Dr. Vanessa Kerry, daughter of John Kerry (yes, that one), is the CEO of Seed Global Health and the Special Envoy to the World Health Organization (WHO) for Climate Change and Health. In those roles, she’s looking at healthcare from a global perspective, focusing on building stronger healthcare systems everywhere and addressing the health impacts of climate change.
Through Seed Global Health, she’s helped create long-term training programs for more than 47,000 medical professionals working in sub-Saharan Africa. In Uganda, she launched new neonatology fellowship programs to train health workers in newborn care and reduce newborn deaths. Last year, she continued Seed’s efforts to find and recruit dedicated individuals to work as health educators in places like Malawi, Sierra Leone, Uganda, and Zambia, something that’s improving healthcare for over 76 million people.
She also spent 2025 speaking at major global forums, including the UN General Assembly and the World Health Assembly where she advocated for new policies to address the health impacts of climate change. She also argued for changes to global aid, promoting investment strategies that strengthen national health systems and prioritize sustainability not just short-term relief.
