Global Health careers - online talk

Dr Tamara Mulenga Willows

Dr Mulenga Willows graduated from Brighton and Sussex Medical School with both a Masters in Global Health and a Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery degree.



In her current role with the University of Oxford, she provides research support to the ‘Avoiding preventable deaths through the Provision of Essential Treatment in Critical Illness in the COVID-19 pandemic (POETIC-COVID)’ project with teams in Kenya and Tanzania as well as other studies within the Health Systems Research Unit at the Oxford Centre for Global Health Research. 



Before working on the POETIC-COVID study, Tamara worked as a junior doctor in the NHS and as a Health Behaviour Change Fellow at the Centre for Infectious Disease Research in Zambia, as part of the Global Health Corps Fellowship. During this period, she led her team on a qualitative research study focused on influencers of birth delivery location among peri-urban women in Lusaka. 



She is also interested in improving engagement ethnic minorities in England in various aspects of health. In 2021, alongside Oxford City Councillors, CEPI, Oxford-Astra-Zeneca Vaccine Researchers and the Zambians Together civil organisation, she participated in digital workshops about the COVID-19 vaccines for ethnic minorities and African diaspora groups in the UK, U.S. and Zambia.

Marie Gill

Marie Gill is a registered pharmacist who has acquired extensive pharmaceutical and quality assurance experience, with over 15 years of working in multiple pharmaceutical sectors.



She currently works as Quality Manager for UK/Ireland in the global bio pharmaceutical industry, is a member of the organisation’s global Women’s Network steering committee for Wellbeing, a Squiggly Career Advocate and visiting guest lecturer at Brighton and Sussex Medical School.



Prior to that Marie worked in the international NGO sector where she joined the Global Pharmacy team as the first and only pharmacist with a focus on pharmaceutical Quality Management system (QMS) and Quality Assurance (QA).



The main focus of her role was the establishment, implementation and the ongoing development, maintenance and support of the global QMS. Engaging with a wide range of internal and external stakeholders to ensure the organisation only procure, distribute and supply medicines for their global health programmes that meet internationally recognised standards on safety and efficacy while working in fragile and humanitarian contexts.



Marie’s background is working as a clinical and technical services pharmacist (MPharm, University of Brighton) within the UK for 15 years with a PGDip in Pharmacy Practice (University of Brighton), an MSc in Global Health from Brighton and Sussex Medical School and Cogent Gold Standard Responsible Person. She is also a Lead Pharmaceutical Auditor.

Dr Kebede Deribe Kassaye

Kebede Deribe Kassaye, Ph.D. is CIFF’s Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTD) Director for Africa, and oversees the program development and implementation of CIFF’s NTD portfolio.

Kebede has responsibility for developing and managing investment portfolios to accomplish, in an end-to-end way, the control, elimination and eradication of NTDs. This includes lymphatic filariasis, schistosomiasis, soil-transmitted helminth, onchocerciasis, trachoma and guinea worm disease.

Previously, Kebede was a research fellow at the University of Sussex, where he led a multicountry research on NTDs. He has worked as a consultant with the World Health Organization Africa Regional Office on NTDs supporting the Expanded Special Program to Eliminate NTDs (ESPEN). Kebede has worked as NTD technical advisor with the Federal Ministry of Health-Ethiopia, supporting key program strategies, operational and crosscutting issues. Early on, Kebede worked with several non-governmental organizations in Ethiopia and Darfur, Sudan.

He has conducted research and implemented health programs in several countries in sub-Saharan Africa.