Joe Simmonds-Issler, Chief of Staff, and executive lead for the Governance, Strategy and Portfolio division, at Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations – CEPI.

Joe joined CEPI in 2017 as Chief of Staff and has played a key role in the evolution of CEPI as it has grown from 20 to more than 280 members of staff. Joe acted as incident response lead for CEPI during the 2019 Ebola outbreak in DR and played a major role in CEPI’s response to COVID-19. This included supporting CEPI’s early fundraising, designing rapid governance processes, and Joe was instrumental to the development and running of COVAX.

In 2021 Joe also took on leading the strategy, portfolio management, CEO office, and governance teams. Joe oversees central strategic functions that help drive progress and direction towards CEPI’s mission, analysis and learning, and effective decision-making. Joe acts as strategic lead on governance.

In 2023, Joe and CEPI secured funding from the Government of Canada to enable CEPI to define its role in the biosecurity space as a core part of CEPI’s strategy. Biosecurity is a critical part of the 100 Day Mission which aims to respond to the next Disease X threat in with a new vaccine in just three months.

Before CEPI Joe worked at Wellcome (including on strategy and governance), completed an Emerging Leaders in Biosecurity Fellowship, and studied War Studies and History at Kings College London (UK).