Dr. Linda Vesel joined the Women and Health Initiative in January 2017 as a Research Associate. She is an epidemiologist with expertise in monitoring and evaluating maternal, newborn and child health (MNCH) interventions in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia as well as applying design thinking for social innovation.
Most recently, she was a Senior Researcher and Knowledge Management Officer at Concern Worldwide US where she oversaw the research, monitoring and evaluation of various projects that comprised the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation funded Innovations for MNCH initiative. Linda also led the initiative’s knowledge management and publications strategy and was partially seconded to UNICEF as a liaison on MNCH and innovations work. Previously, Linda was a Maternal and Newborn Health Program Specialist at UNICEF in New York, working on the development of the Every Newborn Action Plan. She has also worked at the World Health Organization on policy and research related to newborn health and for the former Maternal and Child Health Integrated Program on operational research on the quality of newborn facility care.
Linda received her PhD in epidemiology from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, her MPH in epidemiology and international health at the Boston University School of Public Health and her BA in community health and child development at Tufts University.