Chief Strategy & Operating Officer, Nia Tero
Leigh Morgan is a global leader whose mission is to lead, inspire, and build high performing, purpose based organizations that change the world for better. She is currently the chief strategy and operating officer at Nia Tero (www.niatero.org), a leading global NGO where her accountabilities include strategy, finance, governance, communications/marketing, infrastructure & PRI program areas, operations, and scaling rapid growth.
Her leadership experience spans the biopharmaceutical, government, academia, and public sectors. She previously served as the COO at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, as associate chancellor at the University of California, San Francisco, and she held executive leadership positions at Roche, Genentech, and GlaxoSmithKline. Ms. Morgan also served in former NC Governor Jim Hunt’s administration where she helped establish the state’s AmeriCorps National Service program. Her civic engagement includes the Board of Trustees at the Fred Hutch Cancer Center (Seattle) & Uganda Cancer Institute-Fred Hutch Cancer Centre (Kampala), board member at Springboard Enterprises in addition to her work with Duke CASE. She also serves on the board of Curemark, a pre-IPO biotech company pioneering a novel therapy for autism and other neurological diseases. She is also a lifetime member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
She received her undergraduate degree from Duke, where she was also the starting point guard for the women’s basketball team. In 2017 she was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from the Asian University for Women (Chittagong, Bangladesh) in recognition of her advocacy for women around the world. She earned a MS in Organization Development from The American University.