The people behind Health Finance

Annie Wang is Global Head, Health Finance at Opportunity International, based in Australia, where she leads Health Finance as a semi-independent business unit, owning its strategy and growth across Asia and Africa.

Annie oversees health program delivery through partner financial institutions across all three program pillars: Health Leaders, Health Entrepreneurs, and Health Finance. Her work focuses on expanding last-mile access to healthcare and essential medicines for low-income households through sustainable, partner-led financing models.

Before joining Opportunity International, Annie was a Senior Public Health Consultant for Asia-Pacific at IQVIA, advising clients on evidence-based approaches to systemic health system challenges. She has also held roles as a Health Policy Adviser at the World Bank, Health Economist for Roche Genentech's global infectious disease portfolio, and management consultant at Oliver Wyman. Annie spent 18 months in Sierra Leone following the Ebola epidemic, working with the Clinton Health Access Initiative to support the government in procuring and distributing medical supplies.

Annie holds a Bachelor of Commerce from Queen's University and a Master of Public Health from Harvard University. In 2022, she received the Pro Bono Australia Impact 25 Award for her contributions to the social impact sector.

Dr. Morseda Chowdhury is Program Director at Opportunity Health Finance, based in Australia, where she leads strategic project development and management across the health finance portfolio.

Morseda works closely with implementing partners on project planning, implementation, and systems strengthening, driving improvements in effectiveness, efficiency, equity, and quality of service delivery. She is the Program Lead of Opportunity Health Finance's Global Affairs Canada-supported initiative — the organisation's largest health finance program — delivering reproductive, maternal, neonatal, child and adolescent health interventions across three South Asian countries and reaching 5.3 million people.

Before joining Opportunity, Morseda was Director of the Health Program at BRAC, the world's largest non-governmental development organisation, where she led a network of 50,000 community health workers serving approximately 84 million people across Bangladesh. Her work focused on integrated healthcare delivery for women and girls.

With more than 20 years of experience in public health, she has designed and delivered programs addressing major health challenges across South Asia, drawing on expertise in the social determinants of health to develop evidence-based interventions with measurable outcomes.

Morseda holds a Bachelor of Medicine, master's degrees in Health Economics and Public Health, and a PhD in Nutrition Epidemiology from the Sydney School of Public Health at the University of Sydney.

Ben Scott is Operations & Innovation Director at Opportunity Health Finance, based in Australia, where he leads operations, finance, compliance, and technology for the program.

A member of Opportunity International Australia's executive team, Ben has contributed to organisation-wide strategy and governance. He previously served as Program Director for Health Finance, bringing direct program leadership experience to his current operational role, and is known for building high-performing, supportive teams across complex, multi-country program environments.

Ben brings more than a decade of experience in international development, spanning leadership, project management, and partnership development. As Head of Fundraising at Opportunity International Australia, he raised more than $20 million and drove significant growth in revenue and supporter engagement. He has also held strategic partnership roles at The Salvation Army and Corporate Executive Board.

Ben holds a Master of Commerce in Global Sustainability and Social Impact from the University of New South Wales, awarded with Excellence and recognised with the UNSW Business School Dean's Award. He also holds a Bachelor of International and Global Studies from the University of Sydney.

Jaya Myler is Strategic Partnerships Director at Opportunity Health Finance, based in Australia, where she leads institutional fundraising, grant partnerships, and strategic communications for the unit.

Jaya works with technical and institutional partners and collaborates across the global Opportunity network to identify funding opportunities, develop fundraising proposals and grant applications, and translate complex health finance programs into compelling content and thought leadership. Her work has included contributions to the successful Global Affairs Canada partnership supporting community health interventions across South Asia.

Jaya brings more than 15 years of experience in cross-sector partnership development and strategic communications. As General Manager at the World Toilet Organization in Singapore, she led global advocacy, fundraising, and communications alongside UN bodies and corporate partners. At Room to Read in Singapore, she developed grant applications and funding proposals, managed the ASEAN regional board, and built local and regional corporate partnerships with major financial sector institutions. At WWF-Australia, she served as the organisation's communications lead on the national Say Yes Australia coalition. She has also worked with the Asia P3 Hub, a World Vision and Singapore Government collaboration focused on cross-sector partnerships towards the Sustainable Development Goals.

Jaya holds a Master of Media Practice from the University of Sydney and was selected for the McKinsey Rising Leaders Forum in 2023.

Meredith Downey is Compliance & Accreditation Manager at Opportunity Health Finance, based in Australia, where she manages the Australian NGO Cooperation Program (ANCP) relationship with the Australian Government's Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) for Opportunity International Australia, ensures Health Finance's projects meet compliance and accreditation requirements, and supports the development of the program's systems and processes.

