Susana is Programme Director, Healthcare and Life Sciences, School of Management, University College London and scientific advisor, Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford. She acts as an expert on health innovation and technology for the EU and as Advisor for Governments. She has twenty years of experience in global health from various perspectives: research/academia, public policy, field and entrepreneurial and has worked in the UK, Portugal, The Gambia, Switzerland, USA, Guinea-Bissau, Haiti, Mozambique, Angola. Susana has acted as a consultant with the United Nations (UNDP, UNAIDS, Department of Peacekeeping Operations) and Ministries of Health for a decade on the development of national health, monitoring and evaluation, and emergency/humanitarian strategies, plans and training for a decade. She spent eight years at the University of Oxford where she studied, taught, and conducted research; she worked in a Phase-I clinical trial for an HIV vaccine. During this time Susana was involved in other activities; she was part of the Founding Committee of Oxford Entrepreneurs and acted as Secretary, Oxford University Strategic Studies Group.
She has conducted research at the NIH, Fort Detrick, USA, and at the MRC, The Gambia. Her passion to find solutions to healthcare has led her to co-develop and successfully pilot an innovative health system for epidemiological surveillance with the ESA. She co-founded IES – Social Business School, Portugal in 2008. She seats on the Advisory Board of a number of organisations promoting entrepreneurship and working on healthcare and acts as Mentor, Global Thinkers Forum.
Susana holds a Doctorate in Clinical Medicine (HIV Immunology), University of Oxford, an MBA, Oxford Saïd Business School (Skoll Scholar in Social Entrepreneurship), BSc and postgrad, Tropical Medical Microbiology, Portugal.
