Ellen Agler currently serves as the CEO of the END Fund, a private philanthropic initiative dedicated to ensuring that all people at risk of neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) receive the treatment they need to live healthy and prosperous lives. The END Fund works to control and eliminate the NTDs that affect over 1.5 billion of the world’s most impoverished and vulnerable people by: encouraging private sector engagement in the movement to eliminate NTDs, mobilizing and directing resources to where they can have maximum impact; and advocating for innovative, integrated and cost-effective NTD programs. Specifically, the END Fund focuses on scaling up treatment for intestinal worms, schistosomiasis, river blindness, lymphatic filariasis and blinding trachoma. Since its launch in 2012, the END Fund has helped to provide NTD treatments to over 50 million people at risk of NTDs and train over 100,000 community health workers in 15 countries, with a focus on sub-Saharan Africa.
Agler has worked for almost 20 years on global health programs across more than 50 developing countries in Latin America, Africa, Asia and the Middle East and for organizations including Operation Smile and International Medical Corps. She holds master’s degrees in global health from the Harvard School of Public Health, with a focus on humanitarian affairs, and in Development Studies from the London School of Economics, with a focus on child rights and NGO management.