Meredith has end-to-end ownership of Opportunity International Australia's ANCP relationship, including project managing the preparation, reporting and acquittal of ANCP annual plans and performance reports, and acting as the ANCP/DFAT contact. She leads Health Finance's ANCP accreditation readiness, working with criterion owners across the program to track progress and documentation.

Meredith has spent more than two decades with Opportunity International Australia. Immediately before taking up her current role, she served as Program Finance and ANCP Manager, leading relationship management with DFAT for Opportunity's ANCP-funded programs. Prior to that, she was Health Program Manager from 2020 to 2023, supporting Opportunity's health programs across Asia, including India, Indonesia and Bangladesh.

Meredith holds a Master of Law and International Development from the University of Sydney, a Master of International and Community Development from Deakin University, and a Bachelor of Agricultural Economics from the University of Sydney. She is a Graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors (AICD) Company Directors Course and has served as a Board Director of Baptist World Aid Australia since 2018.

Eros Gautam is Program Coordinator at Opportunity Health Finance, based in Australia, where he coordinates the organisation's project portfolio across Bangladesh, India, Nepal, and Malawi.

Eros works across the program team to support consistent planning, implementation, and reporting across a multi-country portfolio. He brings expertise in project management, multi-stakeholder relationship management, and strengthening the processes and systems that underpin effective program delivery.

Before joining Opportunity International Australia, Eros managed a grants and programs portfolio across Africa and Asia at The Hunger Project Australia, and led strategic fundraising and business development at a local non-governmental organisation in Nepal. He has more than a decade of experience in donor-funded development programs spanning South-East Asia, Africa, and the Indo-Pacific, with a particular focus on program management in complex, multi-stakeholder environments.

Drawing on lived experience from Nepal alongside his international career, Eros is focused on the partnerships and systems that help Health Finance's partners deliver locally led, rights-based primary healthcare to underserved communities.

S M Tahsin Rahaman is Monitoring & Evaluation Specialist at Opportunity Health Finance, based in Bangladesh, where he designs and implements monitoring, evaluation, accountability and learning (MEAL) systems across a growing portfolio spanning South Asia and Africa.

Tahsin leads baseline survey design and implementation for health interventions across Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Ghana, and Malawi. He supports partner organisations to strengthen their MEAL systems and applies mixed-methods research to generate evidence for program learning and decision-making. His approach integrates gender, equity, and community perspectives into monitoring frameworks.

Before joining Opportunity, Tahsin served as Manager for Monitoring, Evaluation, Accountability and Learning at BRAC, where he led MEAL across multi-sector programs including health, gender justice, and humanitarian response, and developed BRAC's Results Framework for 2021–2025. He previously spent eight years as a Field Research Officer at the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), leading large-scale agricultural, nutrition, and gender studies across Bangladesh and contributing to peer-reviewed publications.

Tahsin holds a Master of Public Health (Epidemiology) from Independent University Bangladesh and a Master of Social Science in Anthropology from Jahangirnagar University.

Rupin Mahiyaria is Gender Equality, Disability and Social Inclusion (GEDSI) & Safeguarding Specialist at Opportunity Health Finance, based in India, where she leads the integration of safeguarding and gender-responsive approaches across partner financial institutions and the wider program portfolio.

Rupin develops GEDSI assessment tools, social inclusion guidance, and safeguarding systems, and provides capacity building support to partners to strengthen inclusive practice across Health Leaders, Health Entrepreneurs, and Health Finance. She also contributes to Health Finance's global GEDSI and safeguarding strategy.

Before joining Opportunity, Rupin worked for six years with UN Women and the World Food Programme across India and Myanmar, leading gender equality and social inclusion efforts in large-scale development programs funded by USAID, Canada, Japan, and Citibank. Her work has spanned women's economic empowerment, financial inclusion, nutrition, and health, with governments, civil society organisations, and international non-governmental organisations.

Rupin holds an MSc in Global Politics from the London School of Economics and a BA in Political Science from Hindu College, University of Delhi. She is a member of the CANADEM Global Roster of Gender Experts.

Nirmal Aryal is Finance & Operations Specialist at Opportunity Health Finance, based in Kathmandu, Nepal, where he manages financial controls and administrative coordination across the unit.

Nirmal oversees partner financial reporting, donor compliance, and grant management across a multi-country portfolio. He works to strengthen financial management systems and reporting processes across diverse donor environments.

