Angela Nguku
Angela Nguku is the Founder and Executive Director of the White Ribbon Alliance Kenya, a people-led movement for reproductive, maternal, and newborn health and rights. A passionate maternal, newborn, and adolescent health champion, Angela’s career spans over 16 years of dedicated work towards ending preventable maternal and newborn deaths globally and amplifying the voices of marginalized and vulnerable populations in Kenya, throughout Africa, and around the world. A graduate midwife and an accomplished thought leader, Angela combines her proven influencing and negotiation skills in advocating for the accountability for the health of mothers, newborns, adolescents, and frontline health workers mainly nurses and midwives. She has extensive knowledge and hands-on experience managing and evaluating multi-donor, multi-year and multi-country programs, particularly in the field of Global Health with a special focus on Maternal and Newborn Health, Adolescent, Sexual reproductive Health, and Human Rights and Gender Mainstreaming. Angela serves as a member of the Peoples’ Advisory Board of the Lancet Global Health Commission on High-Quality Health Systems in the SDGs Era, the Civil Society Advisory Group for the Global Action Plan for Healthier Lives and Well Being as well as the Deliver for Good Campaign Advisory group in Kenya. Angela, a Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation 2018 Goalkeeper is an ardent writer and speaker on matters of accountability in the global health space and has written varied articles on accountability for maternal, newborn, and adolescent health, quality of health care as defined by women and girls self-expressed needs, citizen engagement in the UHC design and implementation, self-care as the root of health care, why we need to decolonize global health, philanthropy and its role in driving quality UHC implementation, why investing in frontline health workers is the best buy and most recently why the COVID-19 response should not overshadow maternal newborn health care among mothers. In 2020, Angela was selected to the joint USAID and Bill and Melinda Gates Global Maternal and Newborn Health Align MNH Steering Committee that seeks to advance learning and investments toward a reduction of the high maternal and newborn health deaths in low and middle-income countries mainly in Africa and Asia and the steering committee for National Advocacy Funding that advocates for national CSOS funding for national-level advocacy for health accountability.
Term Expires: December 31, 2023