IAVI appoints three notable global health and business leaders to its board of directors

NEW YORK — FEBRUARY 2, 2022 — Today IAVI announced that Wafaa El-Sadr, Alexis Pinto, and Susan Silbermann have been appointed to its board of directors.

“IAVI is honored to welcome these esteemed leaders to our board,” said Mark Feinberg, M.D., Ph.D., president and CEO of IAVI. “Their collective experience in global health research, innovation, and cross-sector collaboration align with our mission, vision, and pursuit of better ways to address public health threats that disproportionately affect people living in poverty.”

WAFAA EL-SADR

University Professor of Epidemiology and Medicine, Director of ICAP at Columbia University, Director of Columbia World Projects, and the Mathilde Krim-amfAR Professor of Global Health at the Columbia Mailman School of Public Health

Wafaa El-Sadr, M.D., MPH, M.P.A., is the founder and director of ICAP and an international expert in infectious diseases and public health. Her work through ICAP in more than 30 countries integrates research, education, training and program design, implementation, scale-up, and evaluation. She aims to address major public health challenges through partnership, innovation, and collaboration. As the director of Columbia World Projects, she oversees a university-wide initiative that aims at taking scholarly work into action. She is also a principal investigator of the National Institutes of Health-funded HIV Prevention Trials Network.

El-Sadr received her medical degree from Cairo University in Egypt, a master’s degree in public health (epidemiology) from Columbia Mailman School of Public Health, and a master’s degree in public administration from the Harvard University Kennedy School of Government. She was named a MacArthur fellow in 2008, is a member of the National Academy of Medicine in 2009, a fellow of the African Academy of Sciences in 2018, and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations in 2021.

ALEXIS M. PINTO

Chief Legal Officer and Corporate Secretary, Zentalis Pharmaceuticals, Inc.

Alexis M. Pinto, J.D., is chief legal officer and corporate secretary at Zentalis Pharmaceuticals, where she is responsible for all legal and corporate governance matters. She is an accomplished legal and strategic executive with over two decades of deep experience in the health care industry.

Prior to joining Zentalis, Pinto served as corporate vice president and corporate secretary at Celgene Corporation, with broad responsibilities including business development, corporate governance and securities, executive compensation, and early research and development, and where she was lead counsel on critical transactions including the US$74B acquisition of Celgene by Bristol Myers Squibb. Prior to Celgene, Pinto was managing counsel at Merck & Co., where she led intricate transactions including the $14.2B sale of Merck Consumer Care to Bayer and the establishment of the India-based MSD/Wellcome Trust Hilleman Laboratories. Prior to joining Merck, Pinto was an associate at the law firm Paul, Hastings, Janofsky & Walker.

Pinto earned her J.D. from the University of Virginia School of Law and her B.A., magna cum laude, from the University of Virginia. She completed the corporate governance program at Columbia Business School and the leadership in corporate counsel program at Harvard Law School. Pinto is a member of the New York and the New Jersey state bars.

SUSAN SILBERMANN

Independent Board Director; former Global President, Pfizer Emerging Markets; former Global President, Pfizer Vaccines

Susan Silbermann, MBA, M.A., is a former senior executive at Pfizer, starting as a summer intern and retiring after more than 30 years, having served the company in leadership on three continents across multiple businesses. In her final post she served as global president of Emerging Markets, responsible for 10,000 colleagues across over 100 countries, inclusive of Pfizer’s Vaccines business. She created and drove Pfizer’s internal COVID-19 task force, ensuring global colleague safety and business continuity. Prior to this Silbermann was the first global president of Pfizer Vaccines, expanding the portfolio from one product to many, from internally developed to externally sourced. She held positions in marketing, general management, business, and commercial development in the U.S. and abroad, and partnered with research and development, manufacturing, and government/public affairs. She also led numerous initiatives in diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Silbermann brings multiple governance experiences to IAVI, having served on the boards of GAVI; Catalyst, Inc.; the Johns Hopkins University Carey School of Business; and Harvard Kennedy School’s Women’s Leadership Board. Further, she was the vice chair of the President’s Advisory Council on Doing Business in Africa.

Currently, Silbermann is a board director at HilleVax, Inc. and at LianBio. She is a board member of Harvard’s Defeating Malaria: from Gene to Globe Initiative, as well as Meet the Writers, a nonprofit bringing together authors and students in low-income NYC public schools.

Silbermann holds a B.S. in biology and French from Tufts University and a joint MBA/M.A. in business administration and French political and social studies from NYU’s Stern School of Business and the Institute of French Studies at NYU’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.

View the full IAVI Board of Directors.