Victoria Hale

OneWorld Health and Medicines360

Hale Founded First Nonprofit Pharma

Victoria is a global health social entrepreneur. She has founded and run two nonprofit pharmaceutical companies, OneWorld Health, the first nonprofit pharmaceutical company in the US (2000) and Medicines360 (2009). These companies were funded by the Gates Foundation and an anonymous donor, respectively. These companies developed a new cure for visceral leishmaniasis, a platform technology to reduce the cost of artemisinin malaria drugs by more than 10-fold, and an FDA-approved hormonal IUD for contraception. Her present areas of focus remain in public health, with attention on affordable drugs, biologics, vaccines and medical devices.

She established her expertise in all stages of drug development at the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and at Genentech. She earned her PhD in Pharmaceutical Chemistry from the University of California San Francisco (UCSF), where she presently maintains an Adjunct Full Professorship in Bioengineering & Therapeutic Sciences. She has honorary doctorate degrees from the University of Southern California and from Mount Holyoke College.

She has been inducted into the US National Academy of Science, Engineering and Medicine, Institute of Medicine. She was granted the MacArthur “Genius” Award. Dr. Hale is internationally recognized as a senior social entrepreneur by the Skoll Foundation, Schwab Foundation, and Ashoka University. The Economist named her the recipient of its Social and Economic Innovation Award.