Sabeeha “Sabs” Quereshi, VP Global Pandemic Prevention ProgramPAX sapiens is excited to welcome Sabeeha “Sabs” Quereshi, DrPH (c.), MPH, MPA as the Vice President of Pandemic Prevention for the Global Pandemic Prevention Program.
Sabeeha brings a long history of cross sectoral work at the intersection of governance, global health, philanthropy, and national security. As Vice President for Global Pandemic Prevention at PAX sapiens, she is advancing strategies that align political will, financing, and institutional trust to build systems capable of preventing predictable global catastrophes.
Her grounding in biomedical science, epidemiological investigation and health policy shaped a career focused not only on outbreak response, but on the governance, financing, surveillance, and accountability systems that determine whether prevention succeeds.
Most recently, she served as a limited-term Deputy Mayor for Health and Human Services for the City of Chicago, advising on crisis triage and systems coordination. She has also held senior roles at the World Health Organization, the U.S. Department of Defense as a Presidential Appointee advancing biosecurity and Military Health System reform, the CA Office of the Surgeon General, USAID, the Rockefeller Foundation, and UNICEF, where she led vaccine strategy, pandemic intelligence initiatives, financing reform, and multi-country emergency operations worldwide.
Her expertise spans child immunization, outbreak response, health finance, humanitarian aid, epidemiological analysis, monitoring and evaluation, strategic communication and coalition-building in fragile and politically complex environments.
Sabeeha has published with the Council on Foreign Relations’ Think Global Health, delivered a TEDx talk on AI and crisis prevention, and served as an adjunct lecturer at George Washington University and guest lecturer at Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center. She is a Presidential Leadership Scholar and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
“Prevention is ultimately a governance challenge—aligning trust, incentives, technical expertise, and political will before crisis forces action. At PAX sapiens, I’m excited to work with our expert Senior Fellows, as well as across sectors, to help build the coalitions and systems that make pandemic prevention durable, credible, and real,” stated Sabeeha.
Joining Global Pandemic Prevention Program Senior Fellows, Dr. Rebecca Katz, Dr. Louise Gresham, and Dr. David Bowen, Sabeeha will support the ongoing initiatives while also exploring opportunities to expand PAX sapiens’ Global Pandemic Prevention work and cross sectoral opportunities.
About the Global Pandemic Prevention Program
PAX sapiens works to promote better global and local systems for pandemic prevention.
The world has clear models for how to identify infectious diseases, respond quickly, and prevent pandemics from emerging. Building these at scale requires political will and deep cooperation to execute and fund their development.
PAX sapiens works to fill governance gaps in three areas of pandemic prevention:
- We promote the development of technical capacity to detect diseases at or before the moment of spillover to human transmission.
- We support sustainable financing sources for global pandemic prevention efforts.
- We advocate for sustained political will prioritizing pandemic prevention
