Meet the team
Empower's multi-disciplinary team specializes in developing digital Learning & Development (L&D) solutions consisting of public health experts, instructional and graphic designers, animators and video editors, digital learning specialists, and language experts. The public health and instructional design experts guide the design time for the development of the content as well as the technology team in terms of the development of features and user experience for the development of learning technologies and content.
We also have former heads of state, ambassadors, senior functional heads from WHO, UN agencies, and donor funds guiding our team. Finally, we also actively leverage our strong alumni base across 200+ countries in Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Americas and engage selected few as technical experts to add value to our clients, partners, and funders.
Faculty and Advisors
H.E. John Agyekum Kufuor
Mentor
Former President of Ghana; Global Ambassador against Hunger for the UN World Food Programme; Chairman of the UN Interpeace Program; Chairman of the Sanitation and Water for All Partnership; and founder of The John A. Kufuor Foundation in Ghana.
S. Y. Quraishi
Mentor
Former Special Secretary to Government of India, Chief Election Commissioner of India. Dr. Qureshi is on the Board of Advisors for the Empower Group, pursues his interests in academics by teaching & mentoring at the Cluster Innovation Centre, the University of Delhi as Honorary Professor.
Prof. Paul Lalvani
Director - Empower Group
He has more than 25 years of experience in capacity building, procurement, and supply chain, access to medicines, and technology transfer. The former head of Global Fund’s department of Procurement and Supply Chain Management, advisor to Gates Foundation, World Bank, WHO, and various Ministries of Health. His area of expertise includes public health, advocacy, business development, capacity building, strategic planning, policy development, national, and international partnerships. Prof. Paul is the founder and Director of the Empower School of Health, and the Center for Digital Learning (CDL), and the Center for Leadership Development.
Denis Broun
Director - Empower Swiss
Denis Broun is the Director of Empower Swiss and has worked in the field of international health for the past 30 years, with emphasis on access to medicines and vaccines, equitable health financing, and health sector management. He was a former Executive Director of UNITAID, Geneva. As a consultant for WHO and UNAIDS, he has worked notably on issues of health system reform in West Africa towards Universal Health Coverage, access to medicines and vaccines, pharmaceutical regulatory harmonization, as well as improving access to TB medicines in South East Asia
Prof. Bernadette Nirmal Kumar
Empower Senior Advisor
Prof. Kumar is the Senior Advisor at the Empower School of Health, India. Kumar is a medical graduate from India with a doctorate in Epidemiology and Public Health and a post-doctoral research fellowship from the University of Oslo, Norway. She is a commissioner of the Lancet Commission on Migration and Health since 2018 and is the President of the Migration and Ethnic Minority Health Section of the European Public Health Association. She was Director of the Norwegian Centre for Migration and Minority Health and Associate Professor of Global Health at the University of Oslo. She has worked extensively for the UN in Africa and Asia
Mr. Henri Fourcault
Director- Center for Leadership Development in Geneva
Henri Fourcault is the Director of Empower’s Center for Leadership Development. He is a consultant and trainer who has facilitated hundreds of leadership and management workshops and retreats for a wide range of UN agencies, INGOs, and IGOs all over the world. Mr. Fourcault is a former Senior Management Advisor of the Executive Secretary of UNECA in Addis Ababa, Senior Management Officer at the Office of Internal Oversight Services of UNHQ in New York, and Change Manager to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights in Geneva.
Hiroko Osaka
Senior Advisor and Global Catalyst
Hiroko has over 30 years of experience in providing advice on strategy, marketing, and planning for corporations, academic institutions, and start-up companies. She focuses on building strong partnerships between global organizations in developed and developing countries, and between Japan and the rest of the world.
Prof. Andy Barraclough
Director - Training and Capacity Building
Prof. Andy Barraclough is the Professor of Public Health and Director of Training at the Empower School of Health. He has over 30 years of experience working with major international funding institutions and bilateral donors in medical procurement and supply chain management in low- and middle-income countries. His key focus areas include effective management of pharmaceuticals, vaccines, and medical commodities, and especially the implementation of programs for the introduction of new medicines and vaccines for neglected tropical diseases. He has provided support to various EPI vaccine programs in Africa, South and South East Asia and also served as the technical advisor to the Asia Pacific Leaders Malaria Alliance (APLMA) on new medicines and health commodities.

