WomenLift Health, through support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, aims to accelerate the involvement of women in global health leadership by investing in and elevating talented mid-career women to become global health leaders. To support evidence-driven growth, WomenLift Health has partnered with Bixal to conduct ongoing data collection, learning, and evaluations for the program. This report presents the results of a stakeholder analysis, which was conducted through interviews with senior and executive leaders in the field of global health, to look at the organizational and broader landscape of the field as it relates to women’s leadership in North America. This assessment aimed to help the program address the most timely and relevant issues to advance women’s leadership as the program grows and adapts. It also serves to complement routine data collection, annual evaluations, and a similar landscape assessment from mid-career women.

To this end, Bixal’s research team reviewed literature about the global health sector in the United States (U.S.), Canada, and worldwide, and interviewed 30 senior-level global health professionals in the United States and Canada representing a range of sub-sectors, including international non-governmental organizations (INGOs), government agencies, academia, philanthropy, and the private sector. Readers of this report should keep the following limitations in mind: 1) several of the respondents, although based in the United States or Canada, have worked in various countries and sectors, so this wider perspective may inform their answers, and 2) the assessment was designed to inform the program and is not generalizable, especially given the underrepresentation of Canadians, men, and people of color in the sample.