Nina Schwalbe is a Principal Visiting Fellow at UNU-IIGH.
Nina Schwalbe is the Founder and Principal at Spark Street Consulting, a strategic consulting firm with representation in New York, Islamabad, Delhi and Lisbon, specializing in improving effectiveness, maximizing impact, and driving the intersection between strategy, policy and advocacy. Clients include Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, the Global Fund for AIDS, TB and Malaria, WHO, UNICEF, CEPI and a number of private foundations and not-for-profit organizations.
Nina began her career in public health working with refugees in Thailand. She has since held numerous leadership positions including acting as UNICEF’s Associate Director of Program Division and Chief of Health. Prior to UNICEF, Nina served as Managing Director for Policy and Performance at Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, where she led Gavi’s work on strategy and policy development, market shaping, performance management and monitoring and evaluation. In addition to developing Gavi’s organizational strategy, she also developed their vaccine investment strategy, gender, fragile state and graduation, and co-financing policies.
Nina went to Gavi from the Global Alliance for TB Drug Development where, as policy director she focused on access to and adoption of new technologies. Her work on TB began at the Open Society Foundations (OSF), she developed and directed their Public Health Program.
Nina has also worked at EngenderHealth and the Population Council and holds degrees from Harvard and Columbia Universities. She is member of the Council on Foreign Relations, an Adjunct Assistant Professor at Columbia’s Mailman School of Public Health, and serves on Gavi’s Evaluation Advisory Committee. She has published numerous articles and serves as a peer reviewer for Vaccines and the Lancet, among others.
