Meet the team
Empower's multi-disciplinary team specializes in developing digital Learning & Development (L&D) solutions. Our team consists of public health experts, instructional and graphic designers, animators and video editors, digital learning specialists, and language experts. The public health and instructional design experts guide the design team for the development of the content. They also provide assistance to the technology team in terms of the development of features and user experience of the learning platforms and technologies.
We also have former heads of state, ambassadors, senior functional heads from WHO, UN agencies, and donor funds guiding our team. We also actively leverage our strong alumni base across 200+ countries in Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Americas and engage selected few as technical experts to add value to our clients, partners, and funders.
Faculty and Advisors
H.E. John
Agyekum Kufuor
Mentor
Mr. H.E. John Agyekum Kufuor former President of Ghana; Global Ambassador against Hunger for the UN World Food Programme; Chairman of the UN Interpeace Program; Chairman of the Sanitation and Water for all partnership; and founder of The John A. Kufuor Foundation in Ghana.
Dr. S.
Y. Quraishi
Mentor
Dr. S.Y. Quraishi former special secretary to the Government of India, former Chief Election Commissioner of India. Dr. Qureshi is on the Board of Advisors for the Empower Group. He pursues his interests in academics by teaching and mentoring at the Cluster Innovation Centre, the University of Delhi as an honorary professor.
Dr.
J.V.R.
Prasada Rao
Senior Advisor - Empower Group
Dr. J.V.R. Prasada Rao is a senior advisor with Empower School of Health. He is the former Union Health Secretary, Government of India, and is the special advisor to UNAIDS. Dr. Rao was the special envoy to the Secretary General of the United Nations on HIV/AIDS for the Asia Pacific region from 2013 to 2017. From 1997 to 2002, he served as the Director of India’s National AIDS Control Organization (NACO). As secretary for Health and Family Welfare from 2002 to 2004, he made immense contributions to the health sector’s development.
Prof. Paul Lalvani
Director - Empower
Group
Prof. Paul Lalvani is the founder and director of the Empower School of Health, and the Center for Digital Learning (CDL), and the Center for Leadership Development. He has more than 25 years of experience in capacity building, procurement, and supply chain, access to medicines, and technology transfer. The former head of Global Fund’s department of Procurement and Supply Chain Management, advisor to Gates Foundation, World Bank, WHO, and various Ministries of Health. His area of expertise includes public health, advocacy, business development, capacity building, strategic planning, policy development, national, and international partnerships.
Dr. Denis Broun
Director - Empower Swiss
Dr. Denis Broun is the director of Empower Swiss and has worked in the field of international health for the past 30 years, with emphasis on access to medicines and vaccines, equitable health financing, and health sector management. He was a former executive director of UNITAID, Geneva. As a consultant for WHO and UNAIDS, he has worked notably on issues of health system reform in West Africa towards universal health coverage, access to medicines and vaccines, pharmaceutical regulatory harmonization, as well as improving access to TB medicines in South East Asia.
Prof.
Bernadette Nirmal Kumar
Senior Advisor - Empower Group
Prof. Bernadette Nirmal Kumar is the senior advisor at the Empower School of Health, India. Prof. Kumar is a medical graduate from India with a doctorate in Epidemiology and Public Health and a post-doctoral research fellowship from the University of Oslo, Norway. She is a commissioner of the Lancet Commission on Migration and Health since 2018 and is the President of the Migration and Ethnic Minority Health Section of the European Public Health Association. She was director of the Norwegian Centre for Migration and Minority Health and Associate Professor of Global Health at the University of Oslo. She has worked extensively for the UN in Africa and Asia.
Henri
Fourcault
Director - Center for Leadership Development in Geneva
Mr. Henri Fourcault is the director of Empower’s Center for Leadership Development. He is a consultant and trainer who has facilitated hundreds of leadership and management workshops and retreats for a wide range of UN agencies, INGOs, and IGOs all over the world. Mr. Fourcault is a former senior management advisor of the Executive Secretary of UNECA in Addis Ababa, senior management officer at the Office of Internal Oversight Services of UNHQ in New York, and change manager to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights in Geneva.
Hiroko
Osaka
Senior Advisor and Global
Catalyst
Ms. Hiroko Osaka has over 30 years of experience in providing advice on strategy, marketing, and planning for corporations, academic institutions, and start-up companies. She focuses on building strong partnerships between global organizations in developed and developing countries, and between Japan and the rest of the world.
Prof.
Andy Barraclough
Director - Education and Capacity Building
Prof. Andy Barraclough is the professor of Public Health and director of training at the Empower School of Health. He has over 30 years of experience working with major international funding institutions and bilateral donors in medical procurement and supply chain management in low- and middle-income countries. His key focus areas include effective management of pharmaceuticals, vaccines, and medical commodities, and especially the implementation of programs for the introduction of new medicines and vaccines for neglected tropical diseases. He has provided support to various EPI vaccine programs in Africa, South and South East Asia and also served as the technical advisor to the Asia Pacific Leaders Malaria Alliance (APLMA) on new medicines and health commodities.
