Ms Robyn Hayes Badenhorst

Founder and Head of Division

As Head of Group Strategy for Wits Health Consortium (WHC), Robyn supports to develop and drive the implementation of WHC's goals, key activities, and long-range plans. Robyn founded and directs Supporting Health Initiatives where she has successfully coordinated and implemented Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Funded initiatives including key support to the backlog clearance of the South African Health Products Regulatory Authority (SAHPRA).  Robyn and her team, through SHI, are supporting key funders and implementing partners to drive impactful Regulatory Harmonisation Efforts on the African Continent.   Robyn collaborates with university research divisions supporting the development of funding proposals, driving high-level initiatives and providing strategic direction for impact.  

Robyn’s vision is to "hold space for success" and she does this by collaborating with WHC to ensure her high impact initiatives are driven with the flexibility and efficiency needed to move nimbly while providing sound custodianship of funding.

Professor Maria Papathanasopoulos

Co-Director

Maria directs the HIV Pathogenesis Research Laboratory in the Department of Molecular Medicine and Haematology at Wits where she also lectures. An established scientist who has built an exceptional reputation in the infectious diseases, bioinformatics, and virology fields. She has established world class laboratories that conduct innovative research on HIV-1 drug discovery and vaccine designs that are recognised at a national, regional and international level.  Maria has completed research for the South African Strategic Health Innovation Platform, the South African HIV/AIDS Research and Innovation Platform, the National Research Foundation, the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative Innovation Fund, the Carnegie Foundation, the Poliomyelitis Research Foundation and several others.

Dr Lieve Fransen

Executive Member

Dr Lieve Fransen is a former Director at the European Commission where she developed high-profile international public health initiatives, including the creation of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. She also served as a Board Member representing the European Union and Vice Chair of the Board representing all the donors.

After leaving the Commission in 2016 Lieve joined Europa Insights and has acted as Senior Advisor for Royal Philips Health, Plusvalue, Tilburg University, Bozar and European Policy Centre.

Lieve was also Public Health Advisor to the Ministry of Health, Mozambique, Kenya, Rwanda and Cape Verde Islands, Task Manager of a research programme on pregnant women and newborns in Rwanda, and Director of a research programme on sexual and reproductive health in Kenya and in the Tropical Institute in Antwerpen, Belgium. Her expertise span health and development, pensions, employment, and social innovation.

Lieve was awarded Senegal's National Order of the Lion (1999) for special merit in the fight against HIV/AIDS and she received the Jonathan Mann Award for Health and Human Rights (2001).^[10] She was awarded a lifetime achievement award in 2003 in India for her health and human rights work.

Professor Garratt Wallace Brown

Executive Member

His publications and interdisciplinary research expertise include global health governance, health financing, health system strengthening, health security, pandemic preparedness and response, global health justice, and complexity science methodologies. Professor Brown is involved with several WHO projects relating to pandemic preparedness evaluative tools, cost estimates, and financing modalities. He has collaborated with, and provided research expertise for, 12 African governments, the Government of Seven (G7), the Government of Twenty (G20), and numerous non-governmental and civil society organizations. He gave expert evidence to four global COVID-19commissions and other pandemic preparedness reports and sat on the UK Cabinet Office COVID-19 RoundTable Group during the crisis before quitting due to disagreements about the use of evidence. He is currently leading a one-million-dollar grant project to better determine pandemic risk, costs, and institutional appropriateness.

https://essl.leeds.ac.uk/politics/staff/64/professor-garrett-wallace-brown