Grace Kodindo, MD, is a leading expert in the organization and implementation of reproductive health services and the improvement of maternal health services to reduce maternal mortality. Since April 2007 she has served as Assistant Clinical Professor of Population and Family Health at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health and Medical/Advocacy Advisor to Reproductive Health Access, Information and services in Emergency Settings (RAISE), co-led by Columbia University and Marie Stopes International. Prior to her work with the RAISE Initiative, she served as a reproductive health consultant for WHO, UNICEF, and UNFPA. During her consultancy with the WHO in 2003, she wrote a document for the Ministry of Health in Chad entitled “Reproductive health situational analysis in Chad” as a first step for drafting national Reproductive Health policy. With UNICEF she drafted a report on “The Emergency Obstetric Care (EmOC) needs assessment in Chad” funded by AMDD in 2003. In 2006, she was a consultant to UNFPA and led the draft of “The Road Map for the acceleration of the reduction of maternal and neonatal mortality and morbidity” for the Ministry of Health in Chad. She also wrote “Guidelines for antenatal and postnatal care and labour monitoring” in 1994. She was a key staff member of Columbia University’s Averting Maternal Death and Disability Program (AMDD) from 2001 to 2007, where she monitored the implementation of the Emergency Obstetrics Care Project in Mali and Rwanda.

For thirty years, she has practiced general medicine and obstetrics and gynecology in her home country of Chad. During this time, she has taught in nursing and midwifery schools and served on the University of N’djamena faculty of medicine. In 1997, she received the Chad award for distinguished services in public health. Since 2000, she has been the president of the Chadian Society of Obstetrics/Gynecology. In 2000, she won the FIGO/Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health Distinguished Community Service Award for Emergency Obstetric Care. In May 2009, she received an award from the Danish government called “MDG 3 Torch” in Copenhagen. Dr. Kodindo holds a MD from the Université de Montreal in Canada, and a specialization in Obstetrics-Gynecology from Khartoum University and a certificate from Boston University’s School of Public Health on “Health care in developing countries” in September 1992.