Ajoke Sobanjo-ter Meulen is a Senior Program Officer with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. She leads the foundation’s maternal immunization initiative. Most recently, Ajoke was Cluster Head at Novartis, Cambridge, where she managed the Phase 2 maternal immunization clinical development program for the Group B streptococcus vaccine. Previously, Ajoke served as Associate Director Vaccine Clinical Research at Merck Research Laboratories she was a clinical development leader in Discovery through phase 3. Before joining industry, she coordinated the Child Health and Neglected Diseases program at the German bilateral agency (GIZ), as well as a large multi-center trial on HIV drug resistance monitoring and surveillance in Africa and Asia for the Netherlands Aids Foundation. Ajoke completed her residency in pediatric and adolescent medicine at the University of Wuerzburg, Germany, and did her pediatric infectious disease fellowship at Mount Sinai Medical School, New York. She holds a M.D. degree from the University of Berlin, a Dr. med. degree from the Institute of Tropical Medicine Hamburg; and a M.Sc. degree in Epidemiology from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.