Karlee Silver
Co-CEO @ Grand Challenges Canada
Toronto, Canada
Karlee Silver is a startup investor at Grand Challenges Canada in Toronto. Prior to being appointed Co-CEO, Dr. Silver was Vice President of Programs, where she set strategy for development and humanitarian innovation initiatives, and enabled the programs, investments and knowledge management teams to source, support and transition to scale promising innovations for social impact in low- and middle-income countries. Sherepresents Grand Challenges Canada in the International Development Innovation Alliance (IDIA) and in the Grand Challenges network, and advises on a range of global initiatives aligned with women’s and children’s health and development, and global mental health. She is the Chair of the Every Woman Every Child Innovation Marketplace Steering Committee. Dr. Silver has been with Grand Challenges Canada since it launched, and led the process of selecting the organization’s prioritized Grand Challenges. Prior to joining Grand Challenges Canada, Dr. Silver trained in the laboratory of Dr. Kevin Kain at the Sandra Rotman Centre in Toronto, where she helped to identify host responses of malaria infection in pregnant women to harness for diagnostic and therapeutic purposes.Dr. Silver received her doctorate in genetics and immunology in 2006 from the University of Oxford, where she attended as a Rhodes Scholar. An accumulation of inspirations, including traveling through southern Africa after Oxford, led to a refocus towards global health. Witnessing the strength of women (to sustain their families and communities), and the vulnerability of these same women (to the consequences of poverty) inspired Dr. Silver to apply herself to empowering women and girls.
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About Grand Challenges Canada
Grand Challenges Canada is dedicated to supporting Bold Ideas with Big Impact® in global health. They are funded by the Government of Canada and they fund innovators in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) and Canada. The bold ideas they support integrate science and technology, social and business innovation – they call this IntegratedInnovation®. They focus on bringing successful innovation to scale, catalyzing sustainability and impact. They have a determined focus on results, and on saving and improving lives.Grand Challenges Canada works closely with Canada’s International Development Research Centre (IDRC), the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) and Global Affairs Canada to catalyze scale, sustainability and impact. Grand Challenges Canada takes an evidence-based approach to development innovation to save and improve lives in LMICs. They are a platform for development innovation in Maternal, Newborn and Child Health (MNCH) through their Saving Lives at Birth, Saving Brains and MNCH Stars in Global Health programs. They are also focused on helping the poorest and most vulnerable populations, for example those who suffer from mental illness.Since their launch in 2010, Grand Challenges Canada has supported a pipeline of over 700 projects in more than 80 countries. Their investments are producing results: Thousands of lives have been saved and over two hundred and eighty thousand lives have been improved, thus far. By 2030, these innovations have the potential to save hundreds of thousands of lives and improve millions of lives.
Grand Challenges Canada Contacts
| Name | Phone | Socials | |
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Jocelyn Mackie
Co-CEO
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Karlee Silver
Co-CEO
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3 more contacts available
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