John G. Meara, MD, DMD, MBA, is Director of the Program in Global Surgery and Social Change at Harvard Medical School and Chief of the Department of Plastic & Oral Surgery at Boston Children’s Hospital. Since 2008, he has Co-Directed the Paul Farmer Global Surgery Fellowship program in collaboration with Partners In Health.

Andy Leather, MBBS, FRCS, MS is the Director of the King’s Centre for Global Health within King’s College London and King’s Health Partners, one of the UK’s 5 Academic Health Science Centres.

Lars Hagander, MD, PhD, MPH, is a consultant surgeon in paediatric surgery and urology with experience in clinical and academic international service.

Dr. Fizan Abdullah is Assistant Professor of Surgery at Johns Hopkins University, School of Medicine and Associate Professor of International Health at the Bloomberg School of Public Health. He is also the Assistant Program Director for the Residency in General Surgery and the Program Director for the Fellowship in Pediatric Surgery.

Prior to joining the University of California, San Diego, Dr. Stephen Bickler was the Consultant Pediatric Surgeon at the Royal Victoria Hospital in Banjul, The Gambia. He has served as a consultant for the World Health Organization on surgery in low-income countries and has published extensively on strategies for improving the surgical care in settings of limited resources.

Anna Dare, MB ChB, PhD, is a University of Toronto surgical trainee with affiliations to the King’s Centre for Global Health (KCGH) in London, UK. She holds a PhD in Surgery from the University of Cambridge, UK. Anna has a longstanding interest in health systems development and health innovation, particularly in underserved and indigenous communities and in low- and middle-income countries.

Dr. Justine Davies’ objective is to improve health at individual and global levels, an objective she is able to persue in her current position as Editor in Chief of The Lancet Diabetes and Endocrinology. She has been instrumental in overseeing the Lancet Commission on Global Surgery.

Sarah Greenberg, MD, is a Paul Farmer Global Surgery Research Fellow in the Program in Global Surgery and Social Change at Harvard Medical School and a General Surgery Resident at the Medical College of Wisconsin. During the Commission process, she coordinated all global efforts. Her global surgery work has been focused in Haiti and Peru.

Mr. Ramiro Guerrero has held the position of founding Director of PROESA – Research Center for Social Protection and Health Economics in Colombia. Prior to PROESA, he served as Deputy Minister of Social Protection in Colombia, overseeing health system financing, information systems and planning. He joined the Harvard Initiative for Global Health in 2007 as a research fellow working on health metrics and health system performance evaluation.

Dr. James Heiby has focused on adapting modern quality improvement approaches from industrialized countries for use in the health systems of low- and middle-income countries since 1985. The USAID ASSIST Project, one in a series of five-year projects, is already mobilized in more than 20 countries. He is also a Senior Associate in the Department of International Health at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and is a reviewer for several journals.

Dr. Jaymie Henry defines the strategic direction for the G4 Alliance, develops and oversees relations with stakeholders and partners, and organizes political and advocacy events in support of surgical care at various global venues. She was previously the Executive Director of the International Collaboration for Essential Surgery (ICES) and is the Executive Producer, Director, and writer of the Global Surgery advocacy film “The Right to Heal”.

Professor Pankaj Jani joined Kenyatta National Hospital (KNH) as a specialist Surgeon in 1984 and later joined University of Nairobi, Department of Surgery, as a lecturer in 1985. He served as an Associate Professor from 2001 and has been appointed as a full Professor in April 2014. Professor Jani trained at the Royal Infirmary Glasgow in GI/HPB surgery and endoscopies and is a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons Glasgow (1988) and ASEA/COSECSA (1985).

Professor Jorge Jimenez, MD, MPH has focused his efforts in health policy, cancer and chronic diseases, maternal and child health, and vaccines from technical and political points of view. Still very active in research, he is presently part of three important projects with the National Research Commission regarding vaccines and field testing, Systematic Reviews of Health Policy Evaluations (WHO/DFID) and Biomedical Research Consortium on Health Evaluation.

Dr. Edward Kelley is Director for the Department of Service Delivery and Safety at the World Health Organization. In this role, he leads WHO’s efforts at strengthening the safety, quality, integration and people-centeredness of health services globally.

Dr. Emmanuel Makasa, MBChB, MMed, MPH has spent the past two and half years in his current diplomatic position and he is the immediate past technical coordinator of the African group of health Attaches. Prior to joining Permanent Mission of the Republic of Zambia to the UN, he worked in a multitude of capacities, ranging from Deputy Director for Emergency Health Services in the Zambian Ministry of Health to Board Member of Doctors Outreach Care International.

Dr. Mbololwa Mbikusita-Lewanika is a social development expert with a health science and education background. She has over 30 years national and international experience in these areas, with much of her time spent at King’s College London. Dr. Mbololwa spends a great deal of time on issues of social justice, especially pertaining to women, young people and prisoners.

Sir David Nicholson provides advice and guidance to both governments and individual organizations interested in improving health and healthcare, enabling progress towards universal healthcare coverage. Over the last 12 months he has worked in China, Brazil, the USA, Europe and the Middle East, independently, and in association with the World Health Organization, and World Bank.

