Thoai Ngo, PhD, directs the Population Council’s Poverty, Gender, and Youth Program overseeing efforts to develop, test, and scale innovative and effective solutions to improve the well-being of adolescents and young people, to accelerate positive demographic trends, and to strengthen the resilience of vulnerable populations to adapt to climate change. He is also the Founding Director of the GIRL Center, which generates and translates high-quality evidence on adolescents to guide investment that transforms their lives.
Thoai’s research mainly focuses the intersections between gender, health, and poverty in low- and middle-income countries. And his expertise on adolescent health and well-being and strategies to expand sexual and reproductive health services have been well-cited and used to inform international and national guidelines, policies, and programs. Thoai has served as an advisor to multilateral and bilateral donors, private foundations, universities, UN agencies, and governmental bodies in Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. Thoai sits on the editorial committee of Studies in Family Planning, serves as the Board Chair for Ibis Reproductive Health, and lectures at leading global health universities. He has published extensively in scientific journals and other media. In 2017, Thoai was recognized as one of the 120 Under 40: The New Generation of Family Planning Leaders. He received his PhD in Epidemiology and Population Health from the London School for Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and his master’s degree in Global Disease Epidemiology and Control from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.