Advisory Council

Co-Founder, UAEM

Amy Kapczynski is now Professor of Law at Yale Law School and also Co-Director of the Global Health Justice Partnerships as well as the Collaboration of Research Integrity and Transparency. She was previously an Assistant Professor of Law at the University of California at Berkeley Law School. Her research focuses on intellectual property law, international law, and global health issues. Amy received her J.D. from Yale Law School, and clerked for the U.S. Supreme Court (for Justices O’Connor and Breyer, 2005-06) and the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit (for Judge Guido Calabresi, 2003-04). She served as a post-doctoral fellow at the Yale Law School and the Yale School of Public Health (2004-2005; 2006-2007). While at Yale Law School, Kapczynski helped lead efforts that resulted in Yale University and Bristol-Myers Squibb permitting generic competition and providing steep price discounts for an important anti-AIDS drug (d4T) in South Africa. Drawing on this experience, Kapczynski co-founded Universities Allied for Essential Medicines with other students in 2002.

Rachel Kiddell-Monroe is a lawyer and an activist focusing on humanitarian assistance, access to medicines, global health, governance and global health ethics. After working for several years with grassroots organisations in Indonesia, Rachel joined MSF. She headed emergency humanitarian missions in Djibouti, Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda before, during and after the 1994 genocide. After acting as programme director for MSF Canada, she became MSF’s Regional Humanitarian Affairs Advisor for Latin America based in Costa Rica. She went onto lead the MSF Access Campaign in Canada. Rachel is an elected member of Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) International Board of Directors and a Special Advisor to Universities Allied for Essential Medicines (UAEM). Rachel also sits on the board of UAEM Europe, on the Advisory Council of UAEM Brazil and the board of the Young Professionals for Chronic Disease Network. Rachel is currently a Professor of Practice at McGill University, lectures on international development and is part of the McGill University Health Centres Clinical Ethics Committee.

Anthony D. So, MD, MPA is Professor of the Practice and Founding Director of the Innovation + Design Enabling Access (IDEA) Initiative at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. His work on issues of globalization and health equity builds on his experience as a Rockefeller Foundation program officer, where he helped to shape the Foundation’s initiatives on access to medicines, tobacco control, and a cross-thematic program on charting a fairer course for intellectual property rights. Anthony has served as Co-Convener of the UN Interagency Coordination Group on Antimicrobial Resistance and as Expert Advisory Group member to the UN Secretary-General’s High-Level Panel on Access to Medicines. He has co-chaired a technical working group for the 2021 WHO Fair Pricing Forum; contributed to the

Institute of Medicine’s Committee on Accelerating Rare Diseases Research and Orphan Product Development; and serves on the Technical Advisory Group of the WHO’s COVID-19 Technology Access Pool (C-TAP). Trained in internal medicine, Anthony completed a six-year, BA-MD program at the University of Michigan and his MPA at Princeton’s School of Public and International Affairs.

He has served as a White House Fellow, as an Aspen Institute Crown Fellow, and on various non-profit boards, including presently Public Citizen.

Ellen ‘t Hoen, LLM PhD, is a lawyer and public health advocate with over 30 years of experience working on pharmaceutical and intellectual property policies.

From 1999 until 2009 she was the director of policy for Médecins sans Frontières’ Campaign for Access to Essential Medicines. In 2009 she joined UNITAID in Geneva to set up the Medicines Patent Pool (MPP) She was the MPP’s first executive director until 2012. In 2005, 2006, 2010 and 2011 she was listed as one of the 50 most influential people in intellectual property by the journal Managing Intellectual Property. She has worked as an advisor to a number of governments, NGOs and international organisations. She is currently a researcher at the University Medical Centre at the University of Groningen, The Netherlands.

In 2020, she was appointed Officer of the Order of Oranje-Nassau, a royal award given by the King for her international work on equitable access to affordable medicines.

She has published widely on medicines law and policy issues. Her latest book “Private Patents and Public Health: Changing intellectual property rules for public health” was published July 2016.

She has a Masters of Laws from the University of Amsterdam and a PhD from the University of Groningen.

Sara Aviel was one of the original founders of UAEM—as an undergraduate at Yale, she helped lead the groundbreaking campaign that resulted in Yale’s patent concession on d4t, a key AIDS drug, in South Africa. Currently Sara serves as a senior advisor on international economic policy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and the Brookings Institution. Previously, Sara served for all eight years in senior positions in the Obama Administration including as the United States representative on the Board of the World Bank, the chief operating officer of the Office of Management and Budget, and a senior advisor to Secretary Geithner. Prior to joining the Obama Administration, Sara worked for international development organizations in Afghanistan, Kosovo, and throughout Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East. Ms. Aviel received an M.B.A, as well as M.A. and B.A. degrees in political science, from Yale University. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Bretton Woods Committee, and the Aspen Global Leadership Network, and is a fellow in the Aspen Institute’s inaugural Finance Leaders Fellowship.