Wendy Taylor is an innovation leader and entrepreneur with over two decades of experience building and leading high-impact teams. Working at the intersection of public, private, and not-for-profit sectors, she has founded multiple enterprises, catalyzed innovations to tackle some of the world’s toughest health challenges, and leveraged market-based solutions for transformational impact. As Vice President for Technical Leadership and Innovation at Jhpiego, Wendy led a large, multidisciplinary team focused on driving accelerated impact across women’s health, infectious disease, primary health care, global health security, and climate-health. She joined Jhpiego following a two-year fellowship with The Rockefeller Foundation, where she identified ways to leverage advances in artificial intelligence, digital health, and data technologies to transform global health and laid important groundwork for modernizing our global epidemic intelligence systems using advanced outbreak analytics to better prepare for and respond to a global pandemic.
At the U.S. Agency for International Development, she founded and led the Center for Innovation and Impact, which applies innovative, business-minded approaches to accelerate the development, introduction, and scale-up of priority global health solutions. There she spearheaded multiple strategic partnerships, including Saving Lives at Birth, a $100 million, multi-stakeholder Grand Challenge; created the agency’s first advance purchase commitments to stimulate investments in vaccines and diagnostics; and built multiple public-private partnerships with corporations to expand and strengthen health markets.
Previously, she held senior positions with several global health nonprofits, including Bio Ventures for Global Health, which she founded, and served in both the executive and legislative branches of the U.S. Government, including the Office of Management and Budget and the U.S. House Committee on Ways and Means. She received a Master of Public Policy from Harvard University and a B.A. from Duke University. She currently serves on the Board of Last Mile Health and as Vice Chair of the Duke Global Health Institute’s Board of Advisors.
