BIOS — Unite for Sight Global Health Idea Lab Virtual Summit

Jane Aronson

**Jane Aronson** is a pediatrician and a sought-after child health advocate with a lifetime of collaborative experiences in the nonprofit, academic, and private sector. Her medical specialties include HIV/AIDS, adoption medicine, pediatric infectious diseases, and global behavioral health. Adept at building infrastructure for systems change, Jane successfully founded and managed a nonprofit, Worldwide Orphans, for 22 years. Her global team served over 150,000 children in 20 countries and under her leadership, 62 toy libraries were established in Bulgaria, Ethiopia, Haiti, Vietnam, and the United States. She also deployed over 412 service learners called “Orphan Rangers” to mentor trademarked Element of Play programs providing art, camp, crafts, dance, music, sport, theater, writing programs building in-country capacity and sustainability. Today, as Director of Global Behavioral Health Network for Children and Young People, Jane envisions more for kids who live in foster care around the world and she consults with orphanages in order to provide better health care for special needs children.

Jeffrey Blander

**Jeffrey Blander** is a leapfrog innovator, strategic disruptor, and transformation specialist. Jeff is recognized for his exemplary leadership, innovative mindset, communication skills, and proven track record of success. Embedded within his DNA, is the belief in the game-changing power of the public, private, and nonprofit sectors working together. That by doing so, as local and global communities, we can reimagine sustainable financing for public health delivery systems, aggressively deploy new medical technologies, and accelerate equitable access to lifesaving services. Jeff has over 25 years of professional experience and brings a unique perspective in shaping new ideas to tackle our biggest global challenges. Experience includes: Current positions as the Chief Investment Officer, Innovative Financing and Sustainable Investing and the Chief Innovation Officer, Office of the Global AIDS Coordinator and Health Diplomacy, at the U.S. Department of State, supporting the global battle against two pandemics for HIV/AIDS and COVID-19.

Jeff received his Doctorate and Masters Degrees from The Harvard School of Public Health and his Bachelor of Science from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

Elizabeth Bradley

**Elizabeth H. Bradley** has served as President of Vassar College since July 2017. She has led the College to establish new programs and partnerships in India, Rwanda, and China to bring the model of liberal arts higher education to these settings. In addition, Vassar has collaborated with Columbia University to create a 5-year BA-MPH program for Vassar students. She created the first Masters of Health Administration on the African continent with the Clinton Health Access Initiative and pioneered a model of scale up with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Prior to becoming the President of Vassar, she was on the faculty at Yale and was most recently the Brady-Johnson Professor of Grand Strategy and Faculty Director of the Yale Global Health Leadership Institute. Her research has focused on quality of hospital care and large-scale health system strengthening efforts within the US and abroad including in China, India, Ethiopia, Liberia, Ghana, Rwanda, and the United Kingdom. She has published more nearly 320 peer-reviewed papers and has co-authored three books including *The American Healthcare Paradox: Why Spending More Is Getting Us Less.* She was elected to the National Academy of Medicine in 2017 and she is a member of the Council of Foreign Affairs.
Elizabeth graduated *phi beta kappa* from Harvard in economics *magna cum laude*, earned an MBA from the University of Chicago, and a PhD in health economics from Yale University.

Ned Breslin.jpg — Ned Breslin

**Ned Breslin** has led a series of national and global initiatives that have rethought outcomes, made it impossible to leave anyone behind and ultimately changed funding flows from philanthropic investment to sustained public finance. He is a winner of the Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship (2011) and is breaking into new areas once again.

Cal_Bruns.jfif — Cal Bruns

**Cal Bruns**. In his first career, Cal spent 20 years across 5 continents as a highly awarded creative director with a global advertising agency Leo Burnett. Fifteen years ago he pivoted to co-found Africa's first Human-Centered Design firm, Matchboxology. By bringing those communities and individuals closest to challenges into the problem-solving process, they've helped global brands like Levi's® and international donors like USAID and Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to improve our impact in public health, enterprise development, policy implementation, and positive behavior change. While living in South Africa for the past two decades, Cal has become somewhat of a global expert on empathy and human-centered design and Matchboxology has won international accolades for innovation and creative excellence.

