Foundation for a Smoke-Free World People

This page lists the management, board of directors, previous staff and other key personnel associated with the Foundation for a Smoke-Free World (FSFW), which was rebranded in May 2024 as Global Action to End Smoking (GAES).

In June 2025, less than two years after the termination of its pledge agreement with Philip Morris International (PMI), GAES announced a restructuring of its leadership, operations and staffing that included the departure of President and CEO Clifford E. Douglas and two other senior staff members.¹²³

In September 2020, FSFW updated its website to reflect that it had lost 14 staff members, which represented approximately 38% of its total staff the previous week.⁴⁵

Management

• Heidi B. Goldstein is President, Chief Operating Officer and Chief Legal Officer. Previously, she held the position of Chief Legal Officer at Phoenix House, a nonprofit focused on substance use disorders and associated mental health conditions.⁴¹³
• Nataliia Toropova is Chief Development Officer. She was CEO of the FSFW/GAES grantee Healthy Initiatives for six years and has also held senior positions in the World Health Organization and the Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids in Eastern Europe.⁶
• Erik Augustson is Vice President, Programs. Augustson is a former Senior Director Global Scientific Affairs for e-cigarette company JUUL labs.⁷⁴
• Ehsan Latif is Senior Vice President for Grant Management and Development (previously Program Director Health and Smoking Control). Latif formerly worked for the International Union Against Tuberculosis and Lung Disease.⁴⁸³
• Candida Nakhumwa is Vice President and Country Director, Malawi. She is responsible for managing the Agricultural Transformation Initiative activities and strategic partnerships in Malawi’s agricultural sector.⁹ Nakhumwa previously worked for the Farmers Union of Malawi and the National Smallholder Farmers Association.⁴³
• Elsa Larson is Director of Programs.⁴ She is a former behavioural scientist for tobacco company Altria.¹⁰³
• Cole Burbidge is Director of Programs, responsible for developing grant funding mechanisms, reviewing applications and selecting projects for funding.³
• Linda Ruff is Vice president of Finance and Operations. Linda previously held positions at Precision IT Group and Trident Global.⁴³
• Katherine Ellen Foley is Director of Media Relations. She is responsible for GAES’s communications and media outreach. Foley previously worked as reporter for POLITICO and Quartz.¹³
• Kayleigh Hartmann is Program Manager. Previously, she held posts at the Union for International Cancer Control, the International Union Against Tuberculosis and Lung Disease, and NHS Scotland.¹³

An up-to-date listing of GAES staff can be found on its website.

Board of Directors

• Pamela Parizek is Chair of GAES’s board and Managing Director at The Claro Group consultancy. Parizek previously worked for KPMG and Kroll Inc, a corporate investigations and risk consultancy firm.³¹¹.¹²
• Dyborn Chibonga is Regional Head for Malawi and Mozambique at the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA).¹² Chibonga has also sat on the Board of Directors of the African Institute of Corporate Citizenship (AICC) since 2010.¹³³
• Paul Gardner is the former Chairman of advertising firm Grey Group Australia and New Zealand, a WPP company.¹² Since 2012 he has run his own business consulting company, specialising in “branding and marketing communications as well as greenfield start-ups in Australia and overseas”.¹⁴³
• Corinna Lathan is the founder and CEO of AnthroTronix Inc, an engineering research and development company that develops products “in digital health, wearable technology, robotics, and augmented reality”.³
• Angela Marshall Hofmann is the founder and president of World Strategies, a government affairs and policy consultation firm. Hofmann is also the Executive Co-Director and spokesperson for Farmers for Free Trade, which lobbies for free trade agreements to support American farmers. She began her career as a senatorial advisor before working for supermarket giant Walmart where she ended up as a Vice President for International Corporate Affairs.³
• Doris Taylor is co-founder and CEO of Organamet Bio, a company developing bio-engineered personalised human hearts. She has held faculty posts at Duke University Medical Center, University of Minnesota Medical School, Texas A&M University and Rice University.³

An up-to-date listing of GAES board members can be found on its website.

The current board has no known direct tobacco industry links. In an open letter, former FSFW President Derek Yach stated that the appointees are “subject to stringent conflicts of interest policy. No Board member can have ties to tobacco companies. The Directors will receive reimbursement for their expenses and a modest honorarium for their service”.¹⁵

