Barry Bloom is Dean of the Faculty and Professor of Immunology and Infectious Diseases at the Harvard School of Public Health. He received his B.A. degree, and an honorary S.D., from Amherst College, his A.M. from Harvard University, and his Ph.D. from the Rockefeller University. Dr. Bloom served as a consultant to the White House on International Health Policy in 1977-8. He is a member of the WHO Advisory Committee on Health Research and has chaired the WHO Committees on Leprosy Research and Tuberculosis Research, and the Scientific and Technical Advisory Committee of the UNDP/World Bank/WHO Special Programme for Research and Training in Tropical Diseases. Dr. Bloom chairs the WHO UNAIDS Vaccine Advisory Committee and serves on the National AIDS Vaccine Research Committee. He recently received a major grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation for an AIDS prevention initiative in Nigeria. He was a member of both the National Advisory Council of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the U.S. National Vaccine Advisory Committee. He was elected president of the American Association of Immunologists in 1984 and served as President of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB) in 1985. He currently serves on the Scientific Advisory Board of the National Center for Infectious Diseases of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and the National Advisory Board of the Fogarty International Center at the NIH. Dr. Bloom is chairman of the Board of Trustees of the International Vaccine Institute. He was co-chair of the Board on Global Health of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences. He received the first Bristol-Myers Squibb Award for Distinguished Research in Infectious Diseases, shared the Novartis Award in Immunology in 1998, and was the recipient of the Robert Koch Gold Medal for lifetime research in infectious diseases in 1999. Dr. Bloom is a member the Institute of Medicine, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the National Academy of Sciences.

Ken Bernard is Assistant Surgeon General at the United States Public Health Service. In January 2001, Dr. Bernard was assigned by the U.S. Surgeon General to the office of Senator Bill Frist to work on international health issues of priority concern to both the Congress and the Department of Health and Human Services.

From August 1998 to January 2001, Dr. Bernard served as Special Advisor to the Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs. In this position on the National Security Council staff, he was the senior White House advisor on international health issues as they relate to foreign affairs and national security. Prior to joining the NSC, Dr. Bernard served as the International Health AttachÈ and senior representative of the U.S. Secretary of Health at the U.S. Mission to the UN in Geneva, Switzerland (1994-1998). In this position, he acted as the senior health policy advisor to the Ambassador in discussions with the World Health Organization and other UN organizations in Geneva.

From 1989-1994, he was the Associate Director for Medical and Scientific Affairs in the Office of International Health, Department of Health and Human Services. From 1984-1989 Dr. Bernard served as the International Health Policy Advisor to the Director of the U.S. Peace Corps. Between 1982-1984, he directed the U.S. national and international consultation unit on human rabies prevention, treatment and vaccine development at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, Georgia.

Dr. Bernard joined the U.S. Public health Service in 1980. He currently holds the rank of Rear Admiral and is an Assistant Surgeon General. He has received the USPHS Meritorious Service Medal, the Surgeon General's Exemplary Service Medal, the Secretary of Defense Medal for Outstanding Public Service, and the USPHS Outstanding Service and Commendation Medals. Dr. Bernard received his AB degree from the University of California, Berkeley in 1971, an M.D. from the University of California, Davis in 1975, and the DTM&H degree from the University of London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine in 1977. He is Board Certified in Internal Medicine. Dr. Bernard is the author of numerous articles, monographs and book chapters on international health policy and public health. He is married to Karen K. Bernard and lives in Alexandria, Virginia. They have three children.

Raymond V. Gilmartin joined Merck & Co., Inc., in June 1994 as president and chief executive officer. He was named to the additional post of chairman of the board in November 1994. Prior to joining Merck, Mr. Gilmartin was chairman, president and chief executive officer of Becton Dickinson and Company. He joined the company in 1976 as vice president, strategic planning, taking on positions of increasing responsibility over the next 18 years. An active participant in health industry affairs, Mr. Gilmartin is chairman of the Healthcare Institute of New Jersey, and a past chairman of the Pharmaceutical Research & Manufacturers of America, now serving on its executive committee. He is a trustee of the Healthcare Leadership Council, a group dedicated to excellence in America’s health care system, and he is chairman of Valley Health System, Inc. Mr. Gilmartin also serves as chairman of the Council on Competitiveness and the board of associates of the Harvard Business School. He is a director of The College Fund/UNCF, and a member of the Business Roundtable, the Business Council, and the Council on Competitiveness. He also serves on the boards of directors of General Mills, Inc. and the Public Service Enterprise Group, Inc. Mr. Gilmartin received a B.S. in electrical engineering from Union College in 1963. He received an MBA from Harvard Business School in 1968.

