Introducing Our New Managing Director of Science & Global Health R&D

About Anna

Before joining Coefficient Giving, Anna was an associate professor of population health at NYU Grossman School of Medicine, where she used mathematical modeling to inform public health decisions. Before that, she founded and directed the HIV and tuberculosis modeling team at the Institute for Disease Modeling, which was later integrated into the Gates Foundation. She has also spent more than a decade advising the Gates Foundation on global health strategy.

Anna’s work has centered on a question we are also interested in answering: How do you turn science funding into health impact at scale? She has worked directly with health ministries across sub-Saharan Africa and with the World Health Organization, and she was part of the modeling consortium that estimated the health consequences of recent cuts to U.S. foreign assistance. We’ve long been impressed by two skills Anna possesses: her use of quantitative rigor to make decisions under deep uncertainty, and her practical feel for how health systems actually adopt new tools. Both matter a great deal for this program, and we were glad to find them paired in the same person.

Anna holds a Ph.D. and B.S. in materials science and engineering from MIT, where her research focused on vaccine discovery for HIV. She is a Hertz Fellow and a Paul & Daisy Soros Fellow for New Americans, and has published more than 100 papers. She also goes back a long way with us: in 2014, she worked on a research project with Holden Karnofsky, when what is now Coefficient Giving was barely a year old and still called the Open Philanthropy Project.

Here is what Anna says on joining Coefficient Giving:

Having been a grantee myself, I understand how much funders can set the agenda and pace of research. Besides Coefficient, very few funders are focused on achieving the greatest possible impact per philanthropic dollar — and fewer still are disciplined about only claiming credit for making impact happen sooner than it otherwise would have.

Coefficient Giving is incredibly special because it focuses on science and R&D investments that “pay off” in more health gains than the same funding would buy in direct action. Our team also plays an important role in safeguarding the tools that GiveWell and others currently rely on for direct action, like buying bednets, medicines for infection, and so on. Many of these tools will “burn out” from drug resistance unless we keep innovating.

Otis Reid, who leads our Global Health & Wellbeing portfolio, adds:

Anna has a rare and exciting background, combining lab science and disease modeling with years advising on global health strategy at the highest levels. She also knows the global health ecosystem extremely well and brings exciting ideas across a wide range of areas well beyond her own specialties. That breadth is especially valuable as we look across global health R&D for the best opportunities, and I’m excited to see where she takes the work!

Looking ahead

Anna takes over our Science & Global Health R&D program during a period of rapid growth. This year we launched the Strep A Vaccine Fund, committing $140 million toward vaccines against a pathogen that causes rheumatic heart disease and has been badly neglected for decades. We also put out an open call for clinical trials of repurposed generic drugs for high-burden neglected diseases, with up to $20 million available. And a hiring round that closed earlier this year roughly doubled the size of the team.

Anna will have wide latitude to lead and shape the program from here, and we expect its strategy to evolve under her direction. 

In her first weeks, Anna and her team are researching which global causes of death and illness receive the least R&D funding relative to their burden, and which R&D opportunities look unusually tractable. For example, the third-leading cause of diarrheal disease deaths still kills more than half as many people as the leading cause, but may have a disproportionately cheaper and more straightforward path to vaccine development. Anna’s team aims to spot and fund such opportunities.

Lastly, thank you to Chris Smith, who stepped in as interim managing director for the past six months. The team is in a strong position today because of his work. Chris now returns to his full-time role on our Partnerships team.

We’re so excited to see what Anna achieves at Coefficient Giving!