Dr. Solomon Zewdu is Senior Executive Resident for Strategy, Planning and programming at the Mastercard Foundation. Dr. Zewdu recently joined the Mastercard foundation after seven years as a Deputy Director in the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation in Africa. Given his background in emergency prepardeness and disaster response, he coordinated the BMGF Pan African SARSCoV2 response during the Covid 19 pandemic and all the related investments for the African continent. He aslo lead the continental team that shapes integrated, resilient and impactful health, nutrition, disease erradication, human capital development programs. He has been the relationship manager for Africa CDC since the establishment of the agency and continues to help shape investments in vaccine, therapeutics and diagnostics manufacturing, and pandemic prepardeness and response and the new public health order in Africa.

Throughout his career, he has worked side by side with the public and private sector, ministries of health, education and finance, regional governments, academia, donors and implementers.  He has contributed to various health and human development policies and implementation guidelines; as an active member of several working groups, scientific and programmatic advisory bodies, executive boards and strategy, policy and planning committees. He has gained the respect and appreciation of governments and partners across Africa as well as foreign governments and agencies across the world. Dr. Zewdu has practiced medicine in the private and public sectors, managed large United States Government programs (PEPFAR) and Department of Defense (DoD) HIV/AIDS Prevention program (DHAPP), Philantropy and academic grants for the past 22 years.