NextBillion - An Initiative of the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan

Robert Hecht is managing director at Results for Development. He joined the organization in April 2008, and is currently managing a growing portfolio of projects analyzing policy barriers and solutions related to AIDS and health financing and improving R&D and access to new health technologies in developing countries.

Before coming to Results for Development, he spent four years as vice president for Policy and Advocacy at the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative. Prior to this, he had a 20 year tenure at the World Bank, where he occupied a number of senior posts including manager of the Bank’s central unit for Health, Nutrition, and Population, with oversight for global strategies, knowledge, technical services, and partnerships; chief of operations for the Human Development Network; principal economist in the Latin America region, and member of the core team and a lead author of the 1993 World Development Report, “Investing in Health.” From 1987 to 1996, he was responsible for World Bank sponsored studies and projects in health in Africa and Latin America, most notably in Zimbabwe and Argentina.

He served as a director of the Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) from 1998 to 2001, where he managed technical units based in South Africa, Cote d’Ivoire, and Thailand, as well as in Geneva. He led UNAIDS efforts to portray AIDS as a development and poverty issue impacting a wide range of social and economic goals, and published a number of papers advancing this view.

He is the author of more than 30 articles and other publications. He received his undergraduate degree from Yale and his doctorate from Cambridge University.