Judith Timyan

International Development and Public Health Specialist

Judith Timyan is an international public health and development specialist with over 35 years’ experience in developing countries, including 20 years’ residence in overseas posts. The focus of her work is reproductive health, maternal and child health, HIV/AIDS, nutrition and health care systems.

She has worked in USAID missions in Bolivia, Haiti, Guatemala and Uganda as Senior Technical Advisor and Program Manager and additionally, in Guatemala, as Acting Director of the Health and Education Office. As a Population Leadership Fellow at USAID/Bolivia (1997-2001), she played an advisory role to the many USAID contractors working in population, health and nutrition and to the Bolivian government in the design of their five-year health plan.

During her six years in Haiti, she led the HIV/AIDS program in the early years of ramped-up US Government (USG) funding, initially the Presidential Prevention of Mother to Child Transmission program (2001-2002) and then the PEPFAR program (2006-2010), serving as inter-agency PEPFAR Coordinator for two years.  After the 2010 earthquake, she became the Health Lead on the USG inter-agency Haiti Task Force tasked with leading the response and reconstruction effort.

In USAID Guatemala, she led the design process of the health and education five-year strategies for the mission’s Country Development and Cooperation Strategy.  Most recently (early 2015) she advised the USAID/Uganda PEPFAR team on the restructuring of their program mandated by the recent pivot of PEPFAR towards maximizing epidemic control.

Prior to her USAID experience, she worked for Population Services International (1990-96), as Director of Health and Research and as Vice President. She served as Chief of Party of a large, integrated health contract with USAID in Dominican Republic (2002-2006).

She holds a PhD in anthropology (City University of New York, 1977) and spent the first 11 years of her professional career as a researcher at the University of Abidjan in the Ethno-sociology Institute and the Applied Linguistics Institute. She is fluent in Spanish and French; English is her mother tongue.