Helene Gayle on how to lead organizations that respond to crisis
The public sector needs to learn to work with the private sector, from an epidemiologist who became the CEO of one of the world’s largest charities.
The international development sector is losing relevance and humanitarian organizations should look to the private sector to adapt, says Helene Gayle, the CEO of the Chicago Community Trust, a $2.7 billion philanthropic fund.
Gayle has been at the forefront of the sector for close to four decades. Her career has spanned senior leadership in health, international development and humanitarian response. Fresh out of medical school in 1984, she joined the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, where she spent 20 years directing the government response to the ballooning HIV/AIDS crisis during its nascency. In 2001, she became director of HIV, TB and Reproductive Health at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation; then, from 2005–2015, radically reshaped the mission and trajectory of one of world’s preeminent international humanitarian organizations as the CEO of CARE International. In 2015, she became the CEO of the McKinsey Social Initiative before joining the Chicago Community Trust last year.
“I believe development and change happens in more integrated ways than just taking one sector at a time.”
Gayle’s diagnosis is apt: Even as government budgets for international aid and development have grown, the relative level of aid spending among the 30 largest donors has fallen from a high of 0.5% of gross national income to roughly 0.3% today, a trend largely driven by stagnant levels of U.S. assistance. Those in the sector say this reflects that overseas assistance has become a lower priority for the United States.
“We had a huge foreign aid heyday, where governments were incredibly committed to foreign assistance, and we are starting to see that commitment shrink,” Gayle told Displaced hosts Ravi and Grant. “At the same time, we’re seeing more and more private sector, and particularly multinational corporations, understanding that their economic well-being is also tied to their social engagement and their ability to be good citizens and create social value in communities in which they work around the world. I think that’s that’s been a positive trend.”
Gayle is known within the public sector for her ability to establish partnerships, both with the private sector and with governments — even those reluctant to accept clear evidence. That served her well dealing with uncompromising world leaders during the peak of the HIV/AIDS crisis in the 1980s and 90s.
When Gayle began her career as an epidemic intelligence officer at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 1984, there were fewer than 20,000 documented AIDS cases globally. By 1990, the National Institute of Health estimated that close to one million people were infected with AIDS, and 8–10 million people were living with HIV worldwide. The horror and fear caused by the disease’s rapid spread have potent parallels to responses to today’s refugee crisis, Gayle said: Both have generated xenophobia and defeatism, but also catalyzed advocacy and movements for social acceptance.
“When it came to HIV, one of the things that was so critical there…was having people who are involved themselves being on the front lines. If it hadn’t been for AIDS activists, we would not have gotten to where we are today,” Gayle said. But, she added, “The thing that I find different between that era and…the refugee crisis…[is] those activists were citizens of the state…they could apply pressure to government because there was a sense of accountability. Whereas refugees…have no political rights and are in a much trickier situation in terms of the strategies that they can draw on for advocacy and the voices that they can articulate.”
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Read some of the sources that informed this episode of Displaced
Barrett, Christopher B. Food Aid’s Intended and Unintended Consequences. United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization Agricultural Development Economics Division: May 2006
Becker, Jeanine and David Smith. “The Need for Cross-Sector Collaboration.” Stanford Social Innovation Review. Winter 2008.
Gakidou, Emmanuela, Krycia Cowling, Rafael Lozano, and Christopher J L Murray. Increased educational attainment and its effect on child mortality in 175 countries between 1970 and 2009: a systematic analysis. The Lancet 376: 2010.
Granich, Reuben, et al. Trends in AIDS Deaths, New Infections and ART Coverage in the Top 30 Countries with the Highest AIDS Mortality Burden; 1990–2013. PLoS One 10(7): 2015.
Foster, William and Gail Fine. “How nonprofits get really big.” Stanford Social Innovation Review. Spring 2007.
“What Has the Gates Foundation Done for Global Health?” The Lancet. May 9, 2009.
McCoy, David, Gayatri Kembhavi, Jinesh Patel, and Akish Luintel. “The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s Grant-Making Program for Global Health.” The Lancet. May 9, 2009.
Smith, Tara C. and Steven P. Novella. “HIV Denial in the Internet Era.” PloS Medicine 4(8): 2007.
Summers, Lawrence. Investing in All the People: Educating Women in Developing Countries. The World Bank Seminar Paper №45. 1992.
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