Ximena Garzon-Villalba is an experienced professional in Public Health, appointed as Minister of Health of Ecuador from May 2021 to July 2022. She was member of the International Vaccine Institute Board of Trustees in 2022. Currently, she is Dean of Public Health at Universidad San Francisco de Quito, and member of The World Bank Pandemic Fund Technical Advisory Panel. Dr. Garzon-Villalba is member of the Consortium of Universities for Global Health (CUGH) Board of Directors.

Dr. Garzon-Villalba obtained her Medical Degree at Universidad Central del Ecuador, she holds PhD in Public Health with a concentration in Occupational Health, and a Post-doctorate in Occupational Health Research and Occupational Epidemiology, both from University of South Florida. Dr. Garzon-Villalba has been professor for undergraduate and graduate programs in several Ecuadorian and U.S. Universities. Her research work focusses on Occupational Heat Stress, Health Systems Management, Environmental Health and One Health, published in several indexed journals. She was awarded the National Order “For Merit” in the Rank of Grand Cross for leading the “Plan Fenix” a comprehensive response to the COVID-19 pandemic and for the design and implementation of the emblematic “9/100 Vaccination Plan” which reached 9 million fully vaccinated people (more than 50% of the population) before the 100th day of its beginning. Dr. Garzon-Villalba also headed up the development of the “Plan Decenal de Salud del Ecuador”, a holistic, interdisciplinary and intersectoral plan designed to improve the public health of her country under the One Health approach.

A/Prof Carmen Huckel Schneider is Deputy Director at the Leeder Centre for Health Policy, Economics and Data at the University of Sydney where she is also lead of the Health Systems and Governance theme. She holds positions as Senior Adviser at the Sax Institute; and Honorary Senior Fellow at the George Institute. A/Prof Huckel Schneider’s areas of expertise are the application of systems approaches for the analysis of health policy (financing, systems, institutions, services and technologies); health system governance and operational models; knowledge translation and exchange; and global health policy and governance.

Yanzhong Huang is a senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations, where he directs the Global Health Governance roundtable series. He is also a professor and director of global health studies at Seton Hall University’s School of Diplomacy and International Relations, where he developed the first academic concentration among U.S. professional international affairs schools that explicitly addresses the security and foreign policy aspects of health issues. He is the founding editor of Global Health Governance: The Scholarly Journal for the New Health Security Paradigm.  He is the author of Governing Health in Contemporary China (2013),  Toxic Politics: China’s Environmental Health Crisis and Its Challenge to the Chinese State (2020), and The COVID-19 Pandemic and China’s Global Health Leadership (2022). His research has appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, Foreign Affairs, American Journal of Public Health, as well as in peer-reviewed academic publications such as The China Journal and Health Security.

Dr. Huang has testified before U.S. congressional committees multiple times and is regularly consulted by major media outlets, the private sector, and governmental and nongovernmental organizations on global health issues and China. He is a life member of the Council on Foreign Relations, a member of the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations, and a member of the CSIS Bipartisan Alliance for Global Health Security. In 2012, InsideJersey listed him as one of the “20 Brainiest People in New Jersey.” He has taught at Barnard College and Columbia University. He obtained his BA and MA from Fudan University and his PhD from the University of Chicago.

Professor Siobhan Mor is an interdisciplinary researcher and epidemiologist with a dual background in veterinary medicine and public health. Her research intersects with the areas of global health security and tropical medicine, often (but not exclusively) from a One Health perspective.

A Fellow of the Australasian College of Tropical Medicine (ACTM), Prof Mor has held academic appointments at Tufts University School of Medicine in the US (Assistant Professor, 2009-2011), The University of Sydney School of Veterinary Medicine in Australia (Lecturer/Senior Lecturer, 2012-2018) and the University of Liverpool Institute for Infection, Veterinary and Ecological Sciences in the UK (Reader, 2018-2024; Professor, 2025 to present). She holds a joint appointment with the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) and was based full-time in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, from 2018 to 2024. She is now based in Nairobi, Kenya.

Prof Mor leads the Global Health Research Group on Zoonotic Causes of Acute Febrile Illness which aims to create a step change in the way fever is diagnosed and managed in children in sub-Saharan Africa. She is a recognised leader in advancing One Health approaches, focusing on capacity building and translating theoretical frameworks into practical applications, particularly within the African context. Her operational expertise and contributions over the last 15 years include serving as: global health advisor for the RESPOND project (part of USAID’s Emerging Pandemic Threats program) which aimed to strengthen capacity for response to emerging diseases in disease “hotspots”; Research Lead for the Ethiopia hub of the HORN project which aimed to strengthen capacity for One Health research in the Horn of Africa region; as ILRI-PI for the HEAL project which aims to strengthen human-animal-rangeland health service delivery in pastoralist areas of Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia; and country coordinator for Ethiopia and Somalia for the COHESA project which aims to increase uptake and adoption of One Health solutions in eastern and southern Africa.

