Author: Christopher Elias

Christopher Elias is the President of Global Development at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Previously, he was president and CEO of PATH, a Seattle-based nonprofit organization that creates sustainable, culturally relevant solutions, enabling communities worldwide to break longstanding cycles of poor health. Before joining PATH in 2000, Dr. Elias was a senior associate in the International Programs Division of the Population Council. For six years, he served as the country representative in Thailand, where he managed reproductive health programs throughout Southeast Asia. He sits on the boards of the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition, Ibis Reproductive Health, and the Washington Biomedical and Biotechnology Association, among others. He is also a member of the Policy Advisory Committee for the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative and the Advisory Committee for the Department of Global Health at the University of Washington. Dr. Elias was honored as the Schwab Foundation's Social Entrepreneur of the Year for the United States in 2005, and he remains an active member of the Schwab Foundation community. He received his MD from Creighton University (1983), completed post-graduate training in internal medicine at the University of California, San Francisco (1986), and received an MPH from the University of Washington (1990), where he was a fellow in the Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholars Program.