Biography

In October 2020, Aurélia Nguyen was appointed Managing Director of the Office of the COVAX Facility. In this role, Aurélia is leading the coordination of procurement and delivery of COVID-19 vaccines for 190 participating economies through COVAX, the only global initiative that is working with governments and manufacturers worldwide to ensure fair and equitable access to COVID-19 vaccines for economies of all financial means.

COVAX is the vaccines pillar of the Access to COVID-19 Tools (ACT) Accelerator, a groundbreaking global collaboration bringing together governments, scientists, businesses, civil society, donors and global health organisations to speed up an end to the pandemic.

Until her appointment as Managing Director of the Office of the COVAX Facility, Aurélia served as Gavi’s Managing Director for Vaccines & Sustainability, leading the end-to-end work of designing Gavi’s vaccine programmes. She and her team were responsible for designing ways for Gavi’s resources to support financially sustainable vaccine programmes and markets, and ultimately increase uptake of life-saving vaccines.

Prior to joining Gavi, 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 the developing world. She has also undertaken research for the World Health Organization (WHO) on generic medicines policies.

Aurélia 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. Aurélia 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”.