GHIS 2023 SPEAKERS
Keynote Speaker:
Dr. Richard Wamai
Prior to joining Northeastern Dr. Richard Wamai was a research fellow in the Takemi Program in International Health at Harvard School of Public Health. Before that, Dr. Wamai was a researcher at Oxford University (UK) Department of Social Policy. His previous work experience spans a number of other institutions including the London School of Economics, the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health and Institute for Public Policy, the World Bank, the Nordic-Africa Institute in Uppsala Sweden, and the University of Nairobi in Kenya. His research areas are: HIV/AIDS, focusing on male circumcision for HIV prevention, cost-effectiveness and policy in Africa; neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) in Kenya; human papillomavirus in Africa; and health systems and policy. At Northeastern, with professor Pollastri, Dr. Wamai co-leads the Integrated Initiative for Global Health to champion global health efforts at the university. In Kenya Dr. Wamai has opened The Research on Multi-Disease and Educational Services (TERMES) Center to accelerate his work on neglected diseases.
Panel Speakers:
Dr. Madhavi Venkatesan
Madhavi Venkatesan earned her doctorate, master’s and bachelor’s degrees in economics from Vanderbilt University and has published three economics textbooks under the series A Framework for Sustainable Practices: Economic Principles: A Primer, Foundations of Microeconomics and Foundations for Macroeconomics. In 2019 she published her fourth text, SDG8 – Sustainable Economic Growth and Decent Work for All. She is presently under contract with Routledge to write SDG12: Responsible Consumption and Production and her text, Economics of Sustainability is scheduled to be published by Springer in late 2021.
In 2016, Madhavi established Sustainable Practices, a 501(c)3 nonprofit with a mission “to facilitate a culture of sustainability as defined by reducing the human-made impact to the planet and its ecosystems” within Barnstable County, Massachusetts and is the organization’s executive director. In 2019, Sustainable Practices initiated the Municipal Plastic Bottle Ban campaign and in spring 2020, facilitated the Commercial Single-use Plastic Water Bottle Ban. As of July 2021, the Municipal Ban has been adopted in all 15 towns that constitute Barnstable County, and the Commercial Ban had been adopted by Town Meeting vote in ten towns and will be in effect in all ten towns in 2021. The organization is continuing its efforts related to the Commercial Ban.
Madhavi’s academic interests include the integration of sustainability into the economics curriculum. She has been active in promoting education and stakeholder engagement to incorporate ethics into the existing economic framework and her written work has largely focused on these topics as a catalyst to promoting sustainability. Madhavi has also contributed to the literature on the relationship between culture, sustainability, and economics, addressing the relationship between economic systems and cultural convergence. Prior to reentering academics in 2014, Madhavi held senior-level positions in investor relations for three U.S. domiciled insurers (Unum Group, AIG, and The Hartford).
Dr. Aleksandra Jakubowski
Dr. Aleksandra Jakubowski is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Health Sciences and the Department of Economics. Dr. Jakubowski’s research lies at the intersection of health economics and public policy. She designs field experiments and uses secondary data to investigate global health inequalities, with a focus on low- and middle- income countries. She works on multidisciplinary teams and in close partnership with communities and policy makers to ensure that her research is contextualized to the local setting. Dr. Jakubowski’s work examines the complex relationship between health and socio-economic status: what is the impact of public policies on health and economic functioning of households? and what are the social and individual drivers of healthcare decisions?
Research Interests
Global health, health economics, causal inference, econometrics, health disparities, women’s health, child health, women’s empowerment
