Dr. LaTese Briggs is the senior director of strategy and programs at the Milken Institute Center for Strategic Philanthropy. She has more than 15 years of experience in biomedical research and philanthropy. Briggs leads initiatives focused on maximizing return on philanthropic investment by creatively leveraging innovations used to address one social issue and translating them to others, executing on best practices, and developing key performance indicators. Briggs previously served as a pharmaceutical market analyst for Decision Resources, a Boston-based research and consulting firm serving the biopharmaceutical industry. In this capacity, she provided expert analytics on the state of research and clinical development, including research challenges, market drivers, and unmet patient needs in the infectious disease space. She is trained as a biochemist, having completed her doctoral studies at the University of Maryland Baltimore County and then postdoctoral training at Harvard University/Broad Institute focusing on chemical biology and early drug discovery. She has authored several scientific articles and received a number of honors, including being named a Bill & Melinda Gates Millennium Scholar.