WHO WE ARE

Partners is a trusted and nimble organization committed to ensuring that proven solutions addressing people’s health and development needs expand to more communities, in more countries, more sustainably. Grounded in the belief that scaling what works is essential for lasting impact, Partners was founded in 2005 by Dr. Ruth Simmons and Laura Ghiron, after nearly a decade working together at the University of Michigan School of Public Health. Since then, Partners has supported an increasingly wide range of global public health and development initiatives – using grants, government contracts, and mission-related funding – to strengthen local capacity and fuel scale-up. 

As the convener of the ExpandNet network, Partners champions a paradigm shift in how local and global stakeholders lead development by centering a scaling mindset across program design, change management, and investment. Working closely with ExpandNet’s Secretariat, Advisory Council, and Affiliate organizations, Partners supports governments and local actors to drive sustainable, scalable health and development outcomes.

Partners is governed by a Board of Directors, chaired by President Laura Ghiron, that includes Haris Ahmed, Erica Fox, Adam Marcus, and Marina Valle. Together, this leadership team ensures that Partners remains grounded in human rights, equity, country ownership, bi-directional learning, and impact as it advances the mission envisioned by its founders.

Partners Staff

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Laura Ghiron, MPH
President
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Gwyn Hainsworth, M.Ed.
Senior Strategy Advisor
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Rebecka Lundgren, MPH, PhD.
Senior Scale-up Advisor
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John Fields, M.IR.
Communications Associate
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Peter Fajans, MD, MPH
Senior Scale-up Advisor
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Belal Abdulhaleem
Technology and Software Consultant

Key Collaborators

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Field work with the Urban Health Initiative, Uttar Pradesh, India

Partners measures success through the impact achieved with our collaborators—institutions and individuals working to uplift communities around the world. We partner across the global health and development ecosystem to ensure stronger outcomes, more strategic use of resources, and robust pathways for sustainable scale-up.

At the country level, Partners works closely with ExpandNet Affiliate Organizations, including the DOS Center in Nigeria, Horizon Santé in Senegal/Francophone West Africa, Regenerate Africa in Uganda, The Scaling-Up Accelerators in Pakistan, and Spark Health Africa in Southern Africa. Partners provides programmatic and technical support to these organizations as they share ExpandNet’s guidance, framework and approach locally through skills-building workshops and technical assistance with local stakeholders. 

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LAURA GHIRON, MPH

See Laura's CV

Laura is President and Co-founder of Partners. She co-founded Partners in 2005 with Dr. Ruth Simmons to support and advance the global body of work of ExpandNet, a network that grew out of their earlier collaborations with the World Health Organization on strengthening reproductive health policies and programs.

Since becoming President in 2020, Laura has helped guide a new chapter for both Partners and ExpandNet focused on building global capacity to scale what works. Under her leadership, Partners has strengthened the governance, administrative, and legal foundations needed to support a diverse global network–enabling fiscal sponsorship, subcontracting, and technical collaboration with scaling leaders and institutions across regions, while deepening country-led and equity-focused approaches to scale-up.

Laura brings more than two decades of experience advancing the science and practice of scaling up health and development interventions. After earning her MPH from the University of Michigan School of Public Health, she worked closely for more than a decade with Dr. Simmons and  Dr. Peter Fajans of WHO’s  Department of Reproductive Health and Research, co-founding ExpandNet together in 2003. She has collaborated extensively with governments, WHO, and partners across Asia, Africa, and Latin America; co-authored a book, foundational guidance, and peer-reviewed literature on scale-up; and supported major global initiatives funded by the Gates Foundation, USAID, and the MacArthur Foundation, among others.

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Gwyn Hainsworth, M.Ed.

Gwyn has over 20 years experience in sex­ual and reproductive health (SRH) and rights, adolescent health, and gender working across 25 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean. Her work has focused on translating evidence into scalable solutions that strengthen health systems and improve equitable access to high-quality SRH services. During her eight years at the Gates Foundation, Gwyn led investments spanning the design and testing of innovative solutions and the scale-up of evidence-based interventions, including portfolios focused on addressing young people’s barriers to contraception and scaling high-impact family planning (FP) practices. She also served as the FP Team’s lead for Pakistan and for its strategic partnership with the World Bank, including the Global Financing Facility.

Before joining the foundation, Gwyn held technical leadership roles at Pathfinder International, where she supported governments and local organizations to scale up adolescent and youth SRH interventions, sparking her enduring interest in the science and practice of scale-up. She has authored peer-reviewed publications and practical guidance on scale-up and currently serves as a SENIOR STRATEGY ADVISOR with Partners in Expanding Health Quality and Access, the non-profit that administers the ExpandNet network and its Scale-up Learning Center.

