Professor Ilona Kickbusch is the Director of the Global Health Centre at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva.

Professor Kickbusch key interests relate to the political determinants of health, health in all policies and global health. She established the Global Health Centre at the Graduate Institute for International and Development Studies in Geneva. In this context she advises countries on their global health strategies and trains health specialists and diplomats in global health diplomacy. She is engaged in developing a new focus for the centre on the governance of health in the context of digital transformation.

She is a member of the  Global Preparedness Monitoring Board and the WHO High-Level Independent Commission on NCDS and is co-chair of UHC 2030. She acts as Council Chair to the World Health Summit in Berlin.  She has been involved in German G7 and G20 activities relating to global health and chairs the international advisory board for the development of the German global health strategy. She publishes widely and serves on various commissions and boards. She initiated the @wgh300 list of women leaders in global health. She is program chair of the leaders in health network SCIANA.

Professor Kickbusch has had a distinguished career with the World Health Organization. She was a key instigator of the Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion and WHOs Healthy Cities Network and has remained a leader in this field, most recently advising on the WHO activities related to Promoting Health in the SDGs.  She was the director of the Global Health Division at Yale University School of Public Health and responsible for the first major Fulbright Programme on global health. 

She has recently been awarded the Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany (Bundesverdienstkreuz) in recognition of her "invaluable contributions to innovation in governance for global health and global health diplomacy".