How global development organizations can effectively engage leading tech companies

Catherine Cheney is a senior reporter for Devex. She covers the West Coast of the United States, focusing on the role of technology, innovation, and philanthropy in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. And she frequently represents Devex as a speaker and moderator. Prior to joining Devex, Catherine earned her bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Yale University, worked as a web producer for POLITICO and reporter for World Politics Review, and helped to launch NationSwell. Catherine has reported domestically and internationally for outlets including The Atlantic and The Washington Post. Catherine also works for the Solutions Journalism Network, a nonprofit that trains and connects reporters to cover responses to problems.

As Salesforce.org’s Director of Humanitarian Impact Data, Rakesh Bharania is responsible for defining engagement with the humanitarian community, focusing on the principled, safe and ethical application of innovative technologies to accelerate humanitarian and development impact. He has spent more than 27 years in the humanitarian sector, focusing on the intersection of emerging technologies and international humanitarian crisis response and development. He is currently working as a strategist for the Salesforce.org response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Some of Rakesh’s past work includes responding to the September 11, 2001 attacks and Hurricane Katrina in the United States, the earthquakes in Haiti and Japan, Super Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines, the Ebola response in West Africa, and the Syrian refugee crisis in Europe. Prior to Salesforce.org, he worked on the privacy engineering team at Apple, focused on EU GDPR compliance and related policy and engineering work, and at Cisco where he helped to create one of the earliest private sector humanitarian technology response teams.

Until recently, Anthony served as a lead consultant for technical agencies of the United Nations and the World Bank, employing satellite data and digital solutions as a primary decision-making tool, to pursue local capacity building objectives in Central Asia, the South Pacific, and eastern and southern Africa.
Anthony was previously Chief Strategic Engagement Officer for the Radiant Earth Foundation, creating partnerships able to harness new geo-spatial and analytical tools to build powerful, common applications for global health, food security, and environmental missions, including climate change projects for Fiji, Vanuatu, and the Solomon Islands and tracking vector-borne disease outbreaks linked to illegal mining activity in Peru.

This followed a development role with the Center for the Advancement of Science in Space (CASIS) working with multinational organizations and commercial companies, to deploy emerging technologies on the International Space Station (ISS). He was a Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Climate and Security, focusing on satellite technologies, climate change and state stability.

Outside of public focused roles, Anthony also spent significant time in the private sector including COO for a UAS company providing Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and Data-as-a-Service [DaaS] solutions, around the integration of drones, ground-based robotics, and satellite based remote sensing, for governments based in the global south.

Graduate of I.E. Business School, Brown University, and University of Canterbury, NZ.

Nisha Deolalikar leads health programs at Meta, where she develops cross-cutting initiatives to support global health organizations to use the platform for health impact. Prior to Meta, Nisha was a director at an NYC-based consulting firm, Global Health Strategies, where she designed campaigns to move the needle on issues like health systems strengthening, access to medicines and HIV-related law reform. She also focused on building public-private partnerships across tech companies, UN agencies, civil society and governments to improve health outcomes. Nisha started her career in international development, working with nonprofits in India and Nepal on climate, education and human rights issues. She also later held research fellowships at the University of Bergen, Norway, where she focused on topics in global health ethics, and at the U.S. Department of Labor, where she supported research on international child labor and forced labor. Nisha holds a Bachelor’s degree from Harvard University and a Master’s degree from University College London.

Marissa Gilman is an experienced global health professional and former management consultant with 10 years of experience at the intersection of health, development, and the private sector. She has consulted for clients in strategy, research, and innovation, advising on areas ranging from new product development to institutional change management in health systems. Past employers and clients include Johnson & Johnson, Accenture, The Global Fund, USAID, and Google.
Marissa is passionate about improving health access in emerging markets through collaboration and innovation, informed by market-driven and design approaches. She now leads the global health practice at Resonance, where she works across public and private sectors to strengthen health outcomes and systems in emerging markets. She co-created Resonance’s Inclusive Innovation Exchange, a platform to spotlight local and global leaders in global health innovation to promote partnerships and long-term sustainability. She received her MBA from The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and her undergraduate degree in anthropology from Grinnell College.

Andrew Pattison is team lead for digital channels in the department of digital health and innovation at the World Health Organization. At WHO, Andy strives to amplify vital public health messages to more people through more channels. During the COVID-19 emergency, Andy has engaged the digital sector to support this mission and leads a task force of over 40 companies working to tackle misinformation, raise quality content, and develop new digital channels. Andy has also been the web lead for over 35 emergencies while at WHO, with deployments to the Africa region to support both Ebola and cholera outbreaks.