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Kelly Saldana has 25 years of experience in international development and health, including infectious diseases and nutrition. She worked in many regions of the world while serving in senior roles at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). She has worked with public, private, and non-profit sectors and communities. She represented USAID on interagency and international advisory committees and expert groups involving health systems strengthening. Beginning in 2021, Saldana also served as the strategic programming lead for the agency’s COVID-19 response and programmed $6 billion from American Rescue Plan funds to help end the COVID-19 pandemic.

Olga Zues, a health-system and financing specialist, has 20 years of experience in international development. She focuses on the design and implementation of comprehensive reform strategies to strengthen health systems and public finance management. Her expertise includes benefits design to move towards universal health coverage, arrangements to support efficiency gains and service delivery improvements, innovative payment mechanisms, sustainability strategies, and institutional development. She has worked with the World Health Organisation (WHO), the World Bank, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, the U.S. Agency for International Development, the UK Department for International Development – now the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office – and numerous ministries of health, finance, justice, and education.

Nassim Díaz Casado is the chief of party for the USAID Local Health System Sustainability Project (LHSS) in the Dominican Republic (DR). He is an expert in project management with extensive experience in health systems, strategic management, and international development programs in the health sector. Diaz has more than 15 years of experience working as a project director for multilateral organizations, including the World Bank and International Development Bank. He has been chief of party of the USAID- Health Finance and Governance (HFG) project in the Dominican Republic and country program manager for the USAID-SHOPS Plus project, in addition to consulting with international organizations and public and private entities on health and social security systems.

Kelly Wagner has over two decades of experience in the provision of culturally competent technical assistance (TA), training, and capacity building. A skilled public health professional trained in epidemiology, she has developed and led more than 10 national TA programs for federal awardees, including community-based organizations, health centers, academic institutions, and state/local health agencies, reaching target audiences with unique and diverse public health needs across the lifespan. Her areas of expertise include minority health, health disparities and equity, behavioral health, HIV/AIDS and infectious diseases, service integration, and women’s health.

Shelby Hickman is a mixed methods research and evaluation professional with 14 years of experience in program evaluation, training and technical assistance, and analysis of criminal and juvenile justice administrative data. Dr. Hickman has expertise in overseeing studies funded by the Departments of Justice and Health and Human Services. She has experience in causal inference methods for both random assignment and quasi-experimental designs. Additionally, she is proficient in qualitative methodologies, such as semi-structured interviews, focus groups, cognitive interviews, and observations. Hickman is also an expert in forced labor and human trafficking.

Lisanne F. Brown has more than 20 years of experience in public health evaluation and research and a background in epidemiologic and program evaluation methods. She has worked on numerous evaluation and applied research studies for local, state and federal agencies. Her areas of expertise include maternal and child health, health care access, integration of primary care and behavioral health, community-centered health homes, social determinants of health, mixed methods evaluation design and implementation, survey design, and evaluation capacity building.

Nduka Iwuchukwu is a Medical Doctor with more than 30 years of experience in clinical care, public health, safety, environment, and innovation management. He has provided technical assistance on vector control interventions to National Malaria  Programs in Nigeria, Malawi, Tanzania, Zambia, and Guatemala. He has developed several innovations in malaria vector control including indoor residual spraying (IRS) supervision and monitoring tools, field operational protocols, and novel designs for implementing community-based IRS operations.

Rodrigue Fiacre Ahoumènou Agossa is a public health entomologist with more than 12 years of experience in control and elimination of infectious diseases, particularly malaria control programs. His expertise includes project management; research; vector control tools development and evaluation; case management; and health system strengthening. He also has worked on development, consolidation, and popularization of norms, policies, and guidelines for the fight against malaria and neglected tropical diseases. He has collaborated with the Global Fund, World Health Organization, Against Malaria Foundation, and Ministry of Health.

Hanna Kovaleva is a program manager with 15 years of experience managing  humanitarian aid and development programs in Ukraine, with a recent focus on the eastern part of the country ravaged by the war with Russia. She has worked with international organizations, including the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) and the United Nations, as well as social enterprises. Kovaleva’s work with vulnerable populations has centred around gender equality, non-discrimination, conflict sensitivity, and social inclusion. She has extensive experience with monitoring, evaluation, research, and learning approaches; program management; and communication strategies in public health, mental health, and community stabilisation.

Kate Stillman is a technical leader with more than 25 years of experience in program design, systems thinking, evidence generation and use, monitoring, evaluation and learning, and project management. She has deep experience in global development with specialties in health systems strengthening, infectious and vector-borne diseases, maternal and child health, and sustainability. She drives Abt’s efforts to strengthen the generation, management, and use of high-quality data to inform decisions and improve program quality.