Anita Zaidi

Anita Zaidi is the president of the foundation’s Gender Equality division. In this role, Anita oversees the foundation’s efforts to achieve gender equality by integrating gender across the foundation’s global work and investing in women’s economic empowerment, women’s leadership, and removing barriers to women and girls being able to thrive. The mission of the Gender Equality division is a gender equal world.

Anita joined the foundation in 2014 to lead a team focused on vaccine development for people in the poorest parts of the world, surveillance to identify and address causes of death in children in the most underserved areas, and significantly reducing the adverse consequences of diarrheal and enteric infections on children’s health in low and middle-income countries (LMICs). She served as director of the foundation’s Enteric and Diarrheal Diseases team and Vaccine Development and Surveillance team until November 2022. In those roles, Anita championed innovative work on behalf of low-income women and children, including the creation of the Women Leaders in Global Health program—now called WomenLift Health—to promote diversity in global health leadership. She also worked closely with the foundation’s Maternal, Newborn & Child Health Discovery & Tools team. She has led the Gender Equality division since November 2020.

Previously, Anita served as the chair of the Department of Pediatrics and Child Health at the Aga Khan University (AKU) in Karachi, Pakistan, where she worked to reduce child mortality through the prevention and treatment of illness.

Anita earned a medical degree, specializing in pediatric infectious diseases, at AKU and completed further training at Duke University, Boston Children’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School, and the Harvard School of Public Health. Anita has published more than 200 research papers on vaccine-preventable diseases and newborn infections in resource-limited settings.

In 2013, Anita became the first recipient of the $1 million Caplow Children’s Prize for her pioneering work in bringing health services and wraparound care to mothers and children in poverty-stricken communities in Karachi. In 2014, she was nominated as a physician of the year by Medscape. In 2021, she was elected to the U.S. National Academy of Medicine for global leadership in pediatric infectious disease research and capacity development for improving newborn and child survival in LMICs.