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Rebecka Lundgren, MPH, PhD.

Dr. Rebecka Lundgren is an applied anthropologist with more than 30 years of experience in implementation science, specializing in the design, evaluation, and scale-up of interventions that promote gender equity, prevent violence, and improve adolescent sexual and reproductive health. A longtime member of ExpandNet and a member of its Secretariat since 2019, she has helped advance the science and practice of scaling up social and behavior change interventions, with a particular focus on gender-transformative programming.

As Co-Executive Director of the Center on Gender Equity and Health at the University of California San Diego, and previously Deputy Director of the Institute of Reproductive Health at Georgetown University, Rebecka has led numerous scale-up initiatives including expansion of the REAL Fathers program in Uganda and Passages, a USAID-funded project that bridged research, policy, and practice to support the scale up of social norms interventions for adolescent sexual and reproductive health. She has supported applications of ExpandNet’s systemic scaling approach to adolescent and sexual and reproductive health and violence prevention programs in Uganda, Kenya, Niger and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Since 2017, Rebecka has advised global efforts to strengthen guidance on scaling interventions to prevent violence against children, including guidelines for INSPIRE and Joining Forces. She also supports the development of ExpandNet’s Scaling Learning Community, helping translate evidence and implementation experience into practical guidance for policy makers and practitioners.

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John Fields, M.IR

John Fields is a creative video producer of documentary-style video content, along the whole continuum from concept to post-production. John’s special interest is in supporting development of video production that advances international collaboration, understanding and development. John has more than six years of experience in the film industry, spanning an array of mediums and roles. Having studied Film Studies and Political Science at San Francisco State University, and eventually completing his Master’s Degree in International Relations, John has been applying his specialized skillset as a Communications Associate with Partners in Expanding Health Quality and Access. In this role he has been assisting with multiple aspects of production related to ExpandNet’s Scale-up Learning Center and the promotion strategy is accompanying its global rollout.

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Peter Fajans, MD, MPH

Peter Fajans, MD, MPH, was a founding member of ExpandNet, is a member of the ExpandNet Secretariat and now works as a Senior Advisor with Partners. Prior to his retirement from WHO in 2012 he worked for 17 years with the Technical Cooperation with Countries team of the Department of Reproductive Health and Research, World Health Organization, where he led work related to the implementation of the WHO Strategic Approach to Strengthening Reproductive Health Policies and Programmes. Before working with WHO he served as Assistant Professor of Population Planning and International Health at the University of Michigan School of Public Health. He has extensive programmatic and related research experience, working initally for ten years in Indonesia with UNICEF, BKKBN and the Indonesian MOH and, prior to joing the faculty at the UM SPH.

During his 43 year public health career he has also worked extensively in China, India, Kenya, and Vietnam, as well as many other low-and-middle-income countries on diverse health issues including family planning and SRH, nutrition, primary health care and STI/HIV/AIDS prevention in a variety of programmatic settings. This has included provision of technical support to a number of major scaling-up initiatives. While at WHO he co-wrote and co-edited a book of scale up case studies and the WHO/ExpandNet practical guides on scaling up health service innovations. He played a key facilitation role in the initial field testing and subsequent utilization of the ExpandNet guiidance documents to support scale up in multiple countries. He has also co-authored a textbook chapter and multiple peer reviewed publications related to scale up. Currently he also helps to identify and curate scale-up literature for ExpandNet’s online, searchable Scale-up Bibliography.

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Belal Abdulhaleem

Belal Ismail is a digital communications and marketing expert with over a decade of experience designing, developing, and deploying websites, and implementing strategies to increase website traffic and use. Since he began working with ExpandNet and Partners in 2018, Belal has served as the organization’s main collaborator in website development including for expandnet.net, partnersforscaleup.org and slc.expandnet.net. Belal also works for a startup company, AKWAD in Cairo, where he is based, where he serves as Marketing Director, where the team is focused on developing innovative solutions for water conservation and purification. In this role he has led marketing efforts from idea conception to testing and eventual implementation, utilizing a variety of digital marketing tools and techniques, including social media, email, PPC, A/B testing, and web analytics. His efforts helped the company to win several awards and recognitions, such as the UNESCO “Closer to People” competition and the Arab Hope Makers initiative. With Partners/ExpandNet, Belal applies his skills in digital marketing and passion for uncovering hidden opportunities for growth to projects seeking to create meaningful and lasting change at scale around the world.