Biography

Aurélia Nguyen is Chief Programme Officer at Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance – the first person to hold the position. In this role, Aurélia is responsible for assuring the delivery of Gavi’s programmes end to end, from the design of vaccine and health system programmes and manufacturer interactions, through to the delivery of impact with countries through their immunisation systems. She oversees execution across all vaccine programmes and Gavi-supported countries, adapting Gavi support to ensure no one is left behind with immunisation.

Previously, Aurélia served as Managing Director of the Office of the COVAX Facility, beginning in October 2020. In this role, Aurélia set up and ran the COVAX Facility, an emergency organisation, which after the Paris Agreement on climate change is one of the largest multilateral initiatives in history. By negotiating a US$ 10 billion COVID-19 portfolio and stewarding US$ 1.6 billion in delivery funding, COVAX averted an estimated 2.7 million deaths across participating low- and middle-income economies.

In a previous appointment, Aurélia served as Gavi’s Managing Director for Vaccines & Sustainability, where she was responsible for introducing ten new antigens in the Gavi portfolio – including HPV, Ebola and malaria – and for designing Gavi’s resources into financially sustainable vaccine programmes and markets, ultimately increasing uptake of life-saving vaccines.

Prior to joining Gavi in 2011, Aurélia held a variety of posts between 1999 and 2010 within GlaxoSmithKline, where latterly she led the development of GSK’s policies on access to medicines and vaccines in lower-income countries. She has also undertaken research for the World Health Organization (WHO) on generic medicines policies.

Aurélia is of French and Vietnamese origin. She is a certified accountant and holds a Master’s degree in Health Policy, Planning & Financing from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and the London School of Economics. She represents Gavi on the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI)’s Polio Oversight Board (POB); and serves on the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF)’s Board of Trustees. Aurélia was bestowed the Medal of Friendship by Vietnamese Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh in 2023 and was named by TIME magazine to the 2021 TIME100 Next list, honouring “the 100 individuals who are shaping the future of their fields and defining the next generation of leadership".