Organizers

George Fenton is an experienced consultant and evaluator, working with both the aid and private sectors, in the fields of emergency preparedness, response and logistics, including digital cash transfers and market-based interventions. He is an expert in humanitarian supply chain management with over 30 years of experience and is a leader in his field, having co-founded: the Humanitarian Logistics Association, a global humanitarian logistics community of practice and professional development body; the global Fleet Forum which promotes aid transport knowledge sharing, road safety and capacity building; and the East Africa Inter-Agency Working Group for disaster preparedness. George has also played an influential role within international fora such as the World Humanitarian Summit and the Humanitarian Response Network. 

George has led and managed emergency operations and logistics teams to ensure successful multi-million dollar responses to a wide range of global humanitarian crises over the past decade. Constantly seeking new challenges, he uses his academic, private and aid sector networks, broad management experience and versatile skills to support improvements to the delivery of aid by influencing practical, innovative changes to ways in which resources are used.

As a senior executive George has worked for the United Nations and several of the world’s largest non-governmental organisations, leading the development of new technologies, such as mobile data solutions to facilitate cash transfers, developing national supply chain capacity, and managing key relationships with a broad range of stakeholders. He has recently been involved in several UN and donor evaluations of emergency preparedness, response and logistics services in East Africa.

Pinar Keskinocak is the director and co-founder of the Center for Health & Humanitarian Systems (CHHS) at Georgia Tech. She has over 20 years of experience in logistics and supply management. Her work focuses on the applications of operations research and management science with societal impact, particularly health and humanitarian applications. Her recent work has addressed infectious disease modeling (e.g., cholera, pandemic flu), evaluating intervention strategies, and resource allocation; catch-up scheduling for vaccinations; medical decision-making (e.g., disease screening); hospital operations management; disaster preparedness and response (e.g., prepositioning inventory, debris management). Dr. Keskinocak has worked on a variety of projects with companies, governmental and non-governmental organizations, and healthcare providers, including American Red Cross, CARE, CDC, Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, Emory University Hospital, Grady Memorial Hospital, Pan-American Health Organization, and the Task Force for Global Health.