GAVI Alliance CEO: Leadership Is About Vision and Responsibility, Not Power

15 january 2013

Recently, I interviewed Seth Berkley, CEO of the GAVI Alliance, a public-private global health partnership committed to saving children’s lives and protecting people’s health by increasing access to immunization in poor countries. We discussed the evolution and impact of the organization, their unique approach to development, their secret to successful collaborations, and much more.

Seth Berkley joined the GAVI Alliance as CEO in August 2011, as it launched its five year strategy to immunize a quarter of a billion children in the developing world with life-saving vaccines by 2015.

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. Under his leadership, IAVI implemented a global advocacy program that assured that vaccines received prominent attention in the media and in forums such as the G8, EU and the UN. He also oversaw the creation of a virtual vaccine product development effort involving industry, academia, and developing country scientists.

Rahim Kanani: What have been some of the milestones of impact for GAVI since its founding?

Seth Berkley: The GAVI Alliance has achieved many things in its first dozen years, but none more important than helping save more than 5.5 million lives and prevent untold illness and suffering.

Think about that number. It is enormous and made possible only through the collaboration of GAVI Alliance partners, such as UNICEF, the World Health Organization, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the World Bank, the vaccine industry and other private sector partners.

Each brings something different and critically important to the effort to immunize children in the poorest countries – whether clinical knowledge and support, financial management, private sector know-how and more. Together, we have helped immunize an additional 325 million children who might not otherwise have had access to life-saving vaccines.

We collectively now are in the midst of a campaign to immunize an additional quarter billion people by the end of 2015, which we estimate will save up to 4 million more lives. This will have significant additional benefits with respect to improving living standards, health and the global economy.

That’s because children who are vaccinated live longer and have fewer illnesses. This protects families and whole communities. And it reduces ongoing healthcare costs, expands educational opportunities and creates a more reliable workforce. This, in turn, creates a more stable community, higher productivity and stronger national economies. Immunization provides an important foundation for political stability and economic growth.

Rahim Kanani: With regard to raising funds–in your case billions of dollars over the years–in order to continue and expand your efforts, what is it about your approach that’s unique to the development space?

Seth Berkley: Finding innovative ways to deliver vaccines to children in developing countries is at the heart of our work. The very fact that we don’t have people on the ground but rather work in an alliance with other organizations is itself an innovation that was the basis of GAVI’s establishment in 2000.