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Commission Leadership
Chairs
 H.E. Dr Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, President, Nigeria
Dr. Goodluck Ebele Azikiwe Jonathan, GCFR, was elected President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria on 18 April 2011 on the platform of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). He served as Chairperson of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS).
Under the Transformation Agenda of President Goodluck Jonathan, the National Strategic Health Development Plan (NSHDP) was established to enhance health care delivery towards the achievement of the MDGs.
Prior to this, he was Vice-President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria on 29 May 2007. He became the Acting President on 9 February 2010. Dr. Jonathan was subsequently sworn in as President on 6 May 2010 following the death of President Yar’Adua.
Between 1999 and 2005, he was the Deputy Governor of Bayelsa State. He was sworn in as Governor of the State on 9 December 2005 upon the impeachment of the then Governor.
Until his entry into politics in 1998, Dr. Jonathan served in various capacities as education inspector, lecturer, and environmental-protection officer.
He was educated at the University of Port Harcourt where he obtained a B.Sc. degree in Zoology, M.Sc. degree in Hydrobiology and Fisheries Biology and a Ph.D. degree in Zoology.
President Goodluck Jonathan was born on 20 November 1957. He is married to Dame Patience Jonathan and they are blessed with children.
 H.E. Jens Stoltenberg, Prime Minister, Norway
Jens Stoltenberg was born in Oslo on 16 March 1959. He spent his childhood years in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, and Oslo, with his diplomat father, mother and two sisters. Jens Stoltenberg is an economist from the University of Oslo and went to work in Statistics Norway after graduating in 1987. He was called by Prime Minister Gro Harlem Brundtland to serve as Under-Secretary for the Environment in 1990. In 1993 he was elected Member of Parliament for Oslo, and was also appointed Minister of Trade and Energy in the Brundtland Government. He served as Minister of Finance from 1996 to 1997, when the Labour Party lost the election, and he then returned to Parliament.
Jens Stoltenberg was appointed Prime Minister for the first time at the age of 40 in 2000. He stepped down following the election the year after. He was leader of the opposition until 2005, when he again became Prime Minister after the election that year, which brought in a coalition government. His coalition won the next election in 2009 and held on to the majority in Parliament.
Jens Stoltenberg has also had a number of international assignments. During many travels in Africa and Asia he witnessed challenges facing the world’s most vulnerable children. In 2001 he and his government made a pledge to focus on the need for vaccines for these children. Jens Stoltenberg gained thorough knowledge of all aspects of vaccination. For the last ten years he has been a driving force in mobilising political support and funds for the vaccine alliance GAVI, also as a board member of the alliance. In 2005 he was asked by the UN Secretary-General to co-chair the High-Level Panel on System Wide Coherence. The High-Level Panel presented its report UN – Delivering as One to the Secretary-General in 2006. In 2010 Jens Stoltenberg became co-chair of the UN Secretary-General’s High-Level Advisory Group on Climate Change Financing, together with the Ethiopian Prime Minister, Meles Zenawi. The recommendations of the Advisory Group are now being followed up in relevant international forums.
Stoltenberg has over the last years been strongly committed to mobilising political support and funds for fighting maternal and child mortality. He has now accepted the UN Secretary General invitation to co-chair the UN Commission on Lifesaving Commodities for Women and Children together with the President of Nigeria, Goodluck Jonathan. The aim of the Commission is to improve access to essential but overlooked health supplies that could save the lives of millions of women and children every year. Jens Stoltenberg is married to Ingrid Schulerud, a diplomat. They have two grown-up children.
Vice-Chairs
 Dr. Babatunde Osotimehin, Executive Director, UNFPA
On 1 January 2011, Dr. Babatunde Osotimehin became the fourth Executive Director of UNFPA, the United Nations Population Fund. He holds the rank of Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations.
Before this appointment, Dr. Osotimehin had served as the Minister of Health of Nigeria. Prior to that position, he was the Director-General of the Nigerian National Agency for the Control of AIDS, which coordinates all HIV and AIDS work in a country of about 160 million people.
Dr. Osotimehin qualified as a medical doctor from the University of Ibadan, Nigeria, in 1972, and then went to the University of Birmingham in the United Kingdom, where he got a doctorate in medicine in 1979. He is a member of the United Kingdom’s Royal College of Physicians and was, between 1996 and 1997, a visiting fellow at the Harvard Centre for Population and Development Studies. In 2006, he was inducted as a fellow of the prestigious Nigerian Academy of Sciences.
The new UNFPA Executive Director was appointed as a Professor at the University of Ibadan in 1980 and headed the Department of Clinical Pathology before being elected as Provost of the College of Medicine of the same university in 1990. He held the position until 1994.
Dr. Osotimehin’s interests include youth and gender, within the context of reproductive health and rights.
In recognition of his contributions, especially as a leader of Nigeria’s response to HIV and AIDS, he was awarded the national honour of Officer of the Order of the Niger (OON) in December 2005.
Dr. Osotimehin is married and has five children.
 Anthony Lake, Executive Director, UNICEF
On 1 May 2010, Anthony Lake became the sixth Executive Director of the United Nations Children’s Fund, bringing to the position more than 45 years of public service.
During his career, Anthony Lake has worked with leaders and policy makers across the world. In 2007-2008, he served as a senior foreign policy adviser to the presidential campaign of Barack Obama, a role he also performed during the Clinton presidential campaign of 1991-1992. He has managed a full range of foreign policy, national security, humanitarian and development issues at the most senior levels: as National Security Advisor (1993-1997) under President Bill Clinton, and as Director of Policy Planning in President Carter’s administration (1977-1981). He joined the US State Department in 1962 as a Foreign Service Officer.
Upon leaving the government, he served as the United States President’s Special Envoy, first in Ethiopia and Eritrea, and later in Haiti, from 1998 to 2000. His efforts, for which he received the 2000 Samuel Nelson Drew Award, contributed to the achievement of the Algiers Agreement that ended the war between Ethiopia and Eritrea. He also played a leading role in shaping policies that led to peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Northern Ireland.
His experience in international development began in the 1970s, as Director of International Voluntary Services, leading the work of this ‘private Peace Corps’. In that same decade, he also served on the boards of Save the Children (1975–1977) and the Overseas Development Council. Over the past 10 years, Anthony Lake has been an International Adviser to the International Committee of the Red Cross (2000-2003) and Chair of the Marshall Legacy Institute, which works in conflict-affected countries to remove landmines and assist survivors, and advance children's rights.
Anthony Lake’s ties with UNICEF are long-standing, dating back to 1993, when he worked with UNICEF’s third Executive Director, James P. Grant, on the organization’s presentation of its flagship publication, ‘The State of the World’s Children’, at the White House. From 1998 to 2007 he served on the Board of the US Fund for UNICEF, with a term as Chair from 2004 to 2007, after which he was appointed a permanent honorary member.
Immediately prior to his appointment with UNICEF, Anthony Lake served as Distinguished Professor in the Practice of Diplomacy at the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. He has been a member of the Board of Trustees at Mount Holyoke College and a member of the Advisory Council of the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies, and has served on the Governance Board of the Center for the Study of Democracy at St. Mary’s College of Maryland.
He obtained a B.A. degree from Harvard in 1961, read international economics at Trinity College, Cambridge, and went on to receive his Ph.D. from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University in 1974.
A native of New York, Anthony Lake is married and has three children and five grandchildren.
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