Search

Dr. Lawrence Kahindi has 20 years of HIV clinical and program management experience in the public and private sectors. Over the past decade, he has worked at various levels in Namibia’s health system scaling-up quality HIV prevention services. His provider, programmatic, and mentorship experience have resulted in significant improvements in access to and quality of Voluntary Medical Male Circumcision (VMMC) services in Namibia.

Jules Nahimana is a health program manager with almost two decades of experience working in the public health sector. He has worked extensively on malaria vector control programs, especially those implementing indoor residual spraying (IRS), in countries including Burkina Faso, Malawi, Mozambique, and Rwanda. In these roles, he has worked with many high-level organizations including the Ministries of Health (MOH) and the U.S. President’s Malaria Initiative (PMI).

Marianne El-Khoury is a seasoned manager of global health programs. At Abt, she has held senior management and technical roles on USAID-funded projects in health systems strengthening and private sector health. She has also led research and evaluation studies in family planning and reproductive health, maternal and child health, and health financing.El-Khoury is currently the Deputy Director of the $209 million Local Health System Sustainability (LHSS) Project, USAID’s flagship project in integrated health systems strengthening. She provides overall leadership, management, and oversight of project activities across more than 20 countries in Asia, Africa, Europe, and Latin America. She also serves as the Global Development representative for Abt’s Institutional Review Board (IRB).

Dr. Diarra Houleymata is a public health technical expert with more than 25 years of experience in program development and management. Dr. Houleymata has designed and implemented technical assistance across all levels of governments and health systems, including for more than 10 USAID-funded programs in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Guinea, Nigeria, Mali, and other countries. Her expertise spans integrated health; maternal, newborn, and child health; reproductive health/family planning; nutrition; and other sectors. As Chief of Party (COP) leading several country-level projects and a member of national task forces, she has delivered innovative technical assistance to Ministries of Health (MOH) to develop, validate, and operationalize health policies and strategies, generating significant changes to national health systems.

Midori de Habich brings 25 years of experience leading and implementing development activities in low- and middle-income countries (LMIC), including two years serving as Minister of Health, and 10 years as a Chief of Party of USAID-funded projects in her native country of Peru.de Habich is the technical director for the Abt-led, USAID-financed Local Health System Sustainability Project (LHSS), which supports government efforts to improve access to quality care for poor, underserved, and socially excluded populations in LMICs. de Habich helps country teams to think creatively about new solutions and approaches. She ensures that the project’s collaborative approach to working with local government partners is applied wherever LHSS works. She also oversees the global technical expert pool, coordinates cross-project learning, and is responsible for the quality assurance of technical approaches and major project deliverables.

Katharine Witgert is a health policy researcher with 20 years of public health and health care policy experience. Witgert manages research and analysis of health system innovations, conducting program evaluations for federal clients, including design, implementation, and reporting of findings. She provides technical assistance to state officials, primarily in the areas of Medicaid reforms and building Medicaid agency partnerships with public health, behavioral health, and social services programs.

Bettina Brunner is an international health professional bringing more than 19 years of professional experience working in HIV and AIDS, family planning and reproductive health. She focuses on private sector engagement, program management, private health sector assessments, public-private partnerships in health, health systems strengthening, technical management and grant writing. She has extensive experience working for the U.S. Agency for International Development and the World Bank and is a specialist in West Africa. She has developed and tested policy tools, particularly tools for engaging the private health sector.

Jane Pepperall is a senior health professional with over 30 years of experience in global health policy development and in supporting national health sector development in the Pacific, Asia, and Africa. She has focused on strategy and investments to strengthen health systems and health financing. Jane worked for the United Kingdom Department for International Development (DFID) (now the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office) for 20 years, including health adviser postings in Uganda, Kenya, Zimbabwe, Lesotho, Pakistan, and the Pacific. More recently she has been providing health strategy, policy, and technical advice to the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT).

Benny Kil is a certified Project Management Professional (PMP) and a certified scrum master (CSM) with over 15 years of project and product management experience—working in business analysis and project delivery in the federal, state, and commercial areas with a focus on technology and digital processes. He has experience in leading multidisciplinary teams to deliver client requirements using agile methodologies (scrum and kanban). He is an experienced leader who can provide IT project and portfolio management oversight through the entire software development lifecycle (SDLC), including client management, business requirements elicitation, IT software development, quality assurance (QA)/quality control (QC), testing, and deployment. Kil has led projects with a variety of federal clients, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), and the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA).

Laurent Nkera Iyikirenga is a biologist, medical entomologist, teacher, and public health professional with 24 years of experience working in vector control. He has contributed to large-scale projects that include increasing national capacities to collect, analyze, and use entomological data to inform malaria prevention and control programs. He has worked with malaria-control authorities in Rwanda, Burundi, Benin, and Sierra Leone.