Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Names Executive Team to Lead Global Health Initiatives

SEATTLE -- The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation today announced its global health program team will be led by Dr. Gordon Perkin, who was named Executive Director, and Dr. William Foege, who will become Senior Advisor. In their new roles, Perkin and Foege will work together to develop long-term strategy, evaluate grantmaking priorities, review and recommend proposals, liaison with Foundation-funded projects, and serve as Foundation ambassadors among international and national global health organizations.

"We are absolutely thrilled to have two such respected individuals join the Foundation," said Co-chairman Bill Gates, Sr., father of the Foundation co-founder. "After an extensive international search we are confident these two are the best in their fields, and their collective wisdom will be critical in defining the Foundation's future."

"Bill and Melinda Gates are in the process of establishing themselves as major contributors toward the goal to which I've dedicated my career: improving health of women and children," said Dr. Perkin. "It is an awesome responsibility to help the Foundation set the course for its future giving because of the very profound impact it will have on the health of families in the world's poorest countries."

"Through my work in global health I have been the recipient of foundation grants on many occasions, so I have first-hand knowledge of the role foundations play and the potential good they can do," said Dr. Foege. "I look forward to helping the founders and the staff direct their grants in effective, groundbreaking ways and in reaching out to new partners and new solutions."

Dr. Perkin, most recently served as the global health advisor to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, in addition to his work as president of PATH (Program for Appropriate Technology in Health), an international, non-profit dedicated to improving health, especially of women and children. As a physician with more than 35 years of experience in international health and family planning, Perkin also spent 14 years with the Ford Foundation, where he worked as program officer in a variety of international health and population projects. He served as a long-term consultant to the World Health Organization (WHO) on the design and research strategy of the Special Programme in Human Reproduction and has consulted with several other WHO programs. He served as a member of the Committee on Contraceptive Development of the National Academy of Sciences and as a board member of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, the Alan Guttmacher Institute, and the National Council for International Health. In addition, PATH is the secretariat for the Bill and Melinda Gates Children's Vaccine Program, a multi-year, $100 million effort to speed delivery of new and existing vaccines to children in the neediest parts of the world.

Dr. Foege is an epidemiologist who is widely recognized as a key member of the successful campaign to eradicate smallpox in the 1970s. After serving as a medical missionary in Nigeria, Dr. Foege became Chief of the CDC Smallpox Eradication Program, and was appointed director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control in 1977. In 1984, Foege and several colleagues formed the Task Force for Child Survival, a working group for WHO, UNICEF, the World Bank, the United Nations Development Program, and the Rockefeller Foundation. Its success in accelerating childhood immunization led to an expansion of its mandate in 1991 to include other issues that diminish the quality of life for children. Dr. Foege joined The Carter Center in 1986 as its Executive Director, Fellow for Health Policy and Executive Director of Global 2000. In 1992, he resigned as Executive Director of The Carter Center, but continues in his role as a Fellow and as Executive Director of the Task Force for Child Survival and Development. In January 1997, he joined the faculty of Emory University, where he is Presidential Distinguished Professor of International Health at the Rollins School of Public Health. Two areas of special interest to him are the disease eradication and agricultural projects of Global 2000.