Dr. Njeri Gitau

 Dr. Njeri Gitau is an Award- Winning Public health specialist and a Rockefeller fellow on social innovation with over 20 years’ experience in the health sector. She works at the Office of the President, Kenya, Government Delivery Unit as a Senior Director. She also serves on the Global Fund Technical Review panel as a focal point and expert on resilient and sustainable health systems. She previously worked for the World Bank Group as a Senior Health Specialist, on Health Programs in the African Region. She also sits on several boards in the health and education sector.

She has wide experience and in-depth knowledge of the public and private health sectors in Africa and other emerging markets with expertise in global health systems strengthening, private health sector development policy formulation and development, regulatory reform with a focus on quality of care, health care financing,

program management and community health systems. She has expertise and skills in organizational leadership, transformation and growth.

She has experience in building effective partnerships nationally, regionally and internationally to influence policy and practice in the scale up or replication of successful interventions e.g. at Presidential Delivery Unit, she led the Health and Governance portfolio which consisted of the State Departments of Health, National Treasury, Foreign Affairs, State Law , Interior & Coordination of National Government and Public Service, technically supporting the Cabinet Secretaries, Principal Secretaries , Staff and agencies of these state departments and Private Sector Players in delivering various government priority projects and programmes under the “one Government Approach”. She led in development and enactment of The Kenya Health Act 2017 which influenced the Nigeria Health Act and a regulatory framework for quality of care and patient safety piloted and scaled up in Kenya and adopted/replicated in Uganda and Mali; $500mn transformative Managed Equipment Scheme for medical equipment in Kenya a first in Africa is now being replicated across the region.

She has shaped private sector integration into National Health Systems in the East Africa region through establishment and strengthening of Public Private Dialogue platforms in (Ethiopia and Kenya respectively) including private sector participation in policy and regulatory reforms and received an inaugural international Public Private Dialogue award for this work.

These results were achieved through strong collaborative and effective team leadership and participation skills for which she received two awards within the World Bank Group for working with diverse teams across different sectors (education, manufacturing, agriculture and finance)and departments (development economics unit). She has a strong network amongst Donors, Banks, Private Sector, UN, Think Tanks which have been key in scaling or replicating policy, regulatory and system reforms that she has successfully led and implemented. She has great people management skills having directly supervised teams as large as 60 and led diverse and multidisciplinary and multisectoral teams of stakeholders (ranging 10 to 50) from government, private sector and partner organizations on collaborative initiatives.

Prior to joining WBG, she was a programme manager at African Medical Research Foundation (AMREF) – where she managed two large national programs focusing on strengthening the national HIV&AIDS M&E framework and health care provider capacity and strengthening organizational and technical capacity of community-based

organizations through a grant making and capacity building programme. She was also the gender focal point at AMREF Kenya.

Dr. Njeri has worked at the Ministry of health in Kenya, in the sector monitoring and planning department at national level and as a District Medical Officer of Health in charge of all health service delivery and provision where working jointly with stakeholders she transformed the district health system which had a significant impact on the health outcome indicators of the district.

She also sits on several boards in the health and education sector. She chaired the board of Nairobi Waldorf School Trust, Kenya (2017-2022), where she; Established school policies and regulations (from 0 to 14); Attained Financial growth from an annual revenue of Ksh. 83M to 159M ( ~50%)Increased student enrollment by 40%; Registered the Waldorf Curriculum with National Ministry of Education; Established the first Waldorf High School in East Africa; Developed the schools’ first Strategic plan 2019 to 2024; She is a Board Advisor to Open Phences and Savannah Informatics; A non-executive director of the Center for International Health and Biosecurity-Kenya and a Trustee and Member of the Board of New Faces New Voices Kenya.

She holds a Bachelor of Medicine and Surgery degree from Makerere University, Kampala Uganda and a Postgraduate Diploma and Masters’ of Science in Public health from London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine – University of London