Who we are – CEPI

A global coalition for a global problem

Epidemic diseases affect us all. They do not respect borders. CEPI is a innovative global partnership between public, private, philanthropic, and civil society organisations. We're working together to accelerate the development of vaccines against emerging infectious diseases and enable equitable access to these vaccines for people during outbreaks.

THE CEPI Team

Leadership

Our Leadership Team works across our three offices in Oslo, London and Washington D.C.

Board

CEPI is a Norwegian Association. The primary governing body is the Board, which has 12 voting members (four investors and eight independent members representing competencies including industry, global health, science, resource mobilisation, finance) and five observers.

The Board is advised on decisions, such as prioritising pathogens and selecting development partners, by our Scientific Advisory Committee.

Board Committees

We have four Board Committees: Executive and Investment, Compensation and Nomination, Audit and Risk, and Equitable Access, with members of our Board Committees are listed below. Other Board members or experts may be called upon as advisers or observers as needed.

Voting members

Non-voting members

CEPI Board Committees

Executive and Investment

Compensation and Nomination

Audit and Risk

Equitable Access

Investors & Partners

CEPI was founded in Davos by the governments of Norway and India, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Wellcome Trust, and the World Economic Forum.

To date, CEPI has secured financial support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Wellcome Trust, the European Commission, and the governments of Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Ethiopia, Germany, Japan, Mexico, Norway and the United Kingdom.

Additional investment from sovereign governments, the private sector and philanthropic foundations has also been provided to support our COVID-19 vaccine programmes.

In response to call the Governments of Austria, Australia, Belgium, Canada, European Commission, Finland, France, Greece, Germany, Iceland, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Norway, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Serbia, Spain, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom, alongside private sector companies and donations through the UN Foundation COVID-19 Solidarity Response Fund, have pledged $1.4 billion in financial contributions.

Close collaboration with global partners is also crucial to the success of our work to develop vaccines against emerging infectious diseases. That’s why work with industry, regulators, and other bodies to ensure that any vaccines we develop get licensed and can reach the people who need them.

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Investors Council

All investors contributing to CEPI’s funding pool are invited to join our Investors Council. The council nominates Investor representatives to the Board and has some rights including approval any single investments over $100 m.

Each investor appoints one person to represent them on the Investors Council, serving as members for the duration of their pledged commitment.

The Investors Council receives regular updates from the CEPI team, shares information with CEPI and each other, provides guidance and oversight of CEPI activities, and engages in resource mobilisation efforts.

Four members of the CEPI Investors Council serve on the CEPI Board, as part of the Executive and Investment Committee.

CEPI launches at 2017 Davos Meeting

Terms of reference

Scientific Advisory Committee

The Scientific Advisory Committee is an independent body within the CEPI governing structure that provides scientific support, advice, and guidance to the CEPI Board and Secretariat. Final decision-making about the issues addressed by the committee rests with the Board or the Secretariat.

Terms of reference

Members of the Scientific Advisory Committee

Voting members

Non-voting members

Joint Coordination Group

Our Joint Coordination Group is a roundtable of independent institutions with an interest in seeing CEPI’s vaccines successfully developed and deployed in an outbreak.

These independent institutions play a role in various elements of the vaccine development lifecycle, from vaccine research and development all the way through to deploying vaccines during an outbreak.

Members of our Joint Coordination Group come together to discuss how we can best enhance our efforts to deliver and deploy vaccines by addressing challenges related to the research and development, regulation, stockpiling, and delivery of these products. In particular, while the group focuses on advancing our vaccine portfolio, its work also informs the broader field of vaccine development and preparedness.

Members also have a role in planning for rapid response to a priority pathogen or an unknown pathogen. Our Joint Coordination Group consists of 10 to 15 member organisations, which in turn appoint individuals to represent them at meetings.

From time to time, the group may choose to invite other organisations and experts to participate in meetings.

The current members of the Joint Coordination Group include: WHO, GAVI, EMA, FDA, MSF, UNICEF, IFRC, AVAREF, NIBSC, and Wellcome.

Terms of Reference

CEPI’s commitment to tackling racism

A destructive legacy of racism has led to deeply entrenched implicit biases and institutional racism, which have hurt countless people for generations. These inequalities are widespread and, as we have seen in the current COVID-19 pandemic, have led to stark inequities in access to healthcare and poorer health outcomes for affected communities globally.

Tackling this inequality is core to CEPI’s mission to ensure fair access to all the vaccines we develop. Through our strategic partnerships in countries around the world we also seek to build vaccine Research & Development capacity, strengthen domestic expertise, and nurture scientific talent. In response to COVID-19, we’ve launched the COVID-19 Vaccine Global Access (COVAX) initiative, in partnership with the World Health Organization (WHO) and Gavi, to ensure equitable access to COVID-19 vaccines for all countries, at all levels of development.

We are also committed to affecting positive change in the workplace and the principles of equality, inclusion, and non-discrimination guide all our internal and external policies. CEPI is a young organisation, launched in 2017, and our aim from the outset has been to build a diverse and inclusive organisation that reflects the populations we serve. We are proud to say that one in five of the CEPI team now come from low-income or middle-income countries and over half are women.

We also recognise that our executive leadership team does not reflect this diversity and our aim is to ensure we develop and implement a comprehensive plan to ensure that this goal of diversity at all levels is achieved over time. CEPI is a global coalition comprising members and representatives from all continents. We value the substantial geographical and cultural diversity of our partners and we welcome dialogue with them about the issue of racism and how we, as a coalition, can combat its negative effects.

We are determined to play our role in helping to overcome the challenges presented by institutional bias and discrimination. We accept that this won’t be easy and that we are not perfect, but we will persevere. CEPI believes positive and long-lasting change can only be achieved by learning from each other’s experiences and through collective action. A coalition by design, we will always stand together with our staff, our partners, and the communities that we serve around the world to push back against racism in all its forms.