Governance

Governance Structure

The Research Investment for Global Health Technology Foundation (hereinafter, the RIGHT Foundation) has introduced and built a governance structure that ensures transparency and fairness in the selection of projects for new health care technology innovations and improvement of accessibility to them.

The governance structure of the RIGHT Foundation consists of four separate bodies: Board of Directors, Council, Selection Committee, and Management Team. Each body works independently and jointly contributes to the achievement of the missions of the RIGHT Foundation.

Council
Board of Directors
Selection Committee
Management Team

Council

The RIGHT Foundation Council is comprised of representatives from funding organizations who share the RIGHT Foundation’s vision and purpose.
The Council is the highest advisory body within the RIGHT Foundation and provides professional recommendations for the Board of Directors’ consideration.

Full Partner

Associate Partner

Board of Directors

The Board of Directors is the highest decision-making body of the RIGHT Foundation and is composed of global health and business experts.
The Board of Directors has the right to decide on mid- to long-term strategies of the foundation and supporting project selections according to the recommendation report of the Selection Committee, and plays a responsible and fair role in achieving the mission of the RIGHT foundation.

Myongsei Sohn
Chairman

Myongsei Sohn, the Chairman, is an expert in preventive medicine and health policy in Korea. He holds the position of Professor Emeritus at Yonsei University College of Medicine and is a member of important international health committees, including the WHO International Health Regulations (IHR) Revision Committee. Dr. Sohn has also held leadership roles, including the presidency of the Health Insurance Review and Assessment Service and the Korea Society of Health Policy and Administration. He has contributed to global health as a special adviser to UNAIDS and through membership in the UNESCO International Bioethics Committee (IBC). Dr. Sohn earned his master's and doctoral degrees in public health from Yonsei University College of Medicine.

Hani Kim
Executive Director

Hani Kim's educational background is in biology, and she later extended her research into public health. She currently plays an active role in global health as the Executive Director of the RIGHT Foundation. Her career includes positions as a postdoctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute of Immunobiology, followed by roles as a researcher and professor at Toronto General Hospital and the University of Toronto. She also served as a research director at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health and worked as a program officer at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Hani Kim received her bachelor's degree from Queen’s University in Canada and holds master's degrees in pharmacology and clinical pathology from the University of Toronto. She additionally obtained a master's degree in public health from the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health in the United States.

Eunyoung Jung
Ex-Officio Member

Eunyoung Jung currently serves as the Director of Health Industry Policy at the Ministry of Health and Welfare. Her career has encompassed a range of roles, including Director General for Mental Health Policy and Commissioner of Social Policy at the OECD Korea Policy Center, all within the Ministry of Health and Welfare. Eunyoung completed her undergraduate studies at Seoul National University's College of Pharmacy and earned master's degrees in health policy from the London School of Economics and Political Science and in international health management from Imperial College London Business School.

Gieun Rhie
Ex-Officio Member

Gieun Rhie, presently serving as the Director of the Public Vaccine Development Support Center at the National Institute of Infectious Diseases within the Korea National Institute of Health, has held roles in research and public health in both South Korea and the United States. Her career includes positions at Brown University, Seoul National University College of Medicine, International Vaccine Institute, and Harvard Medical School. She has also worked as a health researcher at the National Health Center's Department of Biology, Director of Pathogen Defense Research at the Infectious Diseases Center of the Korea National Institute of Health, and Director of High-Risk Pathogen Analysis at the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency. Gieun holds bachelor's and master's degrees in microbiology from Seoul National University's College of Natural Sciences and a doctoral degree from Brown Unversity’s MCB Program in the United States.

Fukuda Keiji
Member at Large

Fukuda Keiji serves as a Member of the Board of Trustees at the China Medical Board and a Member of the Board of Advisors at Ending Pandemics. His professional roles include Director of the School of Public Health at The University of Hong Kong, Assistant Director General for Health Security and Environment at the World Health Organization (WHO), and Epidemiology Chief at the Influenza Branch of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). His educational background comprises a Bachelor of Arts (BA) from Oberlin College, a Doctor of Medicine (MD) from the University of Vermont, and a Master of Public Health (MPH) from the University of California, Berkeley.

Glenn Rockman
Member at Large

Glenn Rockman currently serves as a founding partner at Adjuvant Capital and holds director positions at VitriVax, Water Equity, Codagenix, InDevR, Inc., X-Vax Technology, Inc., and Univercells. His past roles include Executive Director at JP Morgan, a partner at Global Health Investment Fund, and Director at EuBiologics. Glenn majored in public policy at Princeton University.

Peter Hotez
Member at Large

Peter Hotez is currently the Dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine and the Head of the Vaccine Development Center at Texas Children's Hospital. His career includes serving as the Director of the Sabine Vaccine Institute, being an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine of the United States, and working as a researcher in disease and poverty at the Baker Institute of Public Policy. Peter majored in molecular biophysics at Yale University, received a doctoral degree in biochemical parasitology from Rockefeller University, and a Doctor of Medicine from the Medical College of Cornell University.

