Speakers

Ellen Smith is Palladium’s Utkrisht Director. She has 15 years of experience across many countries in program management, health financing, equity, data analytics, metrics, and modeling for strategic planning and policy audiences. She has worked on a wide range of health topics such as reproductive health, HIV/AIDS, infectious zoonotic diseases, as well as on environmental and educational topics. Ellen holds an MA in Demography from the University of California Berkeley and a BA in Anthropology, Economics, and International Studies from Washington University in St. Louis. She lives in New York City.

Mara is an Economist and Decision Analyst and holds degrees from Bocconi University in Milan and the London School of Economics and Political Science. Her research is motivated by a desire to improve decision making in government, with a special interest and extensive expertise in the field of healthcare. Mara is one of the lead developers of the STAR toolkit, a socio-technical approach sponsored by the Health Foundation to improve resource allocation in healthcare organisations.

Mara has worked extensively with managers of the English and the Italian National Health Systems. She has also consulted for the Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care in Ontario (Canada), the Home Office, the Ministry of Defence and the (then) Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs in England, NATO and the Global Fund to fight Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria.

Dr. Mary-Ann Etiebet has two decades of experience improving healthcare outcomes for vulnerable populations and transforming healthcare delivery at the frontlines. She is the Lead & Executive Director of Merck for Mothers, Merck’s $500M global health initiative to help create a world where no woman has to die while giving life. Between 2011 and 2019, Merck for Mothers maternal health programs and partnerships have resulted in healthy pregnancies and safe deliveries for over 10M women in 48 countries.

Mary-Ann draws on extensive experience in the private, public and not-for-profit sectors for this role. She joins Merck for Mothers from Premier Inc, where she was a Principal Consultant in the Population Health Management team. Previously, she served as Director of Ambulatory Care Strategies for New York City Health and Hospital. Her work in global health includes serving as the Senior Technical Advisor of the Institute of Human Virology-Nigeria, a PEPFAR implementing partner, while she was Assistant Professor, Division of Infectious Disease at the University of Maryland School of Medicine.

Mary-Ann earned her MD and MBA from Yale University. She completed her residency in Internal Medicine at New York-Presbyterian Weill Cornell and fellowship in Infectious Diseases Hospital System at New York-Presbyterian Columbia University Medical Center, becoming Board Certified in both Internal Medicine and Infectious Diseases. She serves as a member of the Center for Global Development (CGD) Board of Directors; the UCSF Institute Health Sciences Global Health Group Advisory Board; the Partnership for Maternal, Newborn & Child Health Board; the Investors Group of the World Bank’s Global Financing Facility; the Maternal Morbidity and Mortality Committee of the National Quality Forum; and the Johns Hopkins Leadership Fellows program.

Dr. Pankhuri Rai’s is a medical professional and public health professional with more than 9 yrs experience of working with public and private sector health systems strengthening. Her vision is to address community-level health and social problems through her intervention programs. She is also an active member, volunteer and honorary office holder with many National and International medical students and professional bodies such as IMA, IDA.
She is currently working with HLFPPT in the Social Franchise Division as the Project Lead for Utkrisht Impact Bond which is a development impact bond designed to improve the quality of maternity care offered by private providers in Rajasthan, India.
Previously she has worked on the Quality Improvement Initiative of the Largest Social Franchise Network of India called “Merrygold Health Network” in HLFPPT.

Pompy is the India Director of MSD for Mothers. She is a strong advocate for using market-based approaches to tackle social challenges. She has two decades of experience working in healthcare and financial sector solutions in India. While with ICICI Lombard for almost a decade, she led the development of health and micro insurance products to increase access to affordable healthcare and insurance products. She has been providing technical assistance through GIZ and the World Bank on several projects to the Microfinance Institutions, Government, Unique Identification Authority of India (Aadhaar). More recently, she offered advisory services for the development of The National Health Insurance (RSBY) for the Government of India. She also anchored development of Aadhaar-enabled solutions for the healthcare and insurance. Her experience ranges across the public, private and the development sectors.

Pompy is a health and a management graduate. She went to the London School of Economics on Chevening Scholarship for a course on Leadership and Globalization. Pompy has also served as a faculty for the Wharton Executive Education program. She has won the NABARD AWARD for Innovation from the Union Finance Minister of India in 2012. Since 2017 Pompy has been engaged with FOGSI, India for conceptualization, roll out and National Scale of the Manyata program.

So directs the health philanthropy portfolio at Mathematica. She has dedicated her more than two-decade career to reducing health disparities and promoting health equity for mothers, children, and their families regardless of race, gender, religion, socioeconomic status, geography, and other visible and invisible characteristics. She brings expertise in measurement, evaluation, and learning for maternal health quality of care in the United States and India.

So holds an AB in Molecular and Cellular Biology from Harvard College, Harvard University and a SM in Health Policy and Management from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Harvard University.

Amy Lin leads USAID’s Center for Innovation and Impact (CII), which applies market-based approaches, innovation, and digital health to global health challenges. Previously, Amy was based in Mumbai with Monitor Inclusive Markets, where she developed social enterprise models. Prior to this role, she served as the HIV/AIDS Program Director for the Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI) in Liberia. Before CHAI, Amy was at the World Bank’s Development Marketplace, which focused on funding new approaches to serving the poor. Amy also worked with TechnoServe in Peru, creating growth strategies for microbusinesses. Earlier, she was with the Boston Consulting Group (BCG), advising multinational companies in the pharmaceutical, financial services, and consumer goods industries.

Amy holds an MBA from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, an MA in International Relations from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), and a BA with Distinction in Political Science from Yale University.