Pedro A. Villarreal is a Research Associate at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs. His research focus is on international and comparative law and issues of human health, as well as its intersections with international economic law. He has spoken as external expert at the German Parliament on reforms at the World Health Organization. Pedro received his PhD in Law from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). His book, Pandemics and Law: A Global Governance Perspective (published in 2019 in Spanish) was awarded the Prize for the Best Doctoral Dissertation in Law and Social Sciences. He is a member of the International Law Association´s Global Health Law Committee, the Coordinating Committee of the European Society of International Law´s Interest Group on International Health Law, the Global Health Law Consortium, and the German Alliance for Global Health Research.

Dr. Siyan Yi is an epidemiologist and implementation research scientist with a PhD in Community and Global Health from the University of Tokyo. He is an Associate Professor at the Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health, National University of Singapore, where he leads the NUS Cambodia Program, and serves as Technical Advisor to Cambodia’s Ministry of Health and member of its National Council of Science, Technology, and Innovation. He is also the Founding Director of the KHANA Center for Population Health Research in Cambodia and Adjunct Professor at Touro University California. Dr. Yi’s pioneering work in implementation research focuses on HIV, tuberculosis, and maternal and child health among vulnerable populations in Southeast Asia. He has led several large-scale intervention studies and actively contributes to global health technical working groups.

Dr. Jomana Musmar is a global policy expert and results-driven leader with extensive experience across the U.S. Departments of Health and Human Services (HHS), Defense (DoD), and Agriculture (USDA). She is the Founder of Advisors of Global Health (AGH) and Co-Founder and CEO of the Antimicrobial Strategic Coalition (ASC), advancing cross-sector collaboration on antimicrobial resistance (AMR) and One Health policy.

Formerly the Executive Director of the Presidential Advisory Council on Combating Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria (PACCARB), she led national coordination among 600+ experts and shaped U.S. and global AMR strategies. At HHS, she served as Deputy Director of Strategic Initiatives, guiding major infectious disease and vaccine policy efforts, including the COVID-19 response.

Dr. Musmar is a Leadership Council Member at NIAMRRE, serves on global AMR committees including with the National Academies of Sciences, and is an Honorary Senior Lecturer at the University of Bristol. She holds a Ph.D. in Biodefense and International Security (George Mason University) and a Master’s in Biomedical Science Policy (Georgetown University).

Fluent in English and Arabic, she is a recognized thought leader and speaker on AMR, One Health, and national health security.

Jessica Malaty Rivera is an infectious disease epidemiologist and award-winning science communicator. She earned her MS in Emerging Infectious Diseases from the Georgetown School of Medicine and has dedicated the last 20 years of her career to emerging disease surveillance, public health policy, and vaccine advocacy. Her specialty is in translating complex scientific concepts into impactful, judgement-free, and accessible information for diverse audiences. From 2020-2021, she served as the Science Communication Lead for The COVID Tracking Project at The Atlantic. She was also the host of the Peabody-nominated COVID Tracking Project podcast, in partnership with Reveal.
Currently, she is a Research Fellow at Boston Children’s Hospital Innovation & Digital Health Accelerator, a Research Fellow and DrPH student at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health, Center for Health Security, and a Senior Advisor at the deBeaumont Foundation. Jessica dedicates several hours a week to promoting science literacy and debunking misinformation on social media. You can follow her work on Instagram (@jessicamalatyrivera) and on Substack (@makingsciencemakesense).

Dr. Gigi Kwik Gronvall is a Professor in the Department of Environmental Health and Engineering at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and a Senior Scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. She is an immunologist by training. Her work focuses on minimizing the technical and social risks of the life sciences while advancing biosecurity, biosafety, ethics, and the bioeconomy. In addition to the Forum on Microbial Threats, she has served on advisory committees to the DoD, State Department, and NIH, and is a life member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

She leads work on improving indoor air quality to reduce pathogen transmission, and was a public health advisor to the Baltimore City Public School system for diagnostic testing during the acute days of the COVID-19 pandemic. She has written about the contested origin of SARS-CoV-2 and the implications for national and international security. She is the author of Synthetic Biology: Safety, Security, and Promise (2016) and Preparing for Bioterrorism: The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation’s Leadership in Biosecurity (2012). Her forthcoming book, Our Biological Future will be published in 2026 by Johns Hopkins University Press.