Seth Berkley, M.D., is Chief Executive Officer of the GAVI Alliance, which works to immunize children in the developing world. He holds academic appointments at Brown University, Columbia University, and New York University.

Seth Berkley, MD joined the GAVI Alliance as CEO in August 2011 to accelerate access to life-saving vaccines and close the equity gap in access to immunisation both within and between countries. GAVI and its partners are working to immunise 245 million additional children in the developing world with life-saving vaccines and prevent an additional 4 million deaths by 2015. 

Seth is committed to innovation— in technology, finance and strategy and to building on GAVI’s history of innovation: new antigens such as HPV and Rubella have been added to GAVI’s portfolio; new corporate funders have joined GAVI and its Matching Fund; and new strategies have been undertaken to improve data quality and pilot the use of mobile technology to track vaccine stocks. At the same time, GAVI is accelerating its vital support to countries to strengthen their health systems to improve immunization and introducing life-saving vaccines.

As GAVI CEO, Seth believes that all children, no matter where they live, deserve a healthy start in life. This includes full access to clean water, nutrition, and life-saving vaccines. GAVI works to expand access to vaccines in some of the world’s most fragile countries. In 2012, it rolled out new vaccines to tackle some of the biggest child killers in Haiti, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Myanmar, Pakistan, and the Republic of Yemen among others.

Prior to joining the GAVI Alliance, Seth was the founder, president and CEO for 15 years of the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI), the first vaccine product development public-private sector partnership. Prior to founding IAVI, Seth served as associate director in the Health Sciences Division at The Rockefeller Foundation. He has also worked for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Massachusetts Department of Public Health and for the Carter Center, where he served as an epidemiologist at the Ministry of Health in Uganda.

Seth has been featured on the cover of Newsweek, recognised by TIME magazine as one of the “100 Most Influential People in the World” and by Wired Magazine as among “The Wired 25 – a salute to dreamers, inventors, mavericks and leaders.”

Seth sits on a number of international corporate and not-for-profit boards, including Gilead Sciences, the New York Academy of Sciences and the Acumen Fund. He is an internationally recognized commentator on the future of global health, and the importance of public-private partnerships. He holds academic appointments at Brown, Columbia and New York Universities. 

Seth received his undergraduate and medical degrees from Brown University and trained in internal medicine at Harvard University. He is married to a dedicated physician and is the proud father of two children.