Prof. Luk Van Wassenhove
Advisor
Prof. Luk is an award-winning author and teacher and has published several articles in academic and management journals, such as Harvard Business Review. He founded the INSEAD Social Innovation Centre and currently leads INSEAD’s Humanitarian Research Group
Carol Squire
Chief Strategy Officer
Ms. Squire comes with 30 years of international public health program management experience working with private, non-profit, and public sector partners, bi-lateral, multi-lateral, and non-governmental donors. Her expertise lies in facilitating management teams, strategic planning, consensus building, executive team organization, team building, vision and mission development, and developing management and leadership skills. She enjoys the challenges of interim, turn-around leadership positions in multicultural situations
Dr. Jonathan VanGeest
Dr. VanGeest is a Professor and Chair, Department of Health Policy and Management, Kent State University, USA, and a significant contributor to the American Public Health Association. He has extensive teaching experience in public health administration, cost-benefit analysis of public health programs and public health programs: planning, implementation, and evaluation.
Dr. Ray Yip
Director- Center for Leadership Development in Geneva
Dr. Yip is Special Advisor to Gates Foundation; Former Director - China Program, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. His work involves assisting the government as well as civil society by addressing key global health issues while supporting the planning and development of major foundation projects. He also oversees a team that provides technical and management assistance to grantees.
Mr. Daljit Singh
Advisor
Mr. Singh is the President of Fortis Healthcare. He has also held the office of CEO. Prior to joining Fortis, Singh was on the Board of Directors of ICI India and served as the Executive Director in charge of Human Resources, Manufacturing, External Relations, and Communications. Singh is also on the Steering Boards constituted by the World Economic Forum and was the president of the Healthcare Federation of India NATHEALTH. A graduate from the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, Singh was a Commonwealth Scholar to the Senior Management Programme at the Manchester Business School in 1995.
Santiago Kraiselburd
Dr. Santiago Kraiselburd CEO of Vaxinz, Inc., a US-based biotechnology company focused on human infectious & neglected diseases in Africa, the Caribbean, and LatAm, works within a complete ecosystem to go from research to market. He holds a Ph.D. in Business Administration from Harvard Business School He is also an Associate Professor and the Research Director at INCAE Business School. In addition to INCAE, Santiago is an Adjunct Professor at the Universidad Torcuato Di Tella (Argentina), and teaches at the Zaragoza Logistics Center (Spain), both in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) International Logistics Program and at the Spanish Master's program.
Ropafdzai Hove
Advisor
Ropafdzai Hove is a results-driven professional with over 30 years of experience. She has strong client-centric skills and an agile approach to Pharmaceutical Policy and Supply Chain Management; who has been appointed on various internal and external advisory panels and has kept abreast with developments in public health with competencies in the areas of Procurement and Quality Assurance, Leadership, Logistics Operations, and Management, Monitoring and Evaluation of Pharmaceutical and Vaccine Supply Chain, Capacity Building and Systems Strengthening, etc. She also has significant experience in research across Africa in the field of Supply Chain Management.
Dr. Maira Bholla
Biomedical Expert and Advisor
Dr. Maira Bholla, Biomedical Expert and Advisor, East Africa has over 20 years of experience in the healthcare industry in East Africa. She provides professional counsel on paramedical projects, including human resources, supply chain logistics, and foreign partnerships coordination, through her local and international associations. She has significant experience working in managing Laboratory Management Systems, capacity building of lab professionals, and managing new medical diagnostic technologies. She is deployed as a consultant with Empower for providing professional counsel on paramedical projects; including human resource, technology, supply chain logistics, and foreign partnerships coordination, through my local and international associations, with a special focus on cancer care and thereafter demystifying COVID. Quality assurance, research, and education are also her forte.
