B.A., Georgetown; J.D., Georgetown
John T. Monahan is the Senior Advisor to Georgetown University’s President. He also holds Georgetown academic appointments as Professor of Medicine, Senior Lecturer in Law, and Senior Fellow at the School of Public Policy. In his current roles, he advances strategic university-wide initiatives in global health and related areas; co-chairs The Lancet-Georgetown Commission on Global Health and Law; and has taught courses in Georgetown’s law, nursing, and foreign service schools.
Over the course of his professional career, Monahan has played multiple leadership roles in government (serving in all three branches of the federal government), philanthropy, academia and politics at the global, national, and state/local levels. He has focused on addressing and managing complex health and social service programs affecting vulnerable populations in the United States and abroad.
From 2010-2014, Monahan served as Special Advisor for Global Health Partnerships at the United States Department of State. Under the leadership of Secretaries Clinton and Kerry, he managed the Obama Administration’s successful strategy for reforming the operations and replenishing the finances of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, an innovative public-private partnership based in Switzerland ($4 billion in annual grantmaking). He served as the US Government’s representative/alternate on the Global Fund’s Board; a member of the Board’s Comprehensive Reform Working Group; and Vice-Chair of the Board’s Finance and Operational Performance Committee.
In 2009-2010, he was Director of the Office of Global Health Affairs at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and served as a primary liaison to the World Health Organization’s leadership during the H1N1 influenza pandemic. He also served as Counselor to the Secretary of HHS and represented HHS on the Vice-President Biden’s interagency task force responsible for coordinating implementation of economic stimulus legislation in 2009.
Monahan also has extensive experience with domestic public policy issues. From 2000-2007, he served as Senior Fellow at the Annie E. Casey Foundation, a philanthropy dedicated to low-income children in the United States. He advised the Foundation’s senior leadership on federal policy issues; managed its relationship with Living Cities (a public-private partnership devoted to US community development); and supported its use of loan guarantees and innovative program-related investment strategies for community development.
During the Clinton Administration, Monahan served as Director of Intergovernmental Affairs at HHS (1993-1997), representing the Secretary in negotiations with governors and state officials regarding ten statewide Medicaid waivers and 43 AFDC demonstration waivers and overseeing HHS’s regional directors. As the Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Children and Families, he helped manage implementation of federal welfare reform, including child support enforcement innovations; and was the senior federal official on-site in establishing a refugee camp for Kosovar refugees in New Jersey.
In his varied career, he has also served as the founding Executive Director of Georgetown’s O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law; Legal Counsel to US Senator David Pryor; Law Clerk to US District Court Chief Judge John Grady; and is a veteran of numerous political races, including the Mondale and Clinton presidential campaigns. A member of the Council on Foreign Relations, he serves on the boards of the Fogarty International Center (NIH), National Network for Public Health Law, US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, and Washington Legal Clinic for the Homeless.
Monahan holds bachelors and law degrees cum laude from Georgetown University.