Members of The Vaccine Fund's Board of Directors:

Nelson Mandela, Chair
Graça Machel, Vice-Chair
Charles J. Lyons, Executive Committee Chair
Jacques-François Martin, President, The Vaccine Fund
Jacques Delors
Her Majesty Queen Rania Al-Abdullah of Jordan
Dwight L. Bush
Dr. Tore Godal
Mary Robinson
Mstislav Rostropovich
Amartya Sen, PhD
Jens Stoltenberg
Patty Stonesifer
Lawrence H. Summers
George W. Wellde

Board bios:

Nelson Mandela was the first black president of South Africa and a legendary figure of the African National Congress (ANC). From 1964 to 1990, Mandela was imprisoned for opposing South Africa’s white minority government and its policy of racial separation. In 1993, Mandela and the president who released him, F.W. de Klerk, shared the Nobel Peace Prize. Mandela was elected president of the Republic of South Africa in 1994 and served until 1999. He is the founder of The Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund, which addresses the needs of marginalized youth.
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Graça Machel, former first lady and minister of education in Mozambique, is widely recognized for her dedication to education and for her leadership in organizations devoted to the children of her war-torn country. She currently serves as chairperson of the Commonwealth Foundation, chancellor of the University of Cape Town, and president of the Foundation for Community Development. Machel is also a member of the Advisory Board of Disarmament Matters at the United Nations, where she has focused on the impact of armed conflict on children, and serves on the boards of the UN Foundation, the UN University and the South Centre.
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Jacques-François Martin, president of The Vaccine Fund

