Dr. Allyson Bear is a global health expert with over 25 years of experience strengthening health systems, advancing equitable health outcomes in low- and middle-income countries, and managing large-scale, high-profile efforts to drive health innovation at the country and global level.
Dr. Bear has contributed to global market shaping and scale-up efforts since the early 2000s, beginning with GAVI’s PneumoADIP and the Hib Initiative, where she co-led the country support mechanism, providing technical assistance to Ministries of Health for vaccine rollout and impact evaluation. At USAID (2009–2015), she led the development of flagship U.S. Government health initiatives — including the Global Health Initiative, Ending Preventable Child and Maternal Deaths Action Plan, and the Global Health Security Agenda. While based in Bangladesh and Mali, she oversaw catalytic investments in cold chain systems, digital health, health workforce, and governance. She collaborated closely with ministries to co-design frameworks for scaling high-impact interventions as part of national health sector strategies.
From 2016 to 2019, Dr. Bear led strategic and evaluative work that shaped major global health investments. She revised USAID’s maternal and child health investment frameworks to align with the SDGs, evaluated its flagship maternal and child health program, and designed a $1B successor strategy. She also led evaluation of the $3.5B Feed the Future nutrition portfolio, providing evidence that informed its Congressional reauthorization. Her advisory work includes digital health evaluations, such as a telecom-based health insurance product in Bangladesh that informed regional scale-up strategies. From 2019 to 2024, she led global portfolios managing integrated development programs across 25–45 countries, overseeing teams of 500–1,650 staff.
Dr. Bear holds degrees in social policy (BS, Northwestern) and public health (MPH, DrPH, Johns Hopkins). She has lived and worked for over a decade in Burkina Faso, Mali, Indonesia, Bangladesh and Palestine. She is fluent in French (professional) and English (native), and currently resides in Baltimore, Maryland.
