Advisory Team

Nigel Livesley

Nigel is a Public health professional and infectious disease doctor with over 17 years of experience working in low- and middle-income countries. He has managed large-scale public health programs in over 20 countries in Africa and Asia. He is interested in helping health workers to improve the quality of care and in supporting institutions to set up strong healthcare delivery systems.

Nigel obtained his MPH from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

M. Rashad Massoud

M. Rashad Massoud is a globally recognized leader in improving healthcare and strengthening systems to deliver better outcomes, efficiency, and sustainability. He is currently a visiting Faculty at the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health and was previously the former President of the Harvard T. H.

Chan School of Public Health Alumni Association. Dr Rashad is a Board Member of the Harvard Alumni Association and an Inaugural Member of the Quality & Safety Academy of the International Society for Quality (ISQua). 

Some of his former capacities include his roles as Senior Vice President and Chief Program Officer at Americares, where he oversaw health programs for people affected by poverty or disaster. He was also the Chief Medical and Quality Officer and Senior Vice President of the Quality and Performance Institute at University Research Co., where he was Director of the USAID Applying Science to Strengthen and Improve Systems (ASSIST) Project. 

Dr Rashad is fluent in English, Arabic, and Russian, and has traveled to 92 countries and worked with 104.

Neeraj Kak

Neeraj Kak has over 30 years of experience in the design and management of public and population health programs; health systems strengthening; quality improvement; digital solutions for health; monitoring and evaluation. Currently, he serves on the advisory board of several local organizations in Asia and Africa.

He formerly served as the Chief Innovation Officer/Senior Vice President at University Research Co. and led teams to expand TB, malaria, HIV and other health and social programs in the US and globally. He has been a leader in the use of digital tools such as predictive analytics, and AI to make public health programs more responsive to the needs of beneficiaries. He has experience in mobilizing funds from various donors and has mobilized hundreds of millions of dollars in funding for multiple health programs. 

Dr. Kak completed his Post-Doctoral Fellowship in public health at the Johns Hopkins University and his PhD at the State University of New York, Stony Brook.

Garance Upham

Garance is the Founder and President of AMR Think-Do-Tank Geneva- an initiative for brainstorming and implementation research, which brings expertise related to better antimicrobial resistance approaches. 

She is a a Member of the CA (Admin Committee) of the World Alliance Against Antibiotic Resistance (WAAAR), and served formerly as the Vice-President. She had been been editor-in-chief of AMR Control from 2015 to the 2019-2020 edition, as well as the 2021 edition. 

She is an editor and reporter at Advocate Patients for Patient Safety, and was former Standing Commitee Patient Safety at WHO.

She is both a Member of the Asia-Pacific Working Group on AMR R&D, as well as a of the Global AMR R&D Hub, Berlin.

Simon Hiltebeitel

Simon Hiltebeitel is a Senior Monitoring, Evaluation & Learning Specialist at EnCompass LLC

Simon has over 15 years of experience in global health and international development. 

Simon is skilled in working with data in practical ways to support large scale quality improvement programs. He has supported teams in Africa and Asia in improving healthcare quality. Many of the systems and guidelines for monitoring and evaluation that he set in place are still in use by teams. 

He is a graduate of George Washington University. 

Maina Boucar

Maina Boucar was formerly the Director for West Africa Office for URC/CHS and presently works with LWR/Corus on a Niger-based project as the Chief of Programs. He was part of the Regional Office for Francophone Africa for the USAID – Applying Science to Strengthen and Improve Systems (ASSIST) program. 

He has considerable experience in Program strategy and design and has been responsible for helping health systems in West Africa foster resilience and quality improvement. 

He is a physician by training and holds a Master of Public Health degree.

Yangchen Dolma

Yangchen Dolma is a Senior Nursing Officer at AIIMS New Delhi and Resource faculty for Quality Improvement in Healthcare. She has extensive experience in carrying out and coaching Quality Improvement projects. She received AIMSONIAN of America book prize award for best Community Health Nurse in 2016. Dolma is also the founder of AIANA.

Astou Coly

Astou Coly is an international consultant with over 15 years of experience in global health and research and evaluation. Prior to consulting, she was the Director of Research of Evaluation at University Research Co. LLC where she led the research portfolio of the USAID Applying Science To Strengthen and Improve Systems (ASSIST) project. She has designed and implemented quality improvement studies and contributed to data quality assessments in Sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean. Dr Coly has designed behavioural studies for NIH-funded multi-country clinical trials to prevent HIV transmission. Her areas of research and evaluation include HIV/AIDS, Zika, COVID-19, maternal and child health and health systems strengthening.

Dr Coly holds a Master’s in Public Health and a doctoral degree in epidemiology from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).

Bijay Acharya

Bijay is a practising clinician at the Massachusetts General Hospital and Instructor in medicine at the Harvard Medical School. He recently completed the Harvard Medical School Fellowship in Patient Safety and Quality. His focus is on developing capacity in healthcare institutions in Nepal by identifying and implementing quality improvement initiatives. He has a strong interest in transparency and accountability and works on patient safety in resource-poor settings.

Dr Bijay completed his medical school at BPKIHS, Nepal and graduated from the Harvard School of Public Health with an MPH in Health Management.

Ridhima Sodhi

Ridhima is an econometrician, policy specialist, and data scientist, with more than 11 years of experience, across academic, public, and private sectors.
Passionate about evidence-driven decision-making, she likes to use a combination of econometric and design/visualization elements in her work. Her areas of interest include digital health, migration, social protection, and universal healthcare. Her work in TB & HIV has led her to take a keen interest in the infectious disease spectrum, and associated stigma.
An experienced data science instructor, Ridhima has led multiple capacity trainings for professionals and graduate students. Her academic experience includes graduate teaching at New York University, whilst also being a founding member of the federal-award-winning data science program for policymakers, Coleridge Initiative. Ridhima has a Master's in Public Policy and Management from Carnegie Mellon University, and a Master’s in Economics from the Delhi School of Economics.