Rachel Marcus is the Executive Director for the Johns Hopkins Institute for Planetary Health (JHIPH) and the Planetary Health Alliance (PHA), where she is a leading voice for Planetary Health, helping to shape the vision, strategy, and work of these organizations while managing two dynamic teams focused on building a Planetary Health community at JHU and growing the global Planetary Health community and movement.
Prior to her role as Executive Director of JHIPH and PHA, Rachel worked for 12 years at the U.S. Agency for International Development where she managed a wide-ranging portfolio of health system and population health programs and teams working across 65 countries worldwide. At USAID, she oversaw multiple programs up to $350M in value, focused on strengthening sustainable, resilient, equitable health systems with shared investment from global health, democracy, environmental, and other sectors. Rachel has received numerous awards for translating complex systems thinking approaches into effective interventions, and for infusing innovative design approaches into programming. Rachel has sought to sustainably improve health and health equity throughout her career, and she is especially interested in how JHIPH and PHA can best collaborate with university partners, communities, governments, and both local and international organizations to translate Planetary Health knowledge into action and improve health outcomes for all.
Rachel holds a DrPH from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Health Equity and Social Justice, an MSc in Health, Community, and Development from the London School of Economics & Political Science, and a B.S. in Psychology and Political Science from Yale University.