Our team brings together a range of views on the key challenges and opportunities for achieving equitable access to medical products, providing academic, industry, government, non-profit, philanthropic and public policy perspectives.
The development of the MAPGuideⓇ platform and Equitable Access Toolkit was supported by the Wellcome Trust (grant numbers 219632/Z/19/Z, 221648/Z/20/Z and 225262/Z/22/Z).
If you are interested in providing funding or an in-kind contribution to support GHIAA’s continuing equitable access advocacy work and resource development activities, please contact us using the form below.
Global Healthcare Innovation Alliance Accelerator is a 501(c)(3) non-profit recognized by the IRS.
Tel: 919-419-0300
919-906-4818
Fax: 919-419-8833
Attn: Executive Director
GHIAA
PO Box 14713
Research Triangle Park, NC 27709, USA
Tel: 919-419-0300
919-906-4818
Fax: 919-419-8833
Attn: Executive Director
GHIAA
PO Box 14713
Research Triangle Park, NC 27709, USA
© 2024 Global Healthcare Innovation Alliance Accelerator. All Rights Reserved
Julie Barnes-Weise is the founder and Executive Director of GHIAA. She trained as a lawyer, and is a global health policy consultant, business development executive, entrepreneur and Certified Licensing Professional.
Julie formerly had a faculty appointment in the Duke Sanford School of Public Policy and was previously a Director of Business Development at Glaxo Wellcome (now GSK). She has decades of experience negotiating IP licenses & alliance agreements and advising companies and institutions on partnering strategies.
Her educational background includes a Juris Doctor degree from the University of North Carolina, a year at the Notre Dame London Law Centre studying international trade law, a BA from Ohio Wesleyan University, and an executive program at Duke University’s Fuqua Business School in International Marketing Leadership.
Bridie Telford manages the continued development of the MAPGuideⓇ
and other GHIAA resources. She has over a decade of experience working in grants management, contract compliance and third-party risk management. Bridie spent ten years at KPMG working with a variety of clients to help them manage financial rights and obligations in licensing, vendor and alliance agreements. She has also worked as a contracts manager at the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations where she was responsible for negotiating award budgets, reviewing awardee expenditure and monitoring compliance with awardee financial reporting requirements.
Laura Hoemeke, DrPH, MPH, serves as a consultant to GHIAA. Laura has experience in advocacy, communications, and program design and management, including 15 years of residence in Francophone Africa and short-term assignments throughout Africa and Asia. She is currently an independent consultant and an adjunct professor at the University of North Carolina’s Gillings School of Global Public Health. Prior to becoming an independent consultant in 2019, Laura worked for IntraHealth International, USAID, and Africare.
With significant experience in health policy development and analysis, Laura’s passion is working with countries to support country-led health systems strengthening. She has technical expertise in family planning, reproductive health, HIV/AIDS, maternal and child health, and malaria control, as well as good governance, decentralization, health financing, and community health.
Laura has a doctorate in public health in health policy and management from UNC’s Gillings Global School of Public Health and an MPH from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. She completed her undergraduate studies at Northwestern University, where she received a BS in journalism from the Medill School of Journalism. She is fluent in English, French, and Sango.
Britnae Purdy manages GHIAA’s social media presence and provides web and graphics support. Britnae has ten years of experience working in public health and social issues, with seven of those years focusing on nonprofit communications. She has a master of science in public health from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, a master of arts in Global Affairs from the George Mason University (Fairfax, VA). Britnae has additional communications expertise in mental health, responsible and respectful travel, Indigenous cultures, and gender issues, including a bachelor of arts in Gender Studies from the University of Mary Washington and extensive time spent living and studying abroad.
Ana Santos Rutschman is a Professor of Law at Villanova University. Her primary research and teaching interests include intellectual property, health law, innovation policy and regulation in the life sciences. She recently consulted for the World Health Organization on the development of the Ebola and Zika vaccines. Her academic writing has appeared or is forthcoming in the UCLA Law Review, Duke Law and Technology Review, the Yale Law Journal Forum, the Annals of Health Law, the Miami Business Law Review, and the Denver Journal of International Law and Policy, among others. In 2017, she was named a Bio IP Scholar by the American Society of Law, Medicine & Ethics.
Beibei works at Sanofi as a Senior Corporate Counsel, Business Development and Licensing, and is located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Prior to joining Sanofi, Beibei was a corporate associate at Ropes & Gray LLP, with a focus of her practices on intellectual property transactions and life sciences industry. Beibei holds a J.D. from Duke University School of Law. Before Duke, she got both her LLB and LLM in IP Law from China. She was an active member of Creative Commons China Mainland. She also interned with the PCT Division of World Intellectual Property Organization in Geneva Switzerland.
Catherine Hennings is the Director of Commercialization & Corporate Partnerships within the Vaccine Development Global Program at PATH. Ms. Hennings is a senior executive with over 20 years of experience working at the interface of research and commercialization within the life sciences industry. Throughout her career, she has focused on bringing the results of research to the public by fostering partnerships and creating pathways to commercialization. Her experience spans both the not-for-profit and for-profit sectors and includes licensing and business development, structuring and negotiating research and development partnerships, and clinical development program strategy and implementation. Ms. Hennings has Master’s degrees in both science and business.