Jeffrey D. Sachs is the Director of the Center for International Development (CID) and former Director of the Harvard Institute for International Development (HIID). He also serves as Co-Chairman of the Advisory Board of The Global Competitiveness Report, and has been a consultant to the IMF, the World Bank, the OECD, and the United Nations Development Program. He was cited in The New York Times Magazine as "probably the most important economist in the world" and in the December 1994 Time Magazine issue on 50 promising young leaders as "the world's best-known economist." In 1997, the French magazine Le Nouvel Observateur named Professor Sachs as one of the world's 50 most important leaders on globalization. His syndicated newspaper column appears in more than 50 countries around the world, and he is a frequent contributor to major publications such as the New York Times, the Financial Times of London, and the Economist Magazine.

During 1986-1990, Sachs was an advisor to the President of Bolivia, and in that capacity helped to design and implement a stabilization program which reduced Bolivia's inflation rate from 40,000 percent per year to the current rate of 10 percent per year. Sachs is also one of the architects of Bolivia's debt buyback program of 1988, which was the first case of a debt reduction program in the 1980s, and which successfully cut Bolivia's commercial bank debt by half. The Bolivian buyback became an import milestone in resolving the developing country debt crisis. During 1988-90, Sachs also advised the Governments of Argentina, Brazil, Ecuador, and Venezuela on various aspects of financial reform.

In 1989, Sachs advised Poland's Solidarity movement on economic reforms, and at the request of the Solidarity leadership, prepared a draft program of radical economic transformation. After August 1989, he advised Poland's first post-communist government on the introduction of radical economic reforms in 1990 and 1991. In January 1999, Sachs received the Commanders Cross of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland, a high Polish national honor bestowed by the President of the Republic of Poland.

From the Fall of 1991 through January 1994, Sachs led a team of economic advisors for Russian President Boris Yeltsin on issues of macroeconomic stabilization, privatization, market liberalization, and international financial relations. In 1991, Sachs advised the Slovene Government on the introduction of a new national currency, and in 1992, advised the Estonian government on the introduction of a new national currency. In both cases, the successful monetary reform enabled these countries to end a hyperinflation and reestablish monetary stability. During 1991-93, he also advised the Mongolian Government on macroeconomic reforms and privatization.

In 1990, Sachs met with Pope John Paul II as a member of a group of economists invited to confer with the Pontifical Council on Justice and Peace in advance of the Papal Encyclical Centesimus Annus. They met again in 1999 in Sachs' capacity as the Economic Advisor to the Jubilee 2000 movement.

Sachs' research interests include the links of health and development, economic geography, globalization, transition to market economies in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, international financial markets, international macroeconomic policy coordination, emerging markets, economic development and growth, global competitiveness, and macroeconomic policies in developing and developed countries. In 1987 and 1988, Sachs directed a large-scale research project at the NBER on the international debt crisis, which is published under Sachs' editorship in a four-volume series, Developing Country Debt and the Economic Performance, University of Chicago Press, 1989. From 1990-92 he directed a project on economic reform in the Soviet Republics and in Eastern Europe for the United Nations University, World Institute for Development Economics Research (WIDER), in Helsinki, Finland. He is now directing a major research program on global public health and economic development as Chairman of the WHO Commission on Macroeconomics and Health.

Sachs has published more than one hundred scholarly articles, and has authored or edited many books. His NBER volume, Economics of Worldwide Stagflation, co-authored with Michael Bruno, was published in 1985, and his books Global Linkages: Macroeconomic Interdependence and Cooperation in the World Economy, co-authored with Warwick McKibbin, and Peru's Path to Recovery, co-authored with Carlos Paredes, were published by The Brookings Institution in 1991. Sachs' textbook on Macroeconomics in the Global Economy, co-authored with Felipe Larrain, was first published in 1993, and has appeared in German, Spanish, Russian, Chinese, Japanese and Portuguese. His account of Poland's reforms, Poland's Jump to the Market Economy, was published in Fall 1993 by MIT Press. In 1994, the two volumes on The Transition in Eastern Europe, co-edited with Olivier Blanchard and Kenneth Froot, were published by the National Bureau of Economic Research and The University of Chicago Press. In 1995, Sachs published, with the BBC, a Russian-language book on Russia and the Market Economy. The John M. Olin Critical Issues Series on The Rule of Law and Economic Reform in Russia, which Sachs co-edited with Katharina Pistor, was published in Spring 1997 by Westview Press.

Sachs and his colleagues at HIID and CID have helped to produce several important global studies. Since 1996 he has led a team of economists in annually preparing The Global Competitiveness Report, in 1998 The Asian Competitiveness Report, and in 1998 and 2000, The African Competitiveness Report with the World Economic Forum. Along with David Bloom, he coordinated a large research project culminating in the publication of Emerging Asia: Changes and Challenges by the Asian Development Bank in May 1997. In February 1997, Sachs and other experts at HIID prepared a proposal for "A New Partnership for Growth in Africa," which has contributed to the reformulation of U.S. foreign assistance policies with regard to Africa.

Sachs was born in Detroit, Michigan, in 1954. He received his B.A., summa cum laude, from Harvard College in 1976, and his M.A. and Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1978 and 1980 respectively. He joined the Harvard faculty as an Assistant Professor in 1980, and was promoted to Associate Professor in 1982 and Full Professor in 1983.