Carol
Squire
Chief Strategy Officer
Ms. Carol Squire comes with 30 years of international public health program management experience working with private, non-profit, and public sector partners, bi-lateral, multi-lateral, and non-governmental donors. Her expertise lies in facilitating management teams, strategic planning, consensus building, executive team organization, team building, vision and mission development, and developing management and leadership skills. She enjoys the challenges of interim, turn-around leadership positions in multicultural situations.
Dr. Ray
Yip
Senior Advisor, Empower Group
Dr. Ray Yip is a special advisor to the Gates Foundation. He was the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's country director for China, and he has held senior positions at the US CDC and UNICEF.
Daljit Singh
Advisor
Mr. Daljit Singh is the president of Fortis Healthcare. He has also held the office of CEO. Prior to joining Fortis, Singh was on the Board of Directors of ICI India and served as the executive director in charge of Human Resources, Manufacturing, External Relations, and Communications. Singh is also on the Steering Boards constituted by the World Economic Forum and was the president of the Healthcare Federation of India NATHEALTH. A graduate from the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, Singh was a Commonwealth Scholar to the Senior Management Programme at the Manchester Business School in 1995.
Dr.
Santiago
KraiselburdAdvisor
Dr. Santiago Kraiselburd is the CEO of Vaxinz, Inc., a US-based biotechnology company focused on human infectious & neglected diseases in Africa, the Caribbean, and LatAm, works within a complete ecosystem to go from research to market. He holds a Ph.D. in Business Administration from Harvard Business School. He is also an Associate Professor and the Research Director at INCAE Business School. In addition to INCAE, Dr. Santiago is an adjunct professor at the Universidad Torcuato Di Tella (Argentina), and teaches at the Zaragoza Logistics Center (Spain), both in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) International Logistics Program and at the Spanish Master's program.
Technical Experts
Kavitha Nair
Deputy Director
Kavitha Nair possesses over 25 years of professional experience in the fields of Public Procurement, Logistics, and Supply Chain Management, adhering to both Domestic and World Bank guidelines within the National TB Elimination Programme (NTEP). She has significant experience working with international organizations such as WHO, World Bank, The Global Fund, GDF, IDA, UNOPS, DFID, RITES, CMSS, and other donor/UN agencies. Her contributions include the development of NTEP guidelines, as well as providing procurement and supply chain training, and technical training at the national level. Furthermore, Kavitha played a pivotal role in enabling KPMG to secure a highly competitive $5 million contract from the United States Agency for International Development, aimed at supporting the Government of India's Swachh Bharat initiative. She is adept at creating and refining systems to improve administrative efficiency and achieve operational objectives within the constraints of cost, time, and quality.
Diwakur Singh
Head, Online Education
A result-oriented professional with experience of over 25 years in managing the entire business operations and institutional strengthening . He has wide experience in New Portfolio Development/ Management, Business planning and execution, Strategic Initiatives execution, Team management, Product development/ innovation, GTM, Strategic Alliances/ partnerships, Channel, Institutional & Direct - Sales & Marketing, Promotion Management, Concept Marketing & Sales, Service delivery, Vendor Management, Client Satisfaction with leading organizations.
He has been working in the education sector since 2019 and specializes in setting up, getting regularity approvals from DEB-UGC and successfully running the Online Degree Programmes for Universities. Developing marketing / promotional hooks in the programmes and managing marketing and admissions of the certificate and Degree programmes. He has been instrumental in setting up 3 universities i.e. Amity University in 2019 and GLA University in 2021 and Chandigarh University in 2022.
Ankit
Kaushik
Associate Director Projects, Partnership-Global
Mr. Ankit Kaushik is a Certified Project Management Professional (PMP®, CSM and Six Sigma Green Belt) with proven success for over 11 years in managing e-learning, digital publishing, web content and technology projects. He is well versed in managing and motivating teams for running successful operations with extensive experience of developing procedures, service standards & operational policies for business excellence. He has gained experience in managing various digital production, technology (animations, HTML5, etc.) and content management projects and conducting audits for continual improvements in the services. Committed in handling multinational clients across varied sectors by providing them blended learning solutions.
Praneeta Rao
Consultant Tech &
eLearning
Ms. Praneeta Rao has over 16 years of experience in program, project and operations management in eLearning, publishing, ed-tech, training and learn-tech industries. She has a vast experience in handling B-to-C and B-to-B clients in corporate, education and government sectors, across the globe. She has led various capacity building projects under GOI's skill building initiative (STAR Scheme), Government of Maldives and Government of Bhutan. She is a certified Project Management Professional (PMP) and an MBA in Operations and Supply Chain Management.
Dr.
Namrata Singh
Senior Public Health
Specialist
Dr. Namrata Singh is a public health professional experienced in instructional design, monitoring and evaluation, project planning and implementation, research, advocacy, and communications. She has been involved in the planning, execution of multiple health and social development projects focused on communicable diseases, maternal and child health, climate change, and health, and health care access. Dr. Namrata has experience in several capacity-building initiatives for different tiers of health staff, ranging from community workers to national and international health staff.