MEET OUR CORE TEAM
NINA SCHWALBE
Principal | New York, USA
NINA SCHWALBE
Nina founded Spark Street in 2016. Her leadership positions include Managing Director for Policy and Performance at Gavi, the vaccine alliance, where she led Gavi’s work in strategic planning, policy development, market-shaping, performance management, and monitoring and evaluation; Principal Advisor and Acting Chief of Health at Unicef, overseeing their health programs in over 150 countries; and Director of Global Public Health for the Open Society Institute. During the COVID-19 pandemic, she established USAID's COVID-19 Vaccine Access and Delivery Initiative and serving as its first director. Nina holds a BA from Harvard, an MPH from Columbia and PhD from Witwatersrand University. A lifetime member of the Council on Foreign Relations, a Senior Scholar at Georgetown University's O'Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law, a Principal Visiting Fellow at the United Nations International Institute for Global Health, and a Lancet Commissioner for gender and health.
NINA SCHWALBE
Senior Advisor | Tunis, Tunisia
ABDALLAH BCHIR
Abdallah is a public health specialist with extensive experience in evaluation. He started his career as a medical doctor and professor of Public Health in Tunisia. He served as the Head of Gavi's Evaluation Unit, where he introduced the concepts of theory of change and prospective evaluation to Gavi’s work. He has also worked as a consultant for WHO and served on the Global Fund’s Technical Evaluation Reference Group. Abdallah holds MSc and PhD degrees in community health from the University of Montreal and currently splits his time between Geneva and Tunis. He is fluent in English, Arabic, and French.
NINA SCHWALBE
Senior Researcher | Washington, D.C.
ELIZABETH GARDINER
Elizabeth is a global health specialist with expertise in product access and scale-up of coverage. She has worked with over 50 countries and formed multidisciplinary partnerships with pharmaceutical and NGO partners on issues ranging from HIV prevention to tuberculosis to reproductive health. Leading strategy and operations, Elizabeth has experience with product distribution in public and private markets. Elizabeth has degrees from Harvard University and the London Business School. She is fluent in English and highly proficient in Russian.
NINA SCHWALBE
Senior Advisor | Dar es Salaam, Tanzania
JESSICA OYUGI
Jessica is a global health specialist in health systems strengthening, community engagement, and digital health innovations, with over 20 years of experience in sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia. During her tenure at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), she focused on HIV adherence, and subsequently led initiatives with organizations such as CDC, UNICEF, USAID, and WHO on maternal, child, and adolescent health and infectious disease management. Jessica completed her Internal Medicine training at UCSF, holds an MD from Tufts University School of Medicine, and a BA from Johns Hopkins University. She is fluent in English and proficient in Italian and Swahili.
NINA SCHWALBE
Social Media Strategist | Geneva, Switzerland
DANTE LICONA
Dante is a social media strategist and international consultant with expertise in strategic communication. He has served in different roles with the Mexican government, WHO, and the Red Cross Red Crescent movement. In these roles, he has lead record-breaking global campaigns on TikTok, forged partnerships with tech companies, responded to emergencies around the world, trained hundreds of colleagues on the effective use of social media, and designed strategies for maximizing impact through digital channels. Dante is fluent in English, French, and Spanish.
NINA SCHWALBE
Director of Research | Lisbon, Portugal
SUSANNA LEHTIMAKI
Susanna is a global health specialist, focusing on results-based program development, strategic planning, and analysis. She has worked with UNICEF at headquarters in New York as well as in Kyrgyzstan and Ukraine where she developed programs on maternal, child and adolescent health and wellbeing. She has a clinical background in maternal, child and school health in Finland and in India. Susanna holds an MA in Public Health and a BA in Social Sciences from Tampere University, Finland, and an MA in Russian and Eurasian Studies from European University in St. Petersburg, Russia. In addition to Finnish, Susanna is fluent in English and Russian.
NINA SCHWALBE
Senior Researcher | London, England
ELLIOT HANNON
Elliot is a senior researcher, focusing on pandemic response and global governance. He has spent a decade-plus as a foreign correspondent, reporting on four continents, most recently from London. Elliot spent four years in New Delhi reporting for NPR and Time magazine. He previously worked as a producer and editor at NPR in Washington D.C. and a staff writer Slate magazine. He has a BA in Political Science from Emory University and studied International Relations and Affairs at the University of Cape Town.
NINA SCHWALBE
Senior Advisor | Delhi, India
BRIAN WAHL
Brian is an infectious disease epidemiologist specializing in pneumonia in children and immunization. He holds a faculty position in the Yale School of Public Health. In addition to his research, he also has a background in public health policy and advocacy. Brian has studied the application of advanced analytic tools, including artificial intelligence, for the prevention, control, and treatment of diseases that disproportionately affect low- and middle-income countries. He earned his PhD and MPH from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and was based in South Asia for more than a decade. In addition to English, he speaks German and Hindi.
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NINA SCHWALBE
Senior Analyst | Lisbon, Portugal
KIMBERLEY PEEK
Kimberley Peek is a public health specialist with a background in infectious disease control. Before Spark Street Advisors, she worked five years with UNICEF Ukraine where she managed the design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of humanitarian, adolescent, maternal and child health, and nutrition programs. Her work focused on facilitating assessments and reviews, programs evaluations, biomedical research, and surveys and included policy development, advocacy, and partnership building. She holds a Master of Science in Control of Infectious Diseases from London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and a Bachelor of Science in Biomedical Sciences from the University of Edinburgh. Kimberley is fluent in English and Spanish.
NINA SCHWALBE
Visual Lead | Chennai, India
PRAKASH DURAIRAJ
Prakash leads Spark Street's graphic design work. He started his career in finance before becoming a designer. He has worked for a Fortune 500 company as a Visualizer and enjoys exploring how to use innovative tools to visualize creative concepts. He has over 14 years of experience in the fields of design and user experience and holds a Bachelor's of Computer Application. He is fluent in English and Tamil.