Sara Vernam Email & Phone Number

Seattle, Wa, Us

My role involves managing and driving key projects on strategy, operations, communications, and leadership engagement related to our HPV and Clinical Vaccine Development Portfolios. I manage interdependencies across initiatives, tracking progress, making decisions, identifying and mitigating risks and resolving conflicts and issues. Working with both upstream colleagues on Vaccine Development and downstream colleagues on our delivery team, as well as our grantees and partners, I helped achieve a policy recommendation from WHO SAGE in April 2022 that stated that one dose of HPV vaccine (rather than two) is acceptable for females and males aged 9-20. With this one dose recommendation, 50 countries have switched to one dose or adopted one dose HPV vaccination, which will result in more girls being vaccinated against HPV and protected against cervical cancer. I am currently focused on uptake of the one dose recommendation; expanding HPV vaccination beyond the current target population; working with Developing Country Vaccine Manufacturers to develop new, higher valency, low-cost HPV vaccines; and the development of combination vaccines and changes to the infant immunization schedule across Gavi countries.

Seattle, Washington

As a Program Officer for Strategic Planning & Engagement, I worked in our CEO's office leading advocacy planning for Bill Gates, Melinda French Gates, and our CEO Mark Suzman. I managed the Advocacy and Outreach Plan (AOP), a strategic external engagement plan for our co-chairs and CEO that involved input from every team at the foundation and balanced the foundation's highest priority advocacy needs with the areas that our co-chairs and CEO could lend their time, voice, and credibility to in order to help achieve the foundation's goals. I also staffed Bill Gates on multiple trips/engagements, including in New York, Dubai, Abu Dhabi, and a keynote speech to AAAS in Seattle.

Seattle, Wa

As a Senior Program Coordinator for our Global Health division, I worked across the Vaccine Development and Discovery & Tools for Maternal, Newborn & Child Health (MNCH D&T) teams to manage a grant portfolio of over 100 grants and contracts totaling $425M. I developed and managed relationships with key external partners and oversaw the management of their grant awards, working with program/senior program officers, deputy directors and finance colleagues to make decisions about funding and ensure timeliness of key reporting elements. I took on special projects across both teams and led initiative meetings for HPV and gut health, including developing agendas, facilitating meetings, and recording meeting minutes and action items.

As a program coordinator in the Global Health division, I worked across the Pneumonia and Enteric and Diarrheal Disease programs to manage a grant portfolio of 80 grants and contracts totaling $100M. I worked with the business and finance teams to manage portfolio pipelines and ensure timeliness of payment and reporting milestones. I worked closely with our grantees to help develop and refine grant funding proposals and developed a new mechanism for grant making that has since been widely adopted across the foundation.

Seattle, Wa

As a Program Manager at Amplio (formerly Literacy Bridge), I managed our day to day programs in Ghana, working with field staff there to ensure the timely delivery of the Talking Book program, an on-demand audio program delivered through the Talking Book device that was updated monthly with key messages on health behaviors and agriculture techniques. I administered a large grant from UNICEF and managed the relationship with UNICEF and other funding partners and assisted the Executive Director in development efforts. As part of my work at Amplio I spent 1 month in Jirapa, Upper West Ghana, living and working with the staff in our Ghana office to help refine programs and listen to needs on the ground.

Seattle, Wa

As a program coordinator for UW's Global Business Center within the Foster School of Business, I managed day to day operations for the Center and the administration of our federal grant from the Department of Education. I co-led the Global Social Entrepreneurship Competition, a social impact competition for students around the world who came to Seattle to pitch their ideas and find investors. I also led the development of our grant application to the Department of Education during the last year of our four-year federal grant.

Seattle, Wa

While in graduate school I worked with Literacy Bridge (now Amplio) to research best practices for behavior change communication on key health interventions that have an outsized impact, including things like hand washing at key times, using bed nets, exclusively breastfeeding for the first six months of life, and delivering with a skilled attendant. Literacy Bridge hired me as a Program Manager after the completion of the project and graduation from my MPA program.

Boston, Ma

In my first job out of college, I managed a program for undergraduates that gave small grants to students to do research with BU professors during the academic year across all disciplines. I also managed the Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) program that sponsored underrepresented minority students to come to BU for an 8-week summer program and placed them in STEM labs across campus, working with professors to define and execute on a research project. I selected 20 applicants from pools of 600 annual applicants, managed all communications, travel bookings, and summer programming during their BU experiences.

Bachelor Of Arts, International Relations

Master Of Public Administration (Mpa), Public Policy Analysis