Impatient Optimists
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
Authors / Biography

Mark Suzman

Title Managing Director for International Policy, Programs, & Advocacy
Organization Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

Mark Suzman is the Managing Director for International Policy, Programs & Advocacy at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. He oversees the foundation’s global development policy and communications work as well as relationships with governments, NGOs and other key partners to increase awareness, action, and resources devoted to key international development priorities. He also oversees a grant portfolio that both directly supports global development policy and advocacy activities worldwide and addresses key crosscutting initiatives to create opportunities for poor people to lift themselves out of poverty.

Posts By Mark Suzman

"SMART" Goals Will Help Reduce Poverty

June 06, 2013 / Mark Suzman

The report from the United Nations High Level Panel on the post-2015 development goals was released last week. It sets forth a bold vision and narrative that reflects the evolving and complex nature of development. But in order to be able to mobilize the necessary political will and resources to make the agenda actionable, the world will need to prioritize by agreeing to a short set of clear goals. The Panel has taken the difficult step of suggesting priority areas through its illustrative goals. No one will be perfectly satisfied with the hard choices that this entails, but this is a necessary step to coming up with a robust agenda.

Full Blog Post ›

Details

MDG Success Relies on Setting Smart Goals

May 13, 2013 / Mark Suzman

While there are wide variations within and between countries, it’s clear that remarkable overall progress has been made in the last 15 years on the MDGs.

Full Blog Post ›

Details

Hunger and Poverty: Still Core to the MDG Agenda

April 09, 2013 / Mark Suzman

This week saw two key events related to the Millennium Development Goals : the kickoff on April 5 of an ambitious global campaign focused on accelerating progress over the last 1000 days before the 2015 deadline and a critical meeting on April 4 in Madrid to assess how hunger, food security and nutrition should be tackled in any post-2015 framework.

Full Blog Post ›

Details

Stay the Course on Post-2015 Development Goals

March 07, 2013 / Mark Suzman

With nearly one thousand days to go before the world calls time on the Millennium Development Goals, there is a heightened sense of urgency to ensure we do everything possible to meet this ambitious deadline – and to make sure that a new set of goals are set that keep up the critical momentum.

Full Blog Post ›

Details

Global Development: A Glass Half Empty or Half Full?

September 16, 2010 / Mark Suzman

In Accra, Ghana, an abundance of locally produced fruits, roots, and vegetables for sale speaks to a remarkable achievement: Ghana reduced hunger by nearly 75 percent between 1990 and 2004, an astonishing improvement mirrored in the reduction of the extreme poverty rate, which fell from 51 percent to 30 percent over the same period.

Full Blog Post ›

Details


  Load More Posts
Reader Comments
See All ›Partner Headlines
See All › Last Thought

  • "Our desire to bring every good thing to our children is a force for good throughout the world. It’s what propels societies forward." —Melinda Gates

  • The Global Fund has helped to deliver more than 190 million bed nets to protect families from malaria.

  • "The world faces a clear choice. If we invest relatively small amounts, many more poor farmers will be able to feed their families." —Bill Gates, 2012 Annual Letter

  • "When it come to global health, Bill and I are optimists—but we're impatient optimists. Tremendous progress is being made. But there is still so much we're impatient to see done." —Melinda French Gates

  • In Senegal, 80% of households now have a bed net, helping the number of malaria cases there drop 50% in a single year.

©2013 Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation