Wafaa El-Sadr

Wafaa El-Sadr, MD, MPH, MPA is Executive Vice President of Columbia Global, the Dr. Mathilde Krim-amfAR Chair of Global Health at Columbia University, Founder and Director of global health center ICAP at Columbia University, and University Professor in Epidemiology and Medicine. Her vision for Columbia Global is to establish a unifying and strategic platform to promote and facilitate impactful engagement of the University’s faculty, students, and alumni with the world to enhance understanding, address global challenges, and advance knowledge and its exchange. Under her strategic leadership, Columbia Global aligns some of the University’s key global initiatives, including Columbia World Projects, the Columbia Global Centers, and the Institute for Ideas and Imagination.

An expert in global health and infectious diseases with longstanding experience in supporting diverse major health challenges around the world, Dr. El-Sadr has focused her career on advancing public health knowledge and putting that knowledge into action, establishing collaborative partnerships to strengthen health systems, and engaging with communities to meet health threats and improve health outcomes, especially among vulnerable populations around the world. She has led large-scale, innovative projects that have had decisive impacts on such pressing global health challenges as HIV, tuberculosis, malaria, antimicrobial resistance, non-communicable diseases including cancer, and, most recently, the COVID-19 pandemic.

Dr. El-Sadr received her medical degree at Cairo University, a master’s in public health from Columbia Mailman School of Public Health, and a master’s in public administration from Harvard University Kennedy School of Government. She is a MacArthur fellow as well as a member of the National Academy of Medicine, the Council for Foreign Relations, the African Academy of Sciences, and the Advisory Committee to the Director of the National Institutes of Health. She is principal investigator for numerous ICAP-led initiatives, including the NIH-funded HIV Prevention Trials Network and the New York City Pandemic Response Institute. She is also the director of Columbia World Projects and director of the Mailman School’s Global Health Initiative.