Biography

Helga Fogstad

Executive Director

Helga Fogstad is the Executive Director of PMNCH. Strongly committed to human rights, public health and gender issues, Ms. Fogstad has extensive experience in forging partnerships and consensus building to promote the health and well-being of women, children and adolescents. She is a health economist with more than 30 years of public health experience, including many years in developing countries at sub-national and national levels, as well as at the global level within multilateral and bilateral agencies.

Prior to her time at PMNCH, Ms. Fogstad was the Director of the Department of Global Health, Education and Research at the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (Norad). In this and other roles at Norad, she represented Norway in several global health initiatives and structures, as well as guided Norway’s efforts to promote the rapid scale-up of proven cost-effective interventions with a special focus on the health-related Millennium Development Goals for women and children. In this capacity, she was actively engaged in political mobilization and advocacy initiatives, particularly surrounding the implementation of the Global Strategy for Women’s and Children’s Health, and related UN commissions on information and accountability, and on life-saving commodities for women’s and children’s health.