Global Health Catalyst Names Adriana Sanford Executive Director for Strategic Partnerships & Corporate Engagement

Three-year appointment advances corporate engagement, philanthropy and experiential learning in global health.

CAMBRIDGE, MA, UNITED STATES, October 1, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ -- Global Health Catalyst (GHC) has appointed Adriana Sanford, J.D., Dual LL.M., as Executive Director, Global Strategic Partnerships, Corporate Engagement & Experiential Learning, for a three-year term. Following the 2026 GHC Summit at Harvard and MIT, Sanford will strengthen GHC's corporate, academic, and philanthropic partnerships and expand experiential learning opportunities in global health.

GHC advances international collaboration in cancer care, advocacy, research, and education. Its summits began at Harvard in 2015 under Prof. Wilfred Ngwa and have expanded to MIT, Johns Hopkins University, the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of Pittsburgh, with support from the U.S. National Institutes of Health. GHC reports $180 million catalyzed for collaborative cancer research since 2015 and more than 10,000 trainees through Global Oncology University. Its initiatives include the AI-powered Comprehensive Cancer/CARE Center in the Cloud (C4).

Sanford is a legal scholar, law professor, and compliance executive whose work focuses on privacy law, artificial intelligence governance, and multijurisdictional regulatory compliance. She serves on the faculty of the College of Business at The University of Texas at Arlington (UTA), where she teaches 587 students during the fall 2026 semester. At the University of San Diego School of Law, Sanford teaches comparative corporate law in Spanish to an LL.M. cohort of practicing lawyers. Her professional experience includes service as Latin America Regional Counsel and U.S. Commercial Counsel for General Electric and as a Senior Analyst for CNN en Español. Within the American Bar Association’s International Law Section, she serves as Vice Chair for International Programming of the National Security Committee and Vice Chair for Rule of Law of the Privacy, Cybersecurity and Digital Rights Committee.

Her academic leadership experience includes service as Acting Director of Executive Education at the University of Oklahoma’s Gene Rainbolt Graduate School of Business. Her academic appointments have also included Lincoln Professor of Global Corporate Compliance and Ethics at Arizona State University, Dean’s Visiting Scholar at Georgetown Law, Visiting Research Professor at the Universidad de Talca in Chile, and Senior Research Fellow at Claremont Graduate University. Sanford has also taught at Pepperdine University and Loyola Marymount University. She holds a J.D. from Notre Dame Law School and a dual LL.M. from Georgetown Law. Fluent in four languages, she has taught more than 8,500 students across three continents.

Sanford brings to GHC a record of connecting students with global leaders. Her month-long Transatlantic Experiential Learning pilot brought 18 UTA business students together with 15 leaders across eight cities in Texas and Spain, combining corporate site visits with executive discussions on international business, governance, and compliance. Participating organizations included CHRISTUS Health System, Ericsson, Siemens, Check Point Software Technologies, Centro de Estudios Garrigues, and Sanitas, part of Bupa.

The GHC–Inspire2Live Collegiate Fellows program builds on Sanford’s model of global experiential learning through mentorship, service, and international engagement, including participation in the GHC Summit. The Fellows met with leaders including Rear Admiral Susan J. Blumenthal, former U.S. Assistant Surgeon General, former senior public health advisor to the White House Domestic Policy Council, and the nation’s first Deputy Assistant Secretary for Women’s Health at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS); H.E. Dr. Fatima Maada Bio, First Lady of Sierra Leone and President of the Organization of African First Ladies for Development (OAFLAD); and Dr. Julie R. Gralow, Chief Medical Officer and Executive Vice President of the American Society of Clinical Oncology.

An Inspire2Live Ambassador since 2022, Sanford also chairs the GHC-Inspire2Live Global Golf Fundraising Initiative, a collaboration between GHC and Inspire2Live that engages philanthropic and business leaders in global health, AI governance, and responsible innovation.


GHC SUMMIT SPONSOR ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

GHC thanks IBA and Flavocure Biotech for their support of the 2026 GHC Summit.

ABOUT Ion Beam Applications S.A (IBA)
Ion Beam Applications S.A. (IBA) is the world leader in particle accelerator technology and the leading supplier of equipment and services in proton therapy, one of the most advanced forms of radiation therapy available today, as well as industrial sterilization, radiopharmaceuticals, and dosimetry. Based in Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium, the company employs approximately 2,300 people worldwide. Its first-ever hospital-based proton therapy installation was at Massachusetts General Hospital.

ABOUT Flavocure Biotech
Headquartered in Baltimore, Maryland, Flavocure Biotech focuses on the discovery and development of next-generation therapies for patients with unmet medical needs. Its research targets aggressive and rare cancers, including pancreatic and brain cancers, as well as neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. The company has received two FDA orphan drug designations and FDA clearance of an investigational new drug application for a Phase I clinical trial in pancreatic cancer.

Vivian Kobusingye Birchall
Global Health Catalysts
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