Vaccines Alliance Gets New CEO

A key international public-private initiative to increase global vaccination has named a new CEO with public and private sector links.

The GAVI Alliance – the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation – has appointed Seth Berkley as chief executive officer, they announced on 8 March. Berkley is a Harvard-trained physician, epidemiologist, and founder of the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI). Prior to that, he was an officer of the Health Sciences Division at the Rockefeller Foundation, where he managed programmes in developing countries, in particular on vaccines. He is expected to take up his new role in August.

According to the IAVI website, Berkley is also adjunct professor of medicine at Brown University and New York University and an adjunct professor of public health at Columbia University.

He also sits on a number of international steering committees and corporate and not-for-profit boards, including Gilead Sciences, VaxInnate, the New York Academy of Sciences, the Global HIV Vaccine Enterprise, the Acumen Fund, and the Scientific Advisory Panel assisting the UNAIDS High Level Commission on HIV Prevention.

Berkley takes over from Deputy CEO Helen Evans. She has been the interim CEO since the departure of former CEO Julian Lob-Levyt in October.

GAVI has secretariat offices in Geneva and Washington, DC.