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 a responsibility of developing and managing 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 multicountry research on NTDs. Kebede has worked as a consultant with the World Health Organization Africa Regional Office on NTDs supporting the Expanded Special Program to Eliminate NTDs (ESPEN). He 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 serval non-governmental organizations in Ethiopia and Darfur, Sudan. He has conducted research and implemented health programs in several countries in sub-Saharan Africa.

Kebede is interested in developing and co-creating catalytic and innovative investments, program implementation, driving impact and change in policy and practice at local and global level.

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 and he was a Wellcome Trust International Fellow.