Previous Board Members and Management Staff

Senior Staff Departures

• Clifford E. Douglas was President and Chief Executive Officer until June 2025.¹ Douglas was formerly director of the University of Michigan’s Tobacco Research Network and the American Cancer Society’s National Vice President for Tobacco Control.¹⁶­­
• Nicole Bradley was Vice President for Communications (formerly Director for Communications). Previously, Bradley spent six years at Pepsi managing their media relations.⁵
• Ayda Yurekli was the Foundation’s Director of Economics. She previously worked for the World Health Organization.⁴⁵
• Vandana Abramson was a Foundation Board Member. She is Associate Professor of Medicine at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, specialising in breast cancer.¹⁷
• David Janazzo was Interim Co-President and Executive Vice President of Operations and Finance and Chief Financial Officer of FSFW.¹⁸⁵
• William R. True was Chief Health, Science & Technology Officer and has held senior positions in tobacco, “e-vapor” and cannabis extraction industries.¹⁹ Between 2002 and 2015 True was Senior Vice President of Research and Development at Lorillard Tobacco Company.²⁰
• Amy Curry was the Foundation’s Chief of Staff.⁴
• Derek Yach was the President of the Foundation and the former Head of the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Tobacco Free Initiative. He was also Senior Vice President of Global Health and Agriculture Policy at PepsiCo.⁴
• Brian Erkkila was the Foundation’s Vice President for Health, Science and Technology. Prior to that he spent seven years at the US Food and Drug Administration’s Center for Tobacco Products.⁵ Erkkila left the Foundation to become Director of Regulatory Science at Swedish Match.²¹
• Pamela Appel was Senior Director, Scientific Exchange and Communications.²²
• Michael J. Paskow was Senior Manager, Health Research, Health, Science, and Technology⁵

Two board members left FSFW in 2020:

• Darshita Gillies is also a Director at Blu Dot Advisory and Founder and CEO of Maanch,¹² a platform which ‘matches donors and charities’ to work towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goals.²³
• Zoe Feldman was the Managing Director at Almanac Investments and previously worked for PepsiCo for eight years.²⁴

Three executive team members were removed from FSFW’s website in September and October 2020:⁵

• Carolyn “C.B.” Blanckmeister was Chief Health Technology Officer. She is an immunologist, and was previously employed at Pfizer, GSK and Roche pharmaceutical companies.⁵
• Nitin Mittal was Chief Operating Officer and Chief Strategy Officer. He has a background in strategy management and previously worked at the Bill and Melinda Gates Global Good Fund, PATH, Microsoft and General Electric.
• Jim Lutzweiler was Vice President of Agriculture and Livelihoods at the Foundation, and former Senior Director of Global Public Policy at PepsiCo.

Additional staff departures included:⁵

• Charles Gardner, Director, Health, Science and Technology
• Rob Henning, Director, Agriculture and Economic Diversification Programmes
• Michael Johnson, Director of Agricultural Science, Technology and Innovation
• Sarah Rajkumar, Director, Epidemiology, Health, Science and Technology
• Alexandra Solomon, Gender Specialist
• Matthew Waterson, Director, Operations and Security

All staff from the Agricultural and Economic Diversification Programme were removed from FSFW’s staff page, as well as several assistant positions.⁵

FSFW appeared to have a high turnover of staff. A website update in September 2020 indicated that it had lost 14 staff members, nearly 40% of its staff, in one week.⁴⁵

Previous Departures

• Heather Majewski was the Foundation’s Vice President for Shared Initatives (formally ‘Global Initiatives’ and prior to that’ Global Services’.⁵
• Ramla Benmaamar was Director, Global Scientific Affairs.
• Tom Harding was the Foundation’s Chief Operating Officer (previously listed as Chief Administrative Officer and Chief Financial Officer).²⁵²⁶.
• Martin Skancke was on the Foundation’s Board of Directors. Skancke is the founder and General Manager of Skancke Consulting, having previously worked for the Norwegian Ministry of Finance and consultancy firm McKinsey.²⁷
• Andrew MacLeod is co-founder of Brexit Advisory Services, Visiting Professor at King’s College London in War and Security Studies, and Chair of Griffin Law.²⁸ He was on the Board of Directors at the Foundation until February 2019.²⁹
• Farhad Riahi was the Foundation’s Chief Health, Science and Technology Officer until 2019. Prior to that he was a Partner at consultancy firm McKinsey.³⁰
• Michael Sagner, a physician and Chairman of the European Society of Preventive Medicine, was a member of the Foundation’s Board until June 2018.³¹³²
• Lisa Gable was also previously a member of the Foundation’s Board.³³ Gable is a former US ambassador and Chairman Emeritus of the Healthy Weight Commitment Foundation (HWCF), “a non-profit organization that aims to reduce obesity among children in the United States.” The Board of Directors of the HWCF includes executives from Nestle, PepsiCo, Coca-Cola and General Mills.³⁴
• Mica Wilson was Vice President of Marketing and Communications at the Foundation. Before this, Wilson was Director of Global health at PepsiCo.³⁵
• Alastair Bradstock, previously Director of the International Tobacco Control Programme at Cancer Research UK,³⁶ worked in the Health and Agriculture Team of the Foundation.

Relevant Links

• Global Action to End Smoking homepage
• Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids’ Industry Watch on the Foundation
• Read STOP’s report on PMI and the Foundation: Addiction at Any Cost

Tobacco Tactics Resources

• Global Action to End Smoking
• Foundation for a Smoke-Free World
• Foundation for a Smoke-Free World: How it Frames Itself
• Foundation for a Smoke-Free World Centres of Excellence
• Philip Morris International
• Front Groups
• Influencing Science

TCRG Research

• The Philip Morris-funded Foundation for a Smoke-Free World: tax return sheds light on funding activities, T. Legg, S. Peeters, P. Chamberlain, A. Gilmore, The Lancet, 6 June 2019
• Big Tobacco is funding the anti-smoking lobby but leaked documents reveal the real reason why, A. Rowell, The Conversation, 13 March 2018