Ann Mei Chang is the first Executive Director of the U.S. Global Development Lab at the U.S. Agency for International Development. With extensive experience in the technology industry, a commitment to public service, and a depth of expertise in development, Ann Mei will accelerate our Agency’s commitment to harnessing science, technology, innovation, and partnerships in every place we work. Prior to USAID, Ann Mei served as the Chief Innovation Officer at Mercy Corps, where she focused on leveraging mobile technology to improve the lives of the poor. She also served as the Senior Advisor for Women and Technology at the U.S. Department of State—playing a key role in harnessing technology to improve the lives of women and girls in developing countries, and increase the representation of women in the technology sector. Throughout her career, Ann Mei has worked closely with USAID—including through the launch of the Alliance for Affordable Internet, a public-private partnership that aims to expand Internet access to one billion people. Ann Mei has more than twenty years of engineering and leadership experience in Silicon Valley, including serving for eight years as a Senior Engineering Director at Google. At Google, she also led the product development team for Emerging Markets, with a mission to bring relevant mobile and Internet services to the two-thirds of the world’s population that is not yet online. In addition, Ann Mei has held leadership roles at several leading companies including Apple,Intuit, SGI, and several startups. Under Ann Mei’s leadership, the Global Development Lab will continue to focus the world’s brightest minds on our biggest shared challenges—lifting millions out of the tragic cycle of extreme poverty.

Wendy Taylor is Director of the Center for Accelerating Innovation and Impact at the US Agency for International Development (USAID), a center of excellence applying innovative, business-minded approaches to accelerate the development, introduction and scale-up of priority global health innovations. Joining the Administration in 2010, Ms. Taylor established and built the Center, spearheaded the Saving Lives at Birth Grand Challenge for Development – a $50 million multi-donor partnership that calls on the brightest minds across the globe to identify groundbreaking new solutions for pregnant women and newborns around the time of birth, and created multiple public-private partnerships. She has worked for the last 20 years identifying market-based solutions to address diseases and conditions of poverty. In 2004, she founded Bio Ventures for Global Health (BVGH), a non-profit working to engage the biopharmaceutical industry to develop medicines for diseases of the developing world. She also held senior positions with Malaria No More and the Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO), and worked in both the executive and legislative branches of the US government, including the Office of Management and Budget and the U.S. House Committee on Ways and Means. She received a Master of Public Policy from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and a B.A. from Duke University. She serves on the North American Board of Medicines for Malaria Ventures and is Chair of HANSHEP, an international donor coordinating body harnessing the private sector to deliver better healthcare to the poor.