Director General’s Message

As IVI’s third Director General, I am honored to lead a team of more than 250 professionals representing over 25 nationalities along with 40 member countries and the World Health Organization, all working together toward a common goal of advancing science for impact and improving the health of people around the world.

IVI is a unique organization with a singular mission: to discover, develop, and deliver safe, effective, and affordable vaccines for global health.

We are an international organization, chartered by the United Nations Development Programme and accountable to a Board of Trustees and Member States. We are also a research institute and Product Development Partnership in practice, specializing in all aspects of the vaccine value chain, from laboratory research to vaccine development, epidemiology and surveillance, and vaccine effectiveness.

Our headquarters is in Seoul, Republic of Korea, and we have a Europe Regional Office in Stockholm, Sweden; an Africa Regional Office in Kigali, Rwanda; a Country Office in Vienna, Austria; a Country and Project Office in Nairobi, Kenya; and Collaborating Centers in Ghana, Ethiopia, and Madagascar. Our field programs span six continents and promote collaborative, sustainable partnership with governments, academic institutions, industry, philanthropy, and other global health agencies.

Through public-private partnerships, IVI is unique among Product Development Partnerships, having led the development of two licensed vaccines for high-burden infectious diseases of poverty. They are the world’s first low-cost oral cholera vaccine, technology-transferred to four companies with four products achieving WHO prequalification and making up the global stockpile, and a new typhoid conjugate vaccine, prequalified by the WHO in 2024 and ready for use in global health settings.

We are only one of two non-profit organizations supported by the Gates Foundation to achieve WHO prequalification for a vaccine. Learn more about our cholera and typhoid programs.

Our full vaccine research and development portfolio includes vaccines at all stages of pre-clinical and clinical development, prioritizing infectious diseases that disproportionately affect populations in low- and middle-income countries. IVI was founded to prevent and eliminate infectious diseases associated with poverty, and we remain steadfast to this mandate more than 27 years later.

The work toward a healthier world for everyone, everywhere continues—and we are grateful to do it with you.

Sincerely,