Sue joined ASAP in 2014 and was appointed Director in 2015. Sue is based in Hanoi, Vietnam and has 20 years experience leading tuberculosis (TB) and HIV advocacy campaigns, managing multi-country TB, HIV, reproductive health and family planning (RH/FP) projects and programs, establishing and coordinating civil society advocacy coalitions and conducting policy analysis and research.
Having grown up internationally, Sue always knew that she wanted to work on global issues. After university, she applied to become a volunteer with the U.S. Peace Corps to gain firsthand experience of the real challenges and difficulties faced by communities in developing countries. Sue was assigned as a community development volunteer in a small town in Côte d’Ivoire, West Africa. During her two-year service, she collaborated with community leaders to develop and run health and hygiene education sessions for new mothers at the local hospital and at a vocational school for adolescent girls who had dropped out of school. These experiences made her passionate about health because she could see the women and girls becoming more and more empowered with every new piece of information they were learning.
Sue’s professional career includes work for leading U.S.-based advocacy organizations, RESULTS and Treatment Action Group (TAG). For RESULTS, Sue drove TB resource mobilization advocacy campaigns targeting major bilateral donors (U.S., U.K. Canada, Japan) as well as the World Bank and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria. Her work with Treatment Action Group (TAG) focused on working in coalition with HIV and AIDS organizations to advocate for increased investment in HIV research. In 2010, Sue moved to Accra, Ghana with her family and through FHI 360, provided short-term support to the National Association of People Living With HIV and AIDS in Ghana (NAP+ Ghana) to improve their capacity and skills in effective advocacy for scaled up treatment. Following her work with NAP+ Ghana, Sue spent the remainder of her time in Ghana as Reproductive Health Program Manager for the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) West Africa regional health office based in Accra. For USAID West Africa, she finalized and managed the implementation of a five-year RH/FP strategy across 14 countries in the region. The strategy was implemented by three main projects aimed at increasing access to RH/FP services at the facility and community levels, improving the policy environment for better quality and delivery of RH/FP services, and ensuring adequate and efficient contraceptive commodity supply.
For ASAP, Sue led a complex research and strategic planning process on gender-based violence and gender equality for the International HIV/AIDS Alliance and supported the technical content for a video campaign to increase understanding of long-acting reversible contraceptives (LARCs) among health care providers. Sue has also provided technical assistance for the Global Fund’s Community, Rights and Gender Department and is currently working on projects for UNAIDS.
My energy comes from working and interacting with individuals all over the world who share the same passion for ensuring every human being has access to good health care. ASAP brings together people who are united by the belief that health is a human right and that this right applies to all members of society, including the most vulnerable and marginalized.