Jessica Martinez
Ex-Officio Observer

Jessica Martinez currently serves as the Senior Program Officer for Scientific Partnerships in global health at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF). Prior to joining the foundation, she held positions as the Chief Consultant at IQVIA and the Director of Corporate Strategy at Pfizer. Jessica majored in molecular biology at Princeton University and earned a master’s degree in diplomacy and political science management from Tufts University.

Selection Committee

The Selection Committee is composed of international experts with extensive knowledge and experience in the research and development of vaccines, drugs, diagnostics, and digital health.
It serves as the key decision-making body in reviewing applications and selecting awards. The Committee evaluates award proposals and reports from applicants, and then recommends research projects for awards to the Board of Directors.

Chairperson
Ann Mills-Duggan
Director AMD Biomedical Consulting
Former Head of Translation at Wellcome Trust

Ann Mills-Duggan currently serves as Director of AMD Biomedical Consulting and is Co-Chair of the GHIT Selection Committee (Tokyo). Dr. Mills-Duggan was previously at the Wellcome Trust where she worked in a number of roles including the Head of Translation. Prior to joining Wellcome she spent over twenty years in the pharmaceutical industry, latterly with UCB and previously with GlaxoSmithKline and GlaxoWellcome, working in research, licensing, alliance management and life science investing. Ann is a graduate of the University of Bath and earned her PhD at Imperial College, London.

Member
Betsy Wonderly Trainor
Alliance Director, Diagnostics, Combat Antibiotic Resistant Bacteria Biopharmaceutical Accelerator (CARB-X)

Betsy Wonderly Trainor currently holds the position of Alliance Director of the Diagnosis Program at the Combat Antibiotic Resistant Bacteria Biopharmaceutical Accelerator (CARB-X). She has actively contributed to the international public health field through previous engagements with industry and with FIND and the World Health Organization (WHO), with a focus on developing and implementing diagnostics for viral diseases in LMICs. Mrs. Trainor's academic journey includes degrees in human development from Cornell University, infectious disease research at Harvard Medical School, and executive education training in product management at the University of California, Berkeley, Haas School of Business.

Member
Christian Lienhardt
Research Director, French National Research Institute for Sustainable Development (IRD), Montpellier, France.

As Research Director at the French National Research Institute for Sustainable Development, Christian Lienhardt has made significant contributions to the field of infectious diseases and epidemiology. His previous roles include serving as an infectious disease and clinical epidemiologist at institutions such as the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, the Medical Research Council (MRC) Laboratories, the International Union Against Tuberculosis and Lung Disease, and the World Health Organization. Christian pursued his medical and infectious diseases studies at the Faculty of Medicine, University of Strasbourg, France and the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, London, UK.

Member
Kee-jong Hong
Director General, Korea mRNA VACcine Initiative (KmVAC)

Kee-Jong Hong (BS, Seoul National Univ; MS, Seoul National Univ; PhD, Texas Tech Univ) is currently a Professor at the Department of Microbiology, Gachon University School of Medicine, Korea, and a director General of the Korean National project for the mRNA Vaccine R&D, KmVAC (Korea mRNA Vaccine Initiative). He has conducted research and development related to the pandemic preparedness including Influenza, Coronavirus, Ebola virus, Nipah virus, and Bioterrorism pathogens such as Anthra and tularemia. He worked for the Korean Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KCDA) for 10 years as a government officer, and served as a director of several industrial research institutes including the Interpark BioConvergence (currently Gradient BioConvergence) and NKmax for 7 years before joining the Gachon University. He is serving for the Korean Vaccine Society as a chair of the publication committee, as well as for the Korean Society for Zoonoses as a vice president.

Member
Lynda Stuart
Executive Director, Institute for Protein Design (IPD), University of Washington

Dr. Stuart is a physician, scientist, with over 20 years of experience in immunology, global health, and product development. Dr. Stuart holds a PhD from the University of Edinburgh and an MD from the University of Cambridge and the University of London. She was a faculty at Harvard Medical School and served on the Massachusetts General Hospital Executive Committee for Research. She was also an affiliate of the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT. Before joining the Institute for Protein Design, Dr Stuart was a Deputy Director in Global Health at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation from 2013 to 2022, where she oversaw the discovery and development of vaccines, biologics, and antibody therapies to address urgent global health challenges. Notably, Dr. Stuart led the Foundation’s COVID-19 discovery and translational vaccine response efforts, managing a large portfolio of COVID-19 and pan-coronavirus vaccine candidates. During this time, she collaborated closely with the Institute for Protein Design to guide the development and approval of SKYCovione, a royalty-free WHO PQ’ed vaccine for COVID-19. Additionally, Dr. Stuart built BMGF's GH Discovery Collaboratory, a multi-institutional R&D network established to enable access to cutting edge technologies to help investigators around the world to advance global health solutions. From 2022-23 Dr. Stuart spent a year as the Vice President of Infectious Disease at the mRNA company BioNTech.