Corrado_Concedda.jfif — Corrado Cancedda

**Corrado Cancedda** is the Director of the Botswana University of Pennsylvania Partnership and Strategic Advisor for Academic Partnerships at the Center for Global Health of the Perelman School of Medicine, at the University of Pennsylvania. Prior to his current position, he was an Associate Physician at Brigham and Women's Hospital and Assistant Professor at Harvard Medical School. Corrado has over twelve years of experience in Global Health as a clinician, educator, researcher, implementer, leader, advocate, and scholar. He has lived and worked extensively in Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Nigeria, Lesotho, Haiti, and Peru. His academic interest lies in the establishment, implementation, and evaluation of the impact of large-scale and multi-disciplinary Global Health Initiatives. He is especially interested in health workforce development and health system strengthening, with a particular focus on the notions of institutional capacity strengthening and sustainability

James Clarke

**James Afful Clarke** graduated from the University of Ghana Medical School with an MBChB. After a year of internship at Korle Bu Teaching Hospital in Ghana, he worked as a General Practitioner and did a General Surgery Residency at the University of Saarland Medical Faculty, Germany, and thereafter practiced as a general surgeon in Ghana. In 1996, he obtained a Postgraduate Diploma in Ophthalmology from the West African Postgraduate Medical College and has since been a practicing ophthalmologist. He also holds a Master's in Public Health (MPH), and he also has a Diploma in Community Health and Tropical Medicine from the Institute of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine in Berlin, Germany.
He founded and directs Crystal Eye Clinic in Accra, Ghana, where he provides outreach services in eye care and performs various surgical procedures, including corneal transplantation. He is the only ophthalmologist providing corneal transplantation in Ghana. He is also a member of Unite For Sight's Medical Advisory Board and leads Unite For Sight's programs in Ghana as Ghana Medical Director.

Gary Cohen.jpg — Gary Cohen

**Gary Cohen** is a co-founder and President of Health Care Without Harm (www.noharm.org), the international campaign for environmentally responsible healthcare. HCWH is working to prevent disease and illness in society by assisting the healthcare sector to understand the links between a healthy environment and healthy people and helping hospitals become more environmentally sustainable as well as anchors in their communities for resilience, equity and community wellness. HCWH is focused on mobilizing the health sector globally to address the climate crisis as a medical emergency. HCWH has member organizations and partners in 70 countries. He is President of Practice Greenhealth, a U.S. membership affiliate of HCWH with over 1300 hospital members. He is also the co-founder of Greenhealth Exchange, a sustainable purchasing cooperative in the U.S. healthcare sector.

Andrea Coleman

**Andrea Coleman** is co-founder of both Two Wheels for Life and Riders for Health, Andrea is also a former motorcycle racer. She has dedicated her life to using motorcycles for humanitarian causes and both she and the organizations she has built have won countless awards.

Dean Cycon

**Dean Cycon** founded Dean’s Beans Organic Coffee Company in 1993 after working as an environmental and indigenous rights lawyer. He set out to prove that a for-profit business could create meaningful change through ethical business practices rooted in respect for the earth, the farmer, our co-workers and the consumer.
Dean spent over a decade as an indigenous rights and environmental lawyer before bringing those skills to the coffee industry by co-founding Coffee Kids, the coffee industry’s first non-profit development organization, in 1988. Yet after designing and managing the development arm of Coffee Kids for five years, Dean decided that charity wasn’t enough – until businesses changed their fundamental operating principles there would be no meaningful impact on the lives of the farmers. He founded Dean’s Beans Organic Coffee in 1993 with the mission of using specialty coffee as a vehicle for positive social, economic and ecological change at origin.

Paul_Ellingstad.jfif — Paul Ellingstad

**Paul Ellingstad:** *Managing Partner, PTI Advisors.* Paul advises and accompanies leaders who want to innovate and grow by effectively navigating breakthrough change. He is a veteran of the technology sector and worked at iconic brands Gateway, Compaq, and HP. Paul is now Managing Partner at PTI Advisors, where he works with clients in all three sectors, especially on the growing importance of sustainability and responsible business in society. He is a lifelong learner and a systems thinker. He is passionate about mentoring and believes that mentors normally learn more than they can ever possibly teach. Paul is a fellow in the Aspen Institute’s Business & Society Program, he serves as a director on several boards, he is a youth leadership advocate and a life-long member of the Scouting movement.

Mackinnon Engen

Mackinnon Engen is Executive Director of Watsi. She has a passion for helping people and organizations come together to tackle complex challenges and create measurable, sustainable impact.

As a global health and humanitarian professional, her experience has spanned the UN, international and local NGOs, and academic sectors. For nearly ten years she helped to oversee international program development for a surgical NGO with a dual focus on safety and quality of care for patients and capacity development of medical professionals. At the UN, she worked to ensure more timely humanitarian assistance reached those most in need as well as helped to coordinate the Secretary-General’s response to the Global Food Crisis. Her research efforts have included topics of organizational leadership and effectiveness, economic impact of health interventions, emergency food security, and humanitarian impact of climate change.