master’s degree in economics with specialized training in health economics and health system governance. She is passionate about research and has published in various journals, including The Lancet, BMC Health Services Research, and BMC Palliative Care. She has delivered executive trainings, most recently as a visiting lecturer at the University of Oxford’s Blavatnik School of Government, focusing on social outcome financing approaches.

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. 

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.

In his role as senior operations officer, Matthijs Schuring focuses on GFF Trust Fund and program management aspects, such as annual work program and budget, GFF portfolio analyses, reports to governance bodies, supporting resource mobilization, and interacting with key World Bank units.

Matthijs is a trust fund program management expert with more than 15 years of experience in the World Bank. Before joining the GFF, he served as senior operations officer in the global programs unit of the Urban, Resilience and Land Global Practice (GPURL), where he was the practice’s trust fund coordinator and the program manager of the sustainable urban and regional development (SURGE) umbrella program. In his other previous roles, he worked in the partnerships unit of the Social, Urban, Rural and Resilience Global Practice, and he coordinated and later managed the Water Partnership Program (WPP) in the Water Global Practice.

Before joining the World Bank in 2009, he worked at a Dutch not-for-profit consultancy firm. He holds a master of science degree in physical geography from the University of Amsterdam.

Isidore Sieleunou provides technical support and operational activities for country programs. Isidore has more than 20 years of 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.

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 Health, Nutrition and Population (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.

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 health care Initiative.

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 had worked with the World Bank since 2019 where she supported the design, implementation, and monitoring of a several World Bank/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 primary health care (PHC) service delivery using innovative approaches, including performance-based financing (PBF) and direct facility financing (DFF).

Shufang joins the health financing team providing technical support to countries on health financing with a focus on leveraging evidence to inform investment decisions maximizing lasting and equitable impact. She has more than 20 years of experience in global health and social development.

Prior to joining GFF, Shufang was the technical lead of value for money at the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria. She successfully provided technical coordination and advice to over 70 countries in areas of costing, efficiency assessment at program and system levels, cost-effectiveness analysis of intervention scenarios, payment for results program design, economics evaluation of health programs and system reforms, and multi-criteria resource allocation, among others. Previously, she worked for United Nations and the World Bank.

Shufang has managed and built strong partnerships with leading academic institutions, think tanks, as well as technical and funding partners in global health. She has served on multiple expert panels and advisory committees on sustainable development, health system reform, national strategic planning, global health costing, and resource allocation modeling.

She earned a master’s degree in environmental economics from Duke University and doctorate in health economics from Harvard University.