Susana Frazao Pinheiro, PhD, MBA
Investment Advisor to the European Union and European Innovation Funds
Lead, Healthcare and Life Sciences, University College of London School of Management

Susana trained as an immunologist.  For over twenty-five years she has been dedicated to developing lasting solutions to global healthcare challenges. Her career spans research, academia, entrepreneurship, health policy and investment. 

Susana created and heads the pioneering Healthcare and Life Sciences Portfolio at the UCL School of Management. Susana conducted and published research in HIV immunology in Oxford, the Medical Research Council in The Gambia and the NIH (Fort Detrick) in the USA. After a DPhil in Clinical Medicine, University of Oxford, she acted as Postdoctoral Research Fellow and Analytical Project Manager in a Phase-I clinical trial for an HIV vaccine conducted at Oxford and funded by IAVI.  Her search for solutions to the HIV epidemic led her to pursue an MBA at Said Business School, University of Oxford (as Skoll scholar in social entrepreneurship).   

In 2007 she led a pioneering initiative to use mobile phones to improve access to healthcare in The Gambia. After the earthquake in 2010, Susana went to Haiti to work with local communities to develop and successfully pilot an innovative real-time, data-driven outbreak detection and prevention surveillance system, co-funded by the European Space Agency. This her to be named Social Capital Markets Entrepreneur 2012 (San Francisco).   Susana was co-founder and Executive Director of IES - Institute for Social Entrepreneurship in Portugal, now the first Social Business School and a co-founder of Oxford Entrepreneurs, which has become the largest student entrepreneurship network in Europe. 

She has spent over a decade working on health and security policy with the UN (Peacekeeping Financing Division, Department of Peacekeeping Operations in New York, UNDP Geneva and Angola and UNAIDS Angola), and with Ministries of Health in Europe and Africa. Susana also works with the EU and Innovation Funds on the assessment of health innovation and technology and acts as a scientific advisor to the Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford. 

She sits on the Advisory Boards of the Institute of Global Health Georgia and of the Center for Business and Poverty UK. Susana acts as a mentor for young women in leadership programs, including Oxford Women in Business and the Global Thinkers Forum.