Debrework Zewdie

Dr. Debrework Zewdie, former Director (September 1994–November 2014) of the World Bank Global AIDS Program and Deputy Executive Director and COO of the Global Fund, is an Ethiopian national who has led strategy, policy implementation, and management of development programs at country, regional, and global levels for international bodies such as the World Bank and The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. As an immunologist, she conceptualized and managed the groundbreaking US$1 billion Multi-country HIV/AIDS Program that changed the AIDS funding landscape and pioneered the large-scale multi-sectorial response with direct financing to civil society and the private sector. Dr. Zewdie led the articulation of the World Bank's first global strategy on HIV/AIDS and the Global HIV/AIDS Program of Action. As a founding UNAIDS Global Coordinator, she has been instrumental in making the unique cooperative structure of the UNAIDS family a working reality, fostering strong inter-agency partnerships. She is an advocate for women's health and was a founding Vice President and member of the Society for Women and AIDS in Africa (SWAA). She established institutional rigor at the Global Fund and led its wide-ranging internal reform which culminated in the ongoing corporate transformation program. Dr. Zewdie has a Ph.D. in clinical immunology from the University of London, a postdoctoral fellowship at SYVA Company (a diagnostic company in Palo Alto, California), and was a Senior MacArthur Fellow at the Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies. Dr. Zewdie was a Richard L. and Ronay A. Menschel Senior Leadership Fellow at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in 2015. During her Fellowship at the Harvard Chan School, she also participated as a speaker on Voices in Leadership, an original webcast series, in a discussion titled, "Leadership in Getting AIDS on the World Bank Agenda", moderated by Dr. Barry Bloom.