Mr. Leo Weakland has dedicated his career to improving the health and lives of people around the globe through better access to health care and life-saving public health interventions. Mr. Weakland brings more than 30 years of experience directing and managing international and domestic public health programs focused on achieving health outcomes across multiple policy, regulatory, and operational contexts and in collaboration with corporate and non-profit organizations.

Prior to joining McKing, Mr. Weakland served for three years as a senior technical advisor to Africa CDC, a specialized technical institution of the African Union responsible for safeguarding the health of all Africans. In that capacity, he advised and assisted the Director of Africa CDC in standing up a new continental public health agency by developing governance and procedural guidance and operational support systems including emergency response to public health emergencies. Mr. Weakland also enjoyed an exciting and productive career as a public health advisor with the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), where he managed and supported the implementation of CDC priority global health programs, including polio eradication and measles elimination, vector-borne diseases, parasitic diseases and malaria, and HIV/AIDS prevention and control.

Mr. Weakland has worked at the Africa CDC headquarters in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia; the US CDC headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia; the WHO Regional Office for Europe in Copenhagen, Denmark; and in Cote d’Ivoire supporting CDC’s seminal operational research in the care and treatment of HIV/AIDS in low-resource settings. Mr. Weakland’s work has involved extensive collaboration with WHO, UNICEF, Ministries of Health, and other public health partners to improve the health of people living in Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Americas.

Mr. Weakland holds a Master of Science in Public Health degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Akron.