Before joining Opportunity, Nirmal held senior country and regional finance roles at Population Services International (PSI) and RTI International, supporting multi-country programs across international development and global health. His experience spans financial systems strengthening, grant compliance, and audit management in environments with significant regulatory and reporting demands.

Nirmal is a Chartered Accountant with an Executive MBA. His focus is on the role that high-quality financial systems play in enabling sustainable development outcomes.

Dr. Asadur Rahman is Training & Learning Specialist at Opportunity Health Finance, based in Bangladesh, where he leads capacity development for partner staff, frontline health workers, and Health Leaders across the program portfolio.

Asad develops competency-based curricula and training systems, and works to strengthen the quality and consistency of preventive healthcare service delivery across Health Finance's partner network. His focus includes digitising training content and building robust supervision and quality assurance systems.

Before joining Opportunity, Asad served as Head of Health Program at SAJIDA Foundation in Bangladesh and held key roles at BRAC. His experience spans maternal, newborn, and child health, nutrition, non-communicable diseases, and primary healthcare, with a particular focus on rural, urban, and climate-vulnerable communities. He has also worked in Uganda.

Asad is a trained physician and holds a Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery (MBBS), a Master of Public Health, and an Executive Master's in Health Economics. His work reflects a commitment to scalable, locally led approaches to health workforce strengthening in underserved communities.

Dr Aparna Mukherjee is Knowledge & Impact Specialist at Opportunity Health Finance, based in Bengaluru, India, where she builds the evidence base for integrated health and financial inclusion programming.

Aparna leads applied research and evaluation across Health Finance's work with partner financial institutions. She strengthens how the team generates, uses and shares evidence, and translates findings for program design and for funders and partners.

Aparna has more than a decade of experience in public health, gender equality, and monitoring, evaluation, research and learning, across academia, civil society and the United Nations in Asia and Africa. Her expertise spans maternal, child and adolescent health, sexual and reproductive health and rights, and gender-based violence. Before joining Opportunity, she held senior research and program roles with the United Nations University International Institute for Global Health, Karnataka Health Promotion Trust, the Tata Institute of Social Sciences and Rocket Learning, and undertook research with UNFPA and WHO. Her work ranges from large-scale population studies and impact evaluations to participatory qualitative research. Her approach is grounded in participatory, intersectional and decolonial feminist perspectives. She co-led the development of a multi-country research consortium on supporting women in health systems, which secured £4 million from the UK's National Institute for Health and Care Research.

Aparna holds a PhD in Population Studies and is a former visiting fellow at the Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies.

Aneesa Jabeen is Digital Innovation Specialist at Opportunity Health Finance, based in Bengaluru, India, where she builds internal tools and dashboards for the team.

Aneesa works across Health Finance's Australia- and South Asia-based team and with partners. She uses AI-assisted development to build and automate tools quickly, helps colleagues get more from AI tools, and supports them to adopt new tools with confidence.

Aneesa has several years' experience building digital products and systems for underserved communities across India. Most recently she was Senior Specialist, Technology at Udhyam Learning Foundation, where she was the hands-on technologist for four nano-entrepreneur programs reaching around 2,000 entrepreneurs across nine Indian states. Her expertise is in offline-first, low-literacy digital tools, and in using AI coding assistants to build tools quickly and responsibly.

Aneesa holds a Master of Social Work in Community Development from Pondicherry University and a Bachelor of Technology in Electronics and Communication Engineering from Cochin University of Science and Technology. She is a UNHCR Innovation Fellow. Her focus is practical, inclusive design: tools that work for the people using them, including where connectivity or literacy is limited.

Hummaira Sirajutheen is a Marketing and Communication Volunteer with Opportunity Health Finance, based in Australia, where she supports the team's content and brand launch activity across the website, blog and LinkedIn channels.

Hummaira is contributing to the development of Health Finance's blog posts and website content ahead of launch, working towards an ongoing cadence of content, and supporting the development of blog and news content in line with Health Finance's content plan. She is also drafting LinkedIn posts alongside reviewing competitor and thought-leadership content.

Hummaira brings experience across marketing, communications and human resources. She previously volunteered with Opportunity International Australia as a Donor Engagement Volunteer conducting donor outreach and supporting the Donor Engagement/Marketing team. She has also held prior recruitment and human resources roles with WARCHEST.CO and Big 3 Media in Singapore.

Hummaira is completing a Bachelor of Commerce, majoring in Marketing and Digital Cultures, at the University of Sydney and holds a Diploma in Human Resource Management with Psychology from Republic Polytechnic in Singapore.