Member
Melissa Malhame
Principal, MM Global Health Consulting LLC

Melissa is currently the principal of MM Global Health Consulting. Her extensive background includes over two decades in the vaccine industry, with roles at Merck Vaccine, Dynavax Technologies, and Gavi, The Vaccine Alliance. Malhame earned her Master’s in Business Administration from Cornell Johnson Graduate School of Management.

Member
Michael Hawkes
Associate Professor, Department of Pediatrics Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry School of Public Health, University of British Columbia

Michael Hawkes (BEng, McGill U; MD, U of Alberta; PhD, U of Toronto; DTM&H, Peru; FRCPC, Pediatrics and Infectious Diseases) is a clinician-scientist at the University of British Columbia. In addition to a clinical practice in consultant Pediatric Infectious Diseases at the BC Children’s Hospital, he leads a translational research program in global pediatric infections. Diseases of focus include some of the leading infectious disease killers of children in the world today: malaria, pneumonia, Ebola, and HIV. He operates field sites in Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo. His research is improving outcomes in children with serious infections in some of the least developed areas of the globe.

Member
Rinn Song
Department of Pediatrics, Oxford Vaccine Group, University of Oxford
Clinician-Scientist and Honorary Consultant in Pediatric Infectious Diseases

Rinn Song is a paediatric infectious disease clinician and scientist in the Oxford Vaccine Group of the University of Oxford. He completed training as an Epidemic Intelligence Service Officer at the US CDC, followed by a fellowship in paediatric infectious diseases at Boston Children's Hospital and Harvard Medical School. His main research interest is paediatric TB; he is involved in multiple global projects. He also served as the PI for safety of the national and international Oxford-Astrazeneca COVID-19 vaccine trials and leads additional paediatric vaccine trials. He earned an MD and MD (Res) from the Ludwig-Maximilians-University in Munich, an MPH from the Harvard School of Public Health and a MSc in Immunology of Infectious Diseases from the LSHTM.

Member
Shabir A. Madhi
Professor Dean, Faculty of Health Sciences Professor of Vaccinology, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg

Shabir A. Madhi currently holds the positions of Professor and Dean of the Faculty of Health Sciences and Professor of Vaccinology at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. His career includes roles such as Executive Director of the South African National Institute for Communicable Diseases. He has served on multiple scientific committees of international organizations, including being the current deputy Chair of the WHO Scientific Advisory Group of Experts on Immunization (SAGE). Shabir undertook all his under-graduate and post-graduate training at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg.

Member
Thomas J. White
Senior Research Fellow, Human Rights Center, School of Law, University of California, Berkeley

Thomas J. White is currently a Core Member of the Scientific Advisory Committee at the Foundation for Innovative New Diagnostics (FIND) and a scientific advisor for the International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP). He had a rich career spanning over 30 years and has published five books on molecular diagnostic and forensic applications of the Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR). His previous positions encompass Vice President of Research at Cetus Corporation, Senior Vice President of Research and Development at Roche Molecular Systems, and Chief Scientific Officer at Celera Diagnostics. Thomas earned his doctoral degree in biochemistry from the University of California, Berkeley, and conducted pre- and postdoctoral research at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, University of California San Francisco Medical Center, and the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

Member
Valerie Nkamgang Bemo
Deputy Director, Emergency Response Global Development, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

Valerie Nkamgang Bemo's distinguished career includes roles with various international NGOs, where she contributed to clinical and public health efforts. Currently, she serves as the Deputy Director of Emergency Response at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, actively participating in major disaster response initiatives worldwide. Valerie’s academic achievements include an MD from the University of Cote d'Ivoire, an Epidemiology Diploma from the University of Paris, and an MPH from the Autonomous University of Madrid.

Management Team

The Management Team is in charge of the business management of the RIGHT Foundation

Executive Director
operates and manages the business and the entire organization of the foundation

Chief Strategy Officer
acts as a strategic partner to establish and carry out strategies of the foundation

Strategic Planning
develops programs of the foundation and establishes strategies, establishes and manages international cooperation networks, manages projects, and forecasts and manages crises

Investment Management
establishes standard investment operation rules and manages compliance with regulations throughout selection and management of projects; manages the progress of portfolio-level projects

Finance and Operations Management
manages HR and finance of the foundation, conducts financial due diligence of projects, manages the operation of the foundation, operates the board of directors, etc.

Government and Public Relations
communicates with councils and the government, carries out communications of public relations, supports new investment attraction, operates councils, etc.