Advisory Board Members

The MENTOR Initiative is advised on technical and operational management and strategic planning by a volunteer and unpaid advisory board.

Mr Paul Jobson: After an international career in senior management at Massey Ferguson and Perkins Engines, Paul became a partner in ECi, a venture capital firm operating predominantly in the management buyout market in the UK Former Chief Investment Officer of Commonwealth Development Corporation (CDC).  He retired in 2001 and now advises charities and businesses on strategy and business development.

Dr. Richard Brennan, MBBS, MPH: Former Health Director of the International Rescue Committee (IRC), a non-governmental organization that provides humanitarian assistance, protection and resettlement services to refugees and victims of armed conflict.

Dr. Ron Waldman MD. MPH: A Professor in the Departments of Population and Family Health and Epidemiology at the Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University who specialize in child health in developing countries.  He was the founder and former director of the school's Program on Forced Migration and Health. His career has spanned from the World Health Organization's Global Smallpox Eradication Program in Bangladesh, to over 20 years with Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and work in the major complex emergencies.

Warren Lancaster: A consultant in international development working as the Senior Development Advisor with Geneva Global. Previously Warren led The Leprosy Mission, England. He was CEO of Merlin (Medical Emergency Relief International). Warren also held leadership roles in Medair and worked with the British Red Cross and the principal relief agencies in the UK examining the feasibility of an Ombudsman for humanitarian assistance.

Prof. Christian Lengeler: Christian Lengeler is the Head of the health Interventions Unit at the Swiss Tropical and Public health Institute, and a Professor of Epidemiology at the University of Basel (Switzerland). His educational background is in biology/parasitology (Neuchâtel) and epidemiology (London).

He has been working for the past 25 years on the epidemiology and control of tropical diseases, with a strong focus on malaria.  He was instrumental in developing insecticide-treated nets (ITNs) as a malaria control tool in the 1990s and has pioneered many developments in large-scale vector control in sub-Saharan Africa. From 1992 to 1995 he was the scientific coordinator of the four WHO/TDR trials in Gambia, Burkina Faso, Ghana and Kenya which demonstrated the substantial effect of ITNs on child mortality and morbidity. He was then responsible for the KINET programme in Tanzania, which demonstrated that the beneficial effect of ITNs was also seen under programmatic conditions.

Currently, his group is involved in understanding and improving access to malaria treatment in malaria-endemic countries, as well as the introduction of improved diagnostic strategies. His main interests are operational research and the process of generating, packaging and disseminating evidence on health interventions for communicable diseases.