Our Team

Vanessa Mitchell

Vanessa Mitchell

Senior Program Officer II, East Africa & Francophone West Africa

Vanessa Mitchell is a French-American, who comes to The Challenge Initiative with over fifteen (15) years of experience working on various global public health projects, including extensive fieldwork in several developing countries.

After serving in the Peace Corps as a Community HIV/AIDS Prevention volunteer in Togo, she worked at Family Health International (FHI) as an Associate Technical Officer and then received her MPH in Nutrition from the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health in 2007. She spent the next nine years providing programmatic, financial and technical support, from both HQ and abroad, at Johns Hopkins Center for Communication Programs, Foundation for the Advancement of International Medical Education and Research, and most recently at Jhpiego where she was a Senior Program Officer.

At Jhpiego, Vanessa provided programmatic leadership to implement a large USAID-funded health service delivery project in Haiti, called Services de Santé de Qualité pour Haiti (SSQH). She is fluent in English and French, and has advanced program management, interpersonal, and writing skills.