Mariam Claeson, M.D., M.P.H., is the Director for the Maternal, Newborn and Child Health team at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which she joined in July 2012.  She was previously the Regional Program Coordinator for AIDS in the South Asia Region of the World Bank (2005 – 2012), based in Delhi 2009-2012.  Mariam was the Lead Public Health Specialist in the Health, Nutrition and Population, Human Development Network of the World Bank (1998- 2004), managing the HNP Millennium Development Goals work program to support accelerated progress in countries, and coordinating the public health cluster and thematic group. She was the co-editor of theDisease Control Priorities in Developing Countries, second edition (2006) and coauthored the call for action: Knowledge into action for child survival (2003), and the World Bank report on The Millennium Development goals for health; Rising to the Challenges (2004).

Prior to joining the World Bank, Mariam worked with the World Health Organization from 1987-1995, for several years as program manager for the WHO Global Program for the Control of Diarrheal Diseases (CDD) and on the development of the Integrated Management of Childhood Illness initiative. She has several years of field experience working in developing countries, in clinical practice at the rural district level (in Tanzania, Bangladesh and Bhutan); in national program management on immunization and diarrheal disease control (Ethiopia 1984-1986); and, for the World Bank in health sector development projects in middle- and low-income countries, including in China, Egypt, Jordan, the Philippines and Uzbekistan, and in national HIV/AIDS programs, including Afghanistan and India.