Debrework Zewdie


Debrework Zewdie, is an Ethiopian immunologist, known for her role in shaping international response to the HIV/AIDS epidemic and her leadership positions at the World Bank and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. She holds a Ph.D. in Clinical Immunology from the University of London and was a Senior MacArthur Fellow at the Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies as well as a Richard L. and Ronay A. Menschel Senior Leadership Fellow at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in 2015. During her Fellowship at the Harvard Chan School, she also participated as a speaker on Voices in Leadership, an original webcast series, in a discussion titled, "Leadership in Getting AIDS on the World Bank Agenda", moderated by Dr. Barry Bloom.
She is an advocate for women's health and was a founding vice president and member of the Society for Women and AIDS in Africa and a member of the Organisation for Women in Science for the Developing World.

Education

She earned a B.Sc in Biology from the Addis Ababa University and went on to complete a Ph.D in Clinical Immunology from the University of London in 1982. Zewdie did her postdoctoral fellowship research in Microbiology at SYVA, a diagnostics company in Palo Alto, California.
She was awarded a Senior MacArthur Fellowship at Harvard University and later participated as a Richard L. and Ronay A. Menschel Senior Leadership Fellow at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, MA, USA.

Career

Debrework Zewdie established and headed the Referral Laboratory for HIV/AIDS in Addis Ababa and also served as Acting Director of the National Research Institute of Health, Ethiopia. She went on to become the Deputy Regional Director - Africa region for the AIDS Control and Prevention project of Family Health International, Nairobi, Kenya prior to joining the World Bank in 1994.
She served as Director of the World Bank Global AIDS Program and Deputy Executive Director and COO of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, where she conceptualized and managed the groundbreaking US$1 billion Multi-country HIV/AIDS Program that expanded the AIDS funding landscape and pioneered the large-scale multi-sectorial response with direct financing to civil society and the private sector. Dr. Zewdie led the articulation of the World Bank's first global strategy on HIV/AIDS and the Global HIV/AIDS Program of Action. As a founding UNAIDS Global Coordinator, she has been instrumental in making the unique cooperative structure of the UNAIDS family a working reality, fostering strong inter-agency partnerships. She co-lead internal reforms and oversaw the day to day operations, strategy planning and accountability at the Global Fund.
In addition to her work in HIV/AIDS, she also served as Director of The Global Alliance for TB Drug Development.

Fellowships and recognition

Selected publications