Director of Global Engagement Strategies at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital
Dr Bente Mikkelsen is the Director of Global Engagement Strategies at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. She is a public health physician and global health leader whose career spans decades of driving large-scale health system reforms and shaping the international non-communicable disease (NCD) agenda. She has a proven track record of uniting multi-stakeholder partnerships across sectors to translate global commitments into measurable health equity and country-level impact.
She has robust executive experience at both the domestic and international levels, having recently served as the Director of the Noncommunicable Diseases Department at the World Health Organization (WHO). Prior to that, she held directorships at the WHO Regional Office for Europe, served as the Head of Secretariat for the Global Coordination Mechanism on NCDs, and spent seven years as the CEO of the South Eastern Norway Regional Health Authority, where she oversaw half of the Norwegian healthcare system.
An obstetrician and gynecologist by training, Bente graduated with a Doctor of Medicine from the University of Oslo and holds a Master’s degree in Health Administration and Management.
