Dr Ryan Abraham is a medical physician with 6-year history as a practising physician in Trinidad and Tobago. He worked in Accident and Emergency on the frontlines of the COVID-19 pandemic, treating scores of patients. During his tenure as a doctor, he saw numerous patients with various diseases and realized the systemic factors (social, economic, and political determinants of health) that influenced whether patients were susceptible to certain conditions. This led him to pursue a post-graduate diploma in International Relations (Pg Dip IR) and a Master’s of Public Health (MPH) at the University of the West Indies, Trinidad campus. He is currently doing a Master’s in International and Development Studies with a specialization in Global Health at the Graduate Institute of Geneva.

Alison Cox is Policy and Advocacy Director at the Non-Communicable Disease Alliance where she is responsible for strategy development and delivery across the organization’s policy impact goals of NCD Prevention, Care, and Financing. Alison has previously led policy and advocacy programs for other global public health alliances:  the Framework Convention Alliance (now the Global Alliance for Tobacco Control) and the Global Climate and Health Alliance. Alison also spent eight years as Cancer Research UK’s Prevention Director, where she delivered campaigns to put tobacco into plain standardized packaging, and restrict junk food advertising to children, as well as built their Cancer Policy Research Centre.

Sophie Bussmann-Kemdjo is the Regional Director for Africa and Europe at City Cancer Challenge Foundation (C/Can). She leads the Foundation’s work in Africa and Europe, onboarding and supporting cities in the C/Can network as they work to improve access to quality cancer care and treatment.

Passionate about contributing to – and realizing – Africa’s transformation agenda, Sophie started her career in the private sector at Lenz & Staehelin, Switzerland’s largest business law firm, and EY, a big four consulting in Geneva, and later transitioned to the non-for-profit at the World Economic Forum (WEF), where she was responsible for key relationships and strategic initiatives with African governments and business leaders.

Sophie holds a Masters in Political Science as well as an MBA degree, and speaks French, English, and Spanish.

Temitayo (Tayo) Erogbogbo is Director, Multilateral Organization Engagement at MSD and leads global advocacy for the MSD for Mothers initiative. Tayo has over two decades of combined private sector and international development experience, 17 years of which is within the pharmaceutical industry. He has occupied multiple roles that include commercial responsibilities in sales and marketing, with others including government affairs, patient engagement and communications covering national, regional, and global responsibilities.

In his current dual role, he’s responsible for advancing health equity through programmatic and advocacy collaborations that deliver policies and practice changes to improve outcomes by strengthening health systems’ capacity and resilience. Tayo is specifically responsible for MSD’s strategic multilateral organizations engagement within MSD’s Social Business Innovation team to advance enterprise-wide health equity and ESG goals, while also leading global advocacy for MSD for Mothers, MSD’s $650m philanthropic initiative to help end preventable maternal deaths.

He was Executive Director for the Wellbeing Foundation, Africa between 2012 and 2014 and led the Adolescent and Youth Engagement at Partnership for Maternal Newborn and Child Health (PMNCH) between an international non-governmental organization hosted by the World Health Organization.

Tayo earned a BSc in Management Sciences from Loughborough University and MSc Information Technology for Management from Coventry University.

Paniz Jamali is a second year master’s student specializing in Global Health at the Geneva Graduate Institute. She also serves as the president of the Global Health Initiative, a platform where different stakeholders (academia, young professionals, IOs, NGOs) come together and collaborate on innovative projects related to health. Inspired by her own personal family experience with cancer, she is deeply passionate about advancing cancer care and prevention and is a staunch advocate for advancing women’s health. She is also currently interning at Telix Pharmaceuticals, a biopharmaceutical company focused on theranostic products aiming to address significant unmet need in oncology and rare diseases.

See speaker bio here