Dr. Woods is the Co-Director of the Hubert-Yeargan Center for Global Health. He is a professor in the Departments of Medicine and Pathology at Duke; an adjunct professor in Epidemiology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Public Health; an adjunct professor in the Emerging Infections Program at the Duke-National University of Singapore Graduate Medical School. Clinically, he serves as Chief of Infectious Diseases and clinical microbiology, and hospital epidemiologist for the Durham VA Medical Center. Dr. Woods is board-certified in internal medicine, infectious diseases, and medical microbiology.
Katrine Thor Andersen was most recently the Deputy Director of Alliance Management within Global Health at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Her responsibilities included creating, negotiating, and managing high-complexity global health drug discovery and development collaborations involving public, academic, philanthropic, and private organizations. Before joining the Gates Foundation in 2017, Katrine worked in global pharmaceutical R&D organizations for 18 years covering formulation development and regulatory affairs, R&D outsourcing management, and business transformation consulting. She has held senior leadership roles within research business operations and informatics. Katrine holds an MBA, MSc QA/RA, MSc. Pharmacy.
Magali Poinot, JD is Advisor to the Executive Director at Innovative Medicines Initiative. She is Responsible for providing strategic and specialist advice and confidential support to the Executive Director on the overall function and direction of the IMI Programme Office to ensure it delivers on IMI strategic objectives to Members, Associated Partners, advisory and ad hoc bodies and stakeholders etc. The Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI) is Europe’s largest public-private initiative aiming to speed up the development of better and safer medicines for patients.
Mark Crowell, RTTP, is Executive in Residence for the Eshelman Institute for Innovation (EII) at the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy. Mark’s work for EII has included major responsibility for creating the launch and business development strategy for READDI (the Rapidly Emerging Antiviral Drug Development Initiative, a global UNC-affiliated non-profit whose goal is to develop novel Phase 1 approved broad spectrum antiviral therapeutics “ready” for the next pandemic.
Mark is a Senior Innovation Advisor to the World Bank and has worked on Bank missions in Romania, Serbia, Croatia, Slovakia, Sri Lanka, and India. He is also President and Co-Founder of Arkane Innovation, an international advisory services firm focusing on translational programs and innovation advisory services for a global client base. His 34+ years of experience in academic innovation and translational partnerships include chief innovation/technology transfer officer roles at six universities – King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) in Saudi Arabia; University of Virginia; The Scripps Research Institute; University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; NC State University; and Duke University.
Mark was 2005 President of the Association of University Technology Managers (AUTM), a former Chair of BIO’s Technology Transfer Committee (2009-2014), and a former Chair of BIO’s Translational Research Forum (2011-2014). In 2013, Mark received the Bayh-Dole Award from AUTM “in recognition of his lifetime contributions to advancing academic innovations.” In 2011, he was invited by the White House to attend President Barack Obama’s signing ceremony for the America Invents Act.
Paul Fehlner, Ph.D., J.D., is a scientist-lawyer with more than 30 years’ experience in life sciences, particularly focused on intellectual property matters. He is a co-founder and CEO of reVision Therapeutics, Inc., created to reimagine the drug development lifecycle by repurposing products into high-impact, affordable treatments for ophthalmic diseases. He also serves as Senior Vice President and Chief Intellectual Property Counsel for Spyre Therapeutics. Previously he was the Chief Legal Officer and Corporate Secretary for Axcella Therapeutics, a clinical stage company. Dr. Fehlner spent nine years as the Global Head of Intellectual Property for Novartis Pharma in Basel, Switzerland. Prior to Novartis, Dr. Fehlner practiced intellectual property law with several firms, reaching the level of partner and life sciences IP practice group leader at Baker Botts LLP, and served as Biotechnology Patent Counsel for Rhône-Poulenc Rorer. Dr. Fehlner assisted the World Health Organization in design of the COVID-19 Technology Access Pool (C-TAP) in 2020-21, presented at the 2019 Brocher Foundation expert working group on access to cell and gene therapies, and has been named to the IAM Strategy 300 World’s Leading Patent Professionals multiple times. He earned a J.D. from Fordham University School of Law, a Ph.D. in immunology and biochemistry from Rockefeller University (Lois P. Markey Fellow), and a B.S. in chemistry from Haverford College (high honors; Phi Beta Kappa).
Spring Gombe, a Global Health Policy Strategist with over 25 years of experience, brings expertise in policy advocacy for innovation of and access to health technologies, with a focus on the needs of the most vulnerable and neglected populations. Her strategic acumen in designing multi-stakeholder projects and shaping multilateral policies has been pivotal in expanding access to health technologies for underserved communities. Her Board and Advisory roles with Helvetas, the Chanjo Hub at Imperial College, Africa Collective, the Africa-Europe Foundation, and the Novartis Foundation, coupled with her experience with UN agencies and product development partnerships, position her as a valuable asset to GHIAA’s mission of accelerating equitable global access to innovative health solutions.
Thi Hanh Cao is the Director of External Relations at the Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative (DNDi), an organization focused on developing new treatments for neglected diseases that disproportionately affect the world’s poorest communities. In her role, she is responsible for building partnerships and engaging with stakeholders to advance DNDi’s mission.
With a strong background in international relations, finance, and public health, Thi Hanh has worked extensively in the non-profit sector, advocating for equity in various areas. Prior to joining DNDi, she worked for several microfinance organizations, setting up institutions in Madagascar, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Algeria, and Senegal. Thi Hanh holds a Master’s degree from the Political Science Institute in Grenoble, France, and a postgraduate diploma from the University of Paris Dauphine
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