Agnès Soucat is the Director of Health and Social Protection at French Development Agency (AFD) in Paris. Previously, she was the Director for Health Systems, Governance and Financing at WHO in Geneva, Switzerland. Before joining WHO, she was Global Health Lead Economist at the World Bank and the Director for Human Development, for the African Development Bank, where she was responsible for health, education, social protection and employment for Africa, including fifty-four countries in the continent. She has, over thirty years of experience, in health and poverty reduction, covering more than seventy countries in Africa, Asia and Europe.
She is a pioneer of several innovations in health financing, including community-based financing and performance-based financing. She was a main author of the World Development Report, "Making Services Work for Poor People"(2004), the Lancet Commission reports, "Global Health 2035: a world converging within a generation" (2011) and "Planetary Health: Safeguarding human health in the Anthropocene epoch" (2015), and "The labor market for health workers in Africa: a new look at the crisis," (2013).
Soucat holds an MD and a Master's in Nutrition, from the University of Nancy in France, as well as a MPH and PhD, in Health Economics from the Johns Hopkins University. She is currently Senior Associate at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore (USA).
