Tom
Brown
Tom Brown has 25 years of experience in supply chain management, including 20 years in global health. During that time Brown has worked both for donor and implementer organisations, and has helped governments in Africa, Southeast Asia and Eastern Europe to achieve better health outcomes through successfully reforming supply chain institutions and practices.
Brown comes to Abt from the World Bank where he worked as a Senior Expert on Supply Chains for the Global Financing Facility, a financing and prioritization mechanism that helps to improve reproductive, maternal, and child health in 36 countries across Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Prior to that, he held the position of Senior Program Officer at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in Seattle, where he managed a portfolio of investments aimed at improving maturity and performance in health product supply chains in several African countries.
Between 2004 and 2015, Brown lived in Southern Africa and led major reform projects at national supply chain agencies in Zambia and Botswana. As Director of Logistics for Zambia Medical Stores Ltd. between 2004 and 2009, Brown led a team that doubled on-time delivery performance (to 95 percent) and reduced unit distribution costs by 32 percent. He also co-designed and managed the largest randomized controlled trial to date in the field of global health supply chain, which empirically proved that nearly 4,000 malaria-related deaths annually could be prevented in Zambia by adopting a different distribution model.
The Zambian government has since used this research to change its distribution strategy and increase access to medicines. As Chief Operating Officer at Botswana Central Medical Stores, Brown led the organization to the ISO:9001 management systems certification, improving the availability of vital medicines from 55 percent to 95 percent in the process. He also provided technical leadership to the CMS as the organization engaged a third party to manage its warehousing and distribution functions for the first time.
Expertise:
- Supply Chain Management
- Global Health
- Infectious Disease
- Maternal and Child Health
Publications:
