Yinuo Li serves as Director of China Country Office of Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation overseeing a team that works with China’s public, private, and nonprofit sectors to address key domestic and global health, development, and policy issues.

Dr. Li joined the foundation in 2015 after a career at McKinsey & Company where she was most recently a partner at the firm's Palo Alto office. Her McKinsey career began in Los Angeles, California, United States, in 2005. From 2008 to 2013, while based in McKinsey’s Beijing office, Yinuo served as co-leader of the Healthcare Practice, and leader of the Social Sector and Global Public Health Practice. Her areas of expertise included health system and reform, global health, pharmaceutical and diagnostic products, digital healthcare, and health financing. Her clients covered leading multinational and Chinese pharmaceutical and life science companies, institutional investors, trade associations, government agencies, nonprofit organizations, and academic institutions.

Dr. Li was elected a partner at McKinsey in 2011. In 2014, she moved to McKinsey’s office in Palo Alto, California, United States, where she focused on Healthcare and Social Sector Practice. She is a sought-after speaker on topics ranging from industry perspectives to strategy, organization, talent recruitment/development, and women’s leadership.

Dr. Li has a B.S. in biology from Tsinghua University in Beijing and a Ph.D. in molecular biology from UCLA.

How innovations in R&D can solve the world’s toughest heath challenges

90% of the world’s communicable disease burden is in developing countries. However, only 10% of relevant investment in worldwide R&D is for developing countries. Less than 20 of the 1,500 medicines authorized since 1975 target diseases in developing countries.

The past 50 years have seen two major waves of progress in human health and well-being, first in South America, then in Asia. Continued progress in global health will depend on our accelerating progress in sub-Saharan Africa, where, by 2050, 86% of the world’s extremely poor people will be concentrated.

Economic development may gradually improve health as well as living standards in Africa, but slowly and not inevitably. Not if infectious diseases continue to ravage the continent. Malaria, TB and HIV take enormous tolls in productivity as well as lives, hobbling Africa’s progress. By reducing these scourges, biomedical advances could greatly accelerate improvement in living standards, which would further redound to the benefit of public health—a virtuous cycle.

Building out the infrastructure of universal health care is important, though it may take several decades. Meanwhile, innovation is needed to discover and devise new interventions that can be effective in poor, tropical countries where the public health infrastructure will be incomplete for the foreseeable future.