Senior Management Team
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES FOR HEALTH SYSTEMS 20/20 SENIOR MANAGEMENT TEAM
Ann Lion Coleman - Project Director
Catherine Connor - Deputy Director of Operations
Elias Epstein - Deputy for Finance & Administration
Derick Brinkerhoff - IR Leader Governance
Fred Rosensweig - IR
Hong Wang - IR Leader Financing
Ann Lion joins Health Systems 20/20 with over 30 years of experience as a leader and manager of global, regional, and country-level health programs both internationally and domestically. Most recently she served as Technical Support Coordinator for the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria at the Office of the Global AIDS Coordinator (OGAC) and as the United States Government (USG) delegate to the Global Fund Board of Directors. At OGAC, Ms. Lion managed a $30 million portfolio of USG Global Fund technical support contracts and grants with UNAIDS, Roll Back Malaria, Stop TB, Green Light Committee, and Management Sciences for Health. Previously Ms. Lion worked as Senior Health Advisor for USAID's Office of Population and Reproductive Health. She managed the Agency's bureau-wide Capacity Project; oversaw the $250 million portfolio focusing on the strengthening and integration of health systems at a global level; and directed project staffing, strategic planning, and linkages with other global efforts including those at WHO and the World Bank. She also managed USAID's YouthNet project, guiding global activities to improve the reproductive health and HIV/AIDS prevention behaviors of youth. Earlier, as Senior Management Advisor at the Program for Appropriate Technology in Health (PATH), Ms. Lion spent seven years as the Regional Director for Latin America and the Caribbean where she led efforts to improve performance of health care providers in a number of LAC countries. Ms. Lion holds a DrPH (ABD) from the George Washington University School of Public Health and an MSPH from the University of Illinois Medical School.
ann_lion@abtassoc.com
Catherine Connor has 25 years of experience in domestic and international health care, including service delivery, family planning, health-systems financing, health-policy analysis, health insurance, and managed care. As deputy director of operations for the Health Systems 20/20 project, Ms. Connor coordinates all contractual reporting to USAID and works with the country teams to develop technical approaches, workplans, and budgets, and implement activities—such as introducing a regional NHA network involving the World Bank, WHO-EMRO, and eight countries. She also leads selected assignments, such as a health-system assessment in Angola, a case study of the NGO-contracting program to combat HIV/AIDS in Brazil, and a rapid assessment of opportunities in Mozambique to partner with the private sector to prevent and treat HIV/AIDS. Previously, Ms. Connor was a country manager at PROFIT, a USAID-funded project that tested approaches to expand the commercial sector’s involvement in family planning in developing countries. Her accomplishments include a feasibility study for a self-sustaining rural HMO for a union of coffee cooperatives in El Salvador and negotiating a $2.5 million loan to an American pharmaceutical manufacturer to develop contraceptive technologies. Ms. Connor has an MBA from Boston University and is fluent in English and Portuguese and knows conversational Spanish.
catherine_connor@abtassoc.com
Elias Epstein is a senior finance and contracts manager with 12 years experience in international development projects. He most recently served as country programs and task order finance manager for John Snow Inc’s USAID Deliver Project, where he was responsible for the financial and operational performance of a portfolio of field offices and the financial and administrative management of an $85M task order working on avian influenza commodities logistics globally. Previously, he was employed by The Nature Conservancy serving as the finance and grants manager for the Parks in Peril program, a $30M cooperative agreement targeting protected areas across the LAC region. Prior to TNC, he was with the World Wildlife Fund – US serving in various positions ranging from finance and administration manager in Peru to program coordinator for the LAC region based in Washington. He has carried out TDY assignments in most of Latin America as well as in Zambia, Mozambique, South Africa, Liberia, and Indonesia. Mr. Epstein holds a master’s in business administration from Loyola University in Maryland and is fluent in Spanish.
elias_epstein@abtassoc.com
Dr. Derick Brinkerhoff has experience in policy analysis, policy implementation and evaluation, decentralization, governance, and management in public-sector agencies and nonprofits. During his 30-year career, his work has focused on policy and management issues in the health sector. Dr. Brinkerhoff works as the governance adviser for RTI’s international programs, including health. He was also a policy adviser to RTI’s Local Governance Project in Iraq. Previously, he worked at Abt Associates, where he prepared an accountability and health system framework for the Partners for Health Reformplus (PHRplus) project. For the Partnerships for Health Reform project, he worked on a policy toolkit for health-systems reform for Latin America and coordinated research on the role of NGOs in health-service delivery and policy advocacy. For 10 years, Dr. Brinkerhoff was research director for the USAID-funded IPC project, where he designed and led a multitrack program investigating policy implementation, public-agency performance, governance reform, anticorruption, and civil-society topics. Among his IPC activities, he participated in developing an HIV/AIDS policy and strategic-management toolkit. He also collaborated with the Policy Project on a workshop about participation in the health-policy process. Previously, he worked at the University of Maryland’s International Development Management Center for 10 years, as a chief of party on a project in Haiti and as associate director for research. Formerly, he was a senior international-management specialist with USAID’s Science and Technology Bureau. Dr. Brinkerhoff has a doctorate in public policy and administration from Harvard University.
dbrinkerhoff@rti.org
Fred Rosensweig has been a full time TRG employee since 1984. He is a senior consultant with over 25 years of experience in health-focused programs in developing countries. In addition to health, Mr. Rosensweig has significant experience in the areas of water supply and sanitation, environment, and local government. As the technical director for human resources and institutional development under the Environmental Health Project and the Water & Sanitation for Health (WASH) Project from 1981-2004, he gained particular expertise in the planning and analysis of development programs and projects, and the design and implementation of activities to improve institutional performance in host country organizations. His specialties include organizational assessment, design and delivery of institutional capacity-building programs, training systems development, development of institutional structures to improve the delivery of services, and the use of participatory processes to gain increased involvement and commitment of key stakeholders. He has worked extensively in Africa, Eastern Europe, Middle East, and Latin America and speaks French and Spanish. Mr. Rosensweig has an MA in English as a second language from the University of California, Los Angeles.
frosensweig@trg-inc.com
Dr. Wang is a health economist with more than 20 years experience in research, teaching, and consulting in health policy internationally. He has conducted studies and authored numerous publications on health policy issues particularly related to rural community health initiatives, health insurance reforms, and health financing and payment schemes. Dr. Wang has ample experience in leading program design, implementation, and evaluation of international health projects. He worked with the Chinese government in developing the Rural Health Improvement Program as part of the VIII World Bank Health Loan Project in China; participated in a Harvard-led social experiment on community-based health care financing schemes in rural China; served as a consultant for the Clinton Foundation leading the development and implementation of a provider payment system to improve the efficiency and quality of HIV/AIDS patient treatment in China; and developed human resources programs for initiatives organized by the World Bank in Mozambique, Zambia, and Lesotho. Dr. Wang has served as one of the key trainers for the World Bank Flagship Workshop on health system reform in China and as the coordinator for the Network of Training and Research in Health Economics & Financing, an initiative sponsored by the World Bank and the MOH in China. He was a faculty member at the Yale University School of Public Health and deputy director of the National Health Economic Institute of the MOH in Beijing and the Department of Health Economics at Beijing Medical University. Dr. Wang received his MD from Beijing Medical University and his PhD in population health from the University of Wisconsin. He has been a Takemi Fellow in International Health at the Harvard School of Public Health and a Visiting Scholar in Health Economics and Health Management at the University of Wisconsin. Dr. Wang currently serves as an associate professor at the Yale School of Public Health.
hong_wang@abtassoc.com
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