As Global Portfolio Director, Susmita Das will handle a mixed grouping of complex grants across the child survival and maternal and newborn health and nutrition portfolios and will also be involved in larger organisational initiatives, such as the planning and startup of new institutional grants.
Susmita is an accomplished public health professional with more than 24 years of experience in increasingly senior technical and managerial roles. Before assuming the role of Global Portfolio Director, Susmita served as Nutrition International’s Deputy Regional Director in Asia for more than six years. In this role, she provided technical and operational guidance through program conceptualization, management and policy advocacy for child survival (including vitamin A supplementation), maternal and newborn nutrition and universal salt iodization programs. Beyond grant management, Susmita provided strategic leadership in Asia, ensuring that Nutrition International’s global mandate integrated with country strategies and systems and aligning our work with the work of our donors and partners.
Prior to joining Nutrition International, she held senior roles with organizations including International Planned Parenthood Federation, Johns Hopkins University – Center for Communication Programs and EngenderHealth. Susmita is a Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation scholar with a master’s degree in public health from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and a master’s in sociology from the Delhi School of Economics.