Technical Experts
Siddharth Srivastava
Head - Supply Chain
Siddharth has more than 12 years of experience in capacity building and training in the development sector. Siddharth also has experience working in different aspects of supply chain management & logistics with multi-disciplinary teams in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. He has successfully led several projects in training content and design, e-learning design, animation, classroom training, academic courses. He has experience of delivering projects with Ministry of Health, UNDP, the Global Fund, UNRWA, Chemonics, and others across Africa, Middle East and Asia region. He has also developed and implemented the Competency Assessment Tool (CAT) and Big Learning Platform (BLP) for Empower.
Namit Grover
Head - Digital Learning
Namit is an accomplished professional with more than 12 years of distinguished experience in eLearning and publishing domains. Strong program and project management professional, skilled in Operations Management of e-learning projects, People Management, Production Planning, Web and Mobile development services into e-learning, and Team Management. Evaluated tools and technology, functional structure to make it cost-effective and efficient to optimize the business process. Managed and professionalized teams to build consensus, commitment, and client satisfaction to ensure timely delivery. Namit has worked for clients like the UNION, WHO, MSH (MTaPS Program), UNDP, Global Fund, and a lot of private sector clients.
Sachin Jagtap
Head - Consulting
More than 15 years of experience with core expertise in procurement and supply chain management. Mr. Jagtap has previously worked as Director, Supply Chain, and Access, Clinton Health Access Initiative, Regional Logistics Coordinator South Asia, Oxfam, and Principal Consultant – Supply Chain with Technopak Advisors Pvt. Ltd. His specific areas of expertise are quantifications/forecasting, SCM design and strategy, SCM risk assessment and management, procurement, information technology in logistics, infrastructure, warehousing, and inventory management.
Rahul Sharma
Head - Partnerships
Rahul has over 20 years of national and international experience in developed and developing countries with health and humanitarian organizations in both the private healthcare and INGOs. He has multi-diversified health sectors experience in working with Corporate Hospitals (Max Healthcare, Rockland Hospital), Diagnostics (Dr. Lal Path labs), and NGO Sector in strengthening health systems, mentoring staff on standard operating protocols, cross-sectoral collaborations and partnerships, business & strategic planning.
Mohit Agarwal
Head - Business Development and Projects
Mohit has over 12 years of experience in public and private consulting. He has strong expertise in project management, policy, and planning research, monitoring, and evaluation, advocacy, communication and strategy, stakeholder analysis, etc. across multi diversified health sectors. He has experience in executing multifaceted assignments for several public health stakeholders for APAC and Africa region.
Dr. Namrata Singh
Public Health Specialist
Dr. Namrata Singh is a public health professional experienced in instructional design, monitoring and evaluation, project planning and implementation, research, advocacy, and communications. She has been involved in the planning, execution of multiple health and social development projects focused on communicable diseases, maternal and child health, climate change, and health, and health care access. Dr. Namrata has experience in several capacity-building initiatives for different tiers of health staff, ranging from community workers to national and international health staff
Harjeet Singh
Animation expert
Harjeet has over 10 years of experience in the production pipeline, which includes work in 2D Graphics, Print and Publishing, Website designing, Content Management, Project Management to 2D Animation for Films and E-Learning Modules, where he has designed plenty of project for ExtraMarks and Edu comp under the Banner of Emotion Creative, Noida. He has Developed plenty of Projects in 3D for Uttarakhand Govt. and NTPC. With experience and knowledge of Creative Cinema, he has designed many projects for Emotion Creative for brands like LG, Kelvinator, CBSE, Edu comp, Raffles Millennium, and Indiamart.
Dr. Sandeep Rathod
Dr. Sandeep is a medical graduate with Master of Health Administration (MHA) from TISS, Mumbai. With more than 12 year of experience in supporting various national health program (RCH, NACP and NTEP) in various capacities, he has worked with UN organizations like Unicef and WHO. He has supported Government of India’s efforts for strengthening existing health system. Data management, policy analysis, implementation challenge identification and offering innovative cost effective as well as feasible solution are few of his areas of expertise. In his current portfolio, he contributes to business development and project implementation at Empower.