Susannah Hopkins Leisher spent over 20 years working on global poverty alleviation, including 10 years based in Vietnam, where she was for five years the Vietnam country representative for Oxfam Hong Kong, as well as consulting for a wide range of agencies including the UN, DFID, the World Bank and various NGOs. Subsequently she spent five years as director and then vice-president for programs of Trickle Up, an NGO that works to move women out of extreme poverty in India, West Africa and Central America. Ms Leisher holds a BA (magna cum laude) in mathematics from Carleton College, an MA with distinction in international economics and social change and development from the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies of Johns Hopkins University, and an MSc with distinction in epidemiology from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. She is a second-year doctoral student in epidemiology at Columbia University with a National Institutes of Health National Research Service Award. Her research interest is stillbirth, and perinatal mortality generally, including the overlap between stillbirth and inequity, reducing unexplained stillbirths, the global socio-political environment for stillbirth prevention, and translating research into practice. Her current research includes a retrospective study of the association between socio-economic deprivation and stillbirth in Queensland, Australia, between 1994 and 2011, and a literature review of the perinatal mortality burden associated with Zika virus globally. Ms Leisher sits on the board of the International Stillbirth Alliance, and is a member of its Scientific Advisory Committee and a co-chair of the Stillbirth Advocacy Working Group. She lives in New Jersey, USA, with her husband and three sons, and is also the mother of stillborn son Wilder Daniel.
