Dr. Susannah (Zan) Hopkins Leisher

Susannah (Zan) Hopkins Leisher is a stillbirth epidemiologist, global stillbirth advocate, and parent to Wilder Daniel, stillborn at 38½ weeks on July 13, 1999, with no cause found. Dr Leisher holds a PhD in epidemiology from Columbia University and an MA in international economics, social change and development from the Paul H Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) at Johns Hopkins University. Dr Leisher’s stillbirth research interests include structural racism and epigenetic mechanisms of effect. At the University of Utah, Dr Leisher is co-director of the first Stillbirth Center of Excellence in the United States. She is an honorary research fellow of the Stillbirth Centre for Research Excellence at the University of Queensland, Australia; ex-officio chair of the International Stillbirth Alliance; co-chair of the Stillbirth Advocacy Working Group, founded by the WHO’s Partnership for Maternal, Newborn and Child Health; a Chief Investigator for ARPAN, a maternal and newborn health center of excellence for the Asia/Pacific region based at the Burnet Institute, Australia; and a member of the Steering Committee of AlignMNH, the MFMU Network’s Community Engagement Board, and the WHO/UNICEF’s Every Woman Every Newborn Everywhere Management Team. Prior to moving to stillbirth research and advocacy, Dr Leisher was a Peace Corps volunteer in Nepal and then spent over 20 years working on global poverty and social justice in Asia, Africa and Central America, including ten years in Vietnam, where she is a recipient of government awards for her work on hunger eradication and poverty reduction. She speaks Vietnamese, French, Spanish, and Nepali.