Jacques-François Martin, president of The Vaccine Fund, leads the Fund’s efforts to provide life-saving vaccines and other immunization program support to low-income countries. Martin previously served as chairman and CEO of Parteurop, a biotech consulting company, and has a long history in biotechnology and public health. He was CEO of Rhone-Poulenc Pharma in Hamburg, Germany before joining Institut Mérieux as vice-president of sales and marketing in 1976. He became CEO of Pasteur-Mérieux in 1998, where he was instrumental in the merger with Connaught Laboratories Ltd in Toronto. From 1996 to 1999, Martin was a member of the board of the French Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale. He currently is a member of the GAVI Working Group and the Strategic Advisory Council of the Bill and Melinda Gates Children’s Vaccine Program and is a board member of the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI).
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Jacques Delors, a French economist and politician and European statesman, was president of the European Commission from 1985 to 1995. Beginning in the 1940s, he held a series of posts in French banking and state planning, eventually becoming an adviser to Gaullist Prime Minister Jacques Chaban-Delmas. Under President François Mitterrand, Delors served as economics and finance minister and economics, finance, and budget minister, helping to revive the French economy. As president of the European Commission, the executive body of the European Community, he helped to craft and win approval of the Single European Act, which laid the groundwork for the creation of a single EC market in 1993.
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Charles J. “Chip” Lyons was appointed president of the U.S. Fund for UNICEF in 1997. In that capacity, Lyons is responsible for raising American public awareness of children’s needs around the world and the work of UNICEF. Before assuming this position, Lyons served in a variety of roles with UNICEF, including chief of staff to the executive director. Lyons serves on the boards of Baby-Friendly USA, an organization working to promote breast-feeding as the optimal care for babies, and Rugmark USA, an organization working to reduce exploitative child labor in the carpet industry.
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Her Majesty Queen Rania Al-Abdullah of Jordan currently serves as chair of the International Advisory Committee of the UN University’s International Network on Water, Environment and Health. In 1995, she established the Jordan River Foundation (JRF), which aims to assist vulnerable segments of Jordan's population. Working closely with various international agencies, the Ministry of Social Development and the Jordan River Foundation, Queen Rania oversaw the launching of the Child Abuse Prevention Project, the first of its kind in the Arab region. In addition, Queen Rania sponsors numerous events that promote economic growth as well as the educational, artistic, and cultural diversity of Jordan.
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Dwight L. Bush has been a Principal of Stuart Mill Capital, LLC, an Arlington, VA, based investment firm, since 1997. From 1999 through 2002 Mr. Bush also served as Chief Financial Officer of SatoTravel Holdings. From 1994 through 1997, Mr. Bush served as Vice President-Corporate Development of Sallie Mae Corporation, a $60 billion financial service corporation, and the nation’s leading provider of education credit. At Sallie Mae, Mr. Bush was responsible for mergers and acquisitions and business development, credit and investment policy, and investor relations. In addition, Mr. Bush was part of the senior management team responsible for the successful re-chartering of Sallie Mae as a fully privatized corporation. Previously, Mr. Bush worked for Chase Manhattan Bank as Managing Director, Project Finance and head of the Public Utilities Group.
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Dr. Tore Godal, executive secretary of the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI) Secretariat in Geneva, has held numerous positions in international health care and infectious disease research. He began his career as director of the Armauer Hansen Research Institute in Ethiopia. At the World Health Organization (WHO), he has served as a consultant to the Immunology Unit, special advisor to the director general, and head of the Special Programme for Research and Training in Tropical Diseases (TDR), where he established global leadership in vector-borne diseases research. In recognition of his work, Dr. Godal was awarded the Prince Mahidol Award in the field of public health.
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Mary Robinson, the first female president of Ireland, currently serves as the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. As high commissioner, Robinson assumes principal responsibility for the human rights activities of the United Nations, including the tasks of streamlining the human rights machinery throughout the United Nations system and supervising the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights in Geneva. Robinson received the Special CARE Humanitarian Award in recognition of her efforts as the first head of state to visit Somalia following the crisis there in 1992. Robinson also served as a member of Seanad Eireann (Upper House of Parliament) from 1969 to 1989, and founded the Irish Center for European Law with her husband in 1988.
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Mstislav Rostropovich is the most esteemed cellist of his generation and a relentless defender of human rights. Born in Azerbaijan, he studied and later taught at the Moscow Conservatory. In 1974 Rostropovich and his wife left the USSR, and in 1978 their citizenship was revoked. Having immigrated to the United States, he became music director of the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington, D.C., a position he held from 1977 to 1994. Rostropovich has given benefit concerts to aid earthquake victims, and undertaken fundraising efforts for the first modern, fully equipped children’s hospital in Moscow. In 1974 he received the Annual Award of the International League of Human Rights and in 1985 the Albert Schweitzer Award.
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Amartya Sen is a Nobel Prize-winning economist whose contributions to the field of welfare economics have helped explain the causes of famine, inequality and poverty. Sen taught at Harvard University, the London School of Economics, Oxford and New Dehli University before becoming head of Trinity College in Cambridge, England. He is the author of numerous books, including Poverty and Famine: An Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation and Collective Choice and Social Welfare. Sen is the recipient of the Alan Shaw Feinstein World Hunger Award, the Jean Mayer Global Citizenship Award, the Indira Gandhi Gold Medal Award of the Asiatic Society and the Edinburgh Medal.
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Jens Stoltenberg started his political career in 1979 with the Norwegian Labour Youth League. He became chairman of the Labour Youth League in 1985, a position he held until 1989. He was elected to the Norwegian Parliament in 1991 and became Deputy-Chairman of the Norwegian Labour Party a year later. Throughout the 1990’s, he held key portfolios in the Norwegian government, ranging from State Secretary for the Environment to Minister of Finance, before becoming Norway’s Prime Minister in 2000. Mr. Stoltenberg is currently Chairman of the Labour Party parliamentary group.
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Patty Stonesifer, co-chair and president of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, helps lead the foundation in its mission to improve access for all people to advances in global health and learning. Prior to being asked by Bill and Melinda Gates to launch the work of the foundation, Stonesifer held a senior vice president position at Microsoft and ran her own management consulting firm, working with such corporations as DreamWorks SKG. Stonesifer is an active community volunteer, donating both time and resources to a number of regional nonprofit organizations including the YWCA of King County and the Seattle Foundation. She also is on the board of Amazon.com and Viacom Inc.
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Lawrence H. Summers began his career teaching economics at MIT before going to Washington in 1982 as a domestic policy economist for the President's Council of Economic Advisers. He returned to Harvard as a professor of economics, taking leave in 1991 to return to Washington, this time as vice president of development economics and chief economist of the World Bank. In 1993, Mr. Summers was named undersecretary of the treasury for international affairs before being promoted to the department's number-two post, deputy secretary of the treasury in 1995. In 1999, Mr. Summers was confirmed, by the Senate as secretary of the treasury. On July 1, 2001, Mr. Summers took office as 27th president of Harvard University.
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George W. Wellde is the Head of North American sales at Goldman Sachs’ Fixed Income business department. He has worked in fixed income sales since joining the Goldman Sachs Group in 1979. Prior to his current responsibilities, Mr. Wellde was the branch manager of Goldman Sachs’ Tokyo office. Previously, he worked at the Federal Reserve Board and Union First National Bank in Washington, D.C.
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