Dr. Mary Mahy has over 22 years of experience using data to transform the HIV response. Mary brings her technical expertise and passion to use evidence to close the inequalities that allow the HIV pandemic to persist. As the current UNAIDS Director for the Data for Impact Practice, she leads the collection and analysis of the world’s most comprehensive collection of data on HIV. Through the DFI Practice, including 80 staff around the globe, she promotes the goal of ensuring that countries use data to improve their HIV response and ultimately end AIDS as a public health threat by 2030.
Mary has played a pivotal role in ensuring programme managers, leaders, and donors have information about how the HIV epidemic affects our world. She has ensured data are publicly available to identify inequalities and advocate for funding. Among her contributions to the field of HIV has been advancing the methods, accessibility, and use of HIV related modeling to build global and country knowledge. She is also passionate about unpacking the impact of HIV on children and has contributed to the understanding of causes of vertical transmission and the worsening inequality gap in HIV treatment coverage for children.
Prior to moving to UNAIDS headquarters in Geneva, Mary was the UNAIDS strategic information adviser in Namibia where she supported the government to build data systems to inform their HIV response. Before joining UNAIDS Mary was responsible for global monitoring and evaluation of HIV at UNICEF headquarters in New York. She also worked as a research analyst for the Demographic and Health Surveys at Macro International.
Mary is an author of over 60 journal articles on HIV-related topics with a special focus on epidemiology and pediatric AIDS. She received her Doctorate of Science in population dynamics from the Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health. Her dissertation research focused on child mortality and HIV in Zimbabwe. She has worked in multiple countries including Malawi, the Federated States of Micronesia, the United Kingdom and the Czech Republic.
