Jean-Luc Poncelet, a physician and specialist in public health and disaster management, has 35 years of experience in building national and local capacities in disaster management. He has led multiple international humanitarian public health interventions, notably in Latin America and the Caribbean. He has also worked in Yemen, Mali, Lebanon, and Burundi. As WHO Representative in  Haiti, he led public health development programs, working closely with international agencies and NGOs, through donor mobilization. He also supported national entities in their response to humanitarian crises and the elimination of cholera in the country through a multisectoral approach. During his 12 years as Regional Director of PAHO/WHO disaster preparedness program, based in Washington, he assisted all member states at broadening their disaster response focus approach of the 80’s to a comprehensive modern national risk reduction program. His main vision has been to help nationals at reducing their dependence to international emergency assistance by equipping them with all sort of tools such as humanitarian supply management systems, institutional response plan and procedures, technical standards for national approval of international medical response teams, making hospital resilient to natural hazards or a variety of disaster management training as well as adaptation of multiple regional technical publications. He works since 2017 as an independent evaluator of disaster management program, lectures at John Hopkins University, operated as senior Health advisor and researched at URD (a humanitarian think tank focusing on fragile states), do research on the articulation of humanitarian and development programs and wrote or

contribute to numerous technical publications in English, French or Spanish.