Michelle Childs

Michelle Childs joined DNDi in April 2016 as Head of Policy Advocacy. She joined the Executive Team in 2025 as Policy Advocacy Director.

Ms Childs has an extensive experience in proposing and advocating for solutions to access and innovation barriers faced by developing countries and health providers. She has helped to develop several proposals on innovation using open knowledge principles for Chagas disease, TB and was a co-author of the original proposal  for  the creation of a patent pool for HIV medicines by Unitaid. Prior to that, Ms Childs was an expert adviser for the WHO to help further develop four open knowledge demonstration projects from India, Brazil, South Africa and Thailand.

Until March 2013 Michelle was Director of Policy Advocacy at Médecins Sans Frontières Access Campaign leading a multidisciplinary and multinational team. She has worked for leading consumer, health and knowledge rights organizations and public authorities including KEI, Which? and the Hong Kong and UK telecom regulators, and as member of a number of NGO and public advisory boards including the four person advisory board of the UK competition authority. She started her career as a commercial litigation lawyer in a City of London law firm.