Dr. Rachel Nugent is Clinical Associate Professor in the Department of Global Health at the University of Washington and Principal Investigator for the Disease Control Priorities Network (DCP3). She was formerly Deputy Director of Global Health at the Center for Global Development, Director of Health and Economics at the Population Reference Bureau, and Program Director of Health and Economics Programs at the Fogarty International Center of NIH.

Dr. Bisola Onajin-Obembe is a Consultant Anaesthesiologist and Assistant Professor of Anaesthesia at the University of Port Harcourt, Rivers State, Nigeria. Dr. Onajin-Obembe also practices and teaches pediatric anesthesia, as well as anesthesia for maxillofacial and ear, nose and throat surgeries, and she has publications in these areas.

Sir Eldryd Parry trained as a specialist in internal medicine and was seconded from the Royal Postgraduate Medical School, Hammersmith Hospital, to University College Hospital, Ibadan, Nigeria in 1960. Subsequently, until 1985, he held academic posts in Addis Ababa, Zaria, Ilorin (Nigeria), where he was Foundation Dean of a new community-oriented medical school, and Kumasi (Ghana) as Dean and Professor of Medicine.

Dr. Ray Price is a trained General and Trauma Surgeon, Intermountain Surgical Specialist with Intermountain Healthcare; Director of Graduate Surgical Education at Intermountain Medical Center, Salt Lake City, Utah; Associate Director of the Center for Global Surgery, University of Utah; Professor, Health Sciences University of Mongolia; and Medical Director, Dr. W.C. Swanson Family Foundation, Ogden, Utah.

Dr. Nakul Raykar joined the Program in Global Surgery and Social Change at Harvard Medical School in 2013 as a global surgery research fellow. He has a very strong interest in health policy, both domestic and global. As a member of the core writing team for the Commission report, he has been able to combine his passion for health policy and research while playing an instrumental role in the Healthcare Delivery and Management Working Group.

Nobhojit Roy, MBBS, MS, MPH, is a visiting Professor for Public Health at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (Deemed University) in Mumbai, India. Dr. Roy trained as a Trauma Surgeon in Mumbai, India and the UK and holds an MPH from John Hopkins University. He served as a rural surgeon in rural and tribal areas of India.

Dr. Tapash Roy has been working with BRAC in Bangladesh for the past 12 years. He currently serves as Program Head for Health, Nutrition and Population. He is an adjunct faculty member in James Peter Grant School of Public Health at BRAC University, Bangladesh.

Dr. Enrique Ruelas’ work has focused on healthcare quality improvement in Mexico since the early 1980’s. During his time with the Mexican government as Vice Minister of Health between 2000 and 2006, he was instrumental in the design and conduction of the National Strategy for Quality in Health Care. He started moving more into the international arena at the end of the ‘80s, and became President of the International Society for Quality in Health Care (ISQua) in the mid ‘90s.

Professor Martin Smith joined Wits originally as a student in 1977, graduated with a MBBCh in 1982 and completed his internship at the Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital. From 1990-2001, he served as a consultant at the Helen Joseph Hospital, after which he returned to the newly named Chris Hani Baragwanath Academic Hospital as Head of General Surgery. He was appointed Academic head of Surgery at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg in 2013.

Dr. John L. Tarpley attended undergraduate and medical school at Vanderbilt and trained in surgery at the Johns Hopkins Hospital. He spent two years at the NCI, Surgery Branch during residency. Dr. Tarpley is a “general general” surgeon whose first career (1978-1993) was in a tertiary care mission hospital in Ogbomoso, Nigeria, where he directed the training for general practice house officers and helped establish a nursing school.

Dr. Ted Trimble has been with NCI since 1991. From 1991 to 2011, he was head of Gynecologic Cancer Therapeutics and Quality of Cancer Care Therapeutics, Clinical Investigation Branch, Cancer Therapy Evaluation Program, Division of Cancer Treatment and Diagnosis, during which time he was a scientific liaison with the Gynecologic Oncology Group and the American College of Surgeons Oncology Group.

Dr. Melanie Walker joined the World Bank Group after serving as the Deputy Director for Special Initiatives with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and previously in various capacities at the WHO related to macroeconomics and health. Prior to this time she was a health care practitioner and founder of a community program in the developing world.

Dr. Buyanjargal Yadamsuren has held her current position since 2013. Prior to her current role, she served in various capacities within the Mongolian Ministry of Health. Prior to joining the MOH in 2005, she worked with the WHO, UNICEF, Marie Stopes International Clinic, and a Maternal Child Health research center in Ulaanbaatar.

Professor Herve Yangni-Angate is a trained Thoracic and Cardio-Vascular Surgeon, and has worked in various teaching, consultant, and director capacities at the Institute of Cardiology, Abidjan, Bouake University Medical School, and the University College of Korhogo. Professor Yangni-Angate is also the founding father of the World Society for Pediatric and Congenital Heart Surgery, the African Association of Thoracic and Cardio-Vascular Surgeons, and the African Society of Morphology.