Kebede Kassaye
Director, NTD and Ethiopia Head of Office
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 CIFF’s investment portfolio 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 multi-country research on NTDs. Kebede has worked as a consultant with the World Health Organization Africa Regional Office on NTDs supporting the Expanded Special Project to Eliminate NTDs (ESPEN). He has worked as NTD technical advisor with the Federal Ministry of Health in Ethiopia supporting key programme strategies, operational and cross-cutting issues. Early on Kebede worked with several non-governmental organisations in Ethiopia and Darfur, Sudan. He has conducted research and implemented health programmes in several countries in sub-Saharan Africa.
Kebede is interested in developing and co-creating catalytic and innovative investments and programme implementation, driving impact and change in policy and practice at the local and global levels.
He earned his Ph.D. in public health and epidemiology from the University of Sussex and the University of Brighton in the UK, holds a Master of Public Health degree from Jimma University and is a graduate of the Executive Global Health Leadership Programme from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. He was also a Wellcome Trust International Fellow.
