Dr Alexandra E Graham
DR. ALEXANDRA E. GRAHAM is a pioneering leader who applies her analytical skills to difficult problems and creates innovative solutions. She is adept at identifying the strengths in diverse and seemingly, unrelated teams, pulling them together and inspiring them into setting and meeting unified goals. These skills have given Dr. Graham a proven record in successfully resolving complex operational, financial, human resource, sales, and legal issues even in resource-constrained settings.
Dr. Graham is driven by a passion to address the perennial healthcare problems of Sub-Saharan Africa and her conviction that the solution lies in sustainable technological growth in the local manufacture of essential medicines. To that end, she applied her training and experience gained as a scientist and a pharmaceutical industry executive, and co-founded LaGray Chemical Company in Ghana in 2002. She raised the requisite capital and delivered all phases of the project, including facility design and construction, recruitment and training of staff, technology transfer and business development.
LaGray was the first fully vertically integrated pharmaceutical manufacturing company in West Africa specifically designed, built and operated to US FDA standards . The company’s facility comprised a fine chemicals and finished drug manufacturing operation that developed and manufactured over 30 products including antibacterial, antiretroviral and antimalarial drugs for the treatment of endemic Sub-Saharan African diseases
Prior to LaGray, she was Program Manager for a $1.5B/year portfolio of products in the multinational pharmaceutical company Abbott Laboratories, where she coordinated product manufacturing and distribution, starting with raw material vendor selection and production scheduling through to worldwide distribution.
Recently, as a Science and Technology Policy Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Dr. Graham contributed her expertise in global health to advance the objectives of the Global Health Bureau of the United States Agency for International Development, serving as a Biomedical Advisor in the Office of HIV AIDS and as a Zika Fellow in the Office of Infectious Diseases. This venture into public service has afforded Dr. Graham with the training and expertise in science diplomacy, policy development and government relations required in her continued quest for excellence.
Dr. Graham has been recognized for her work and passion for Global Health. She received a Pan-African Women Invent and Innovate (PAWII) Award at the first PAWII Awards sponsored by the World Bank IFC Gender Entrepreneurship Markets in 2005. She was also named a TED Global Fellow in 2007, and she received the 2009 Frost and Sullivan African Excellence Award for Innovation in the African Pharmaceutical Business.
Her other recognitions include the USP ACE award in 2014 for Women in Global Health, the MIT Legatum Center Case Study of 2013, and membership of the Expert Drug Discovery Advisory Committee of the World Health Organization.
Dr. Graham has a B.Sc. (1st Class) in Chemistry from Bayero University, Kano, Nigeria, Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry from the University of Sussex and University of Lagos, an MBA in Global Technology Management from American Intercontinental University and publications and patents in organic, polymer, analytical and pharmaceutical process chemistry, and pharmaceutical development in Africa. She has held faculty positions in colleges and universities in Nigeria, U.K and U.S.A.
Dr. Graham is currently President of LaGray Finance (https://www.lagrayfinance.com/), a company she founded to support the financing of healthcare businesses in the US. She is also President and Member of the Governing Council of St. Karol School of Nursing, Ghana(http://www.stkarol.com/ ). St. Karol is a private university offering Bachelor of Science Degrees in nursing that contribute to health systems strengthening in West Africa.
She consults for African national and regional health organizations in pharmaceutical quality regulation and Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) as related to public health. She has extensive experience working with global multilateral organizations such as UNIDO and WHO to establish policies to improve availability and quality of medicines toward health systems strengthening in Africa.