Cora Nally

As Americares director of international emergency response, Cora Nally leads responses to earthquakes, floods, cyclones and other sudden-onset international crises. She is responsible for coordinating large-scale deliveries of medicines and relief supplies, deploying and managing emergency response field teams and restoring health services for disaster-affected communities.

An international public health expert, Nally brings to Americares more than 15 years of experience in global health. Nally joined Americares in 2019 as the organization’s Hurricane Dorian emergency response team leader, where she oversaw Americares relief efforts in the Bahamas. In this role, she was responsible for managing Americares emergency response experts as well as a medical team providing primary care and mental health and psychosocial support services to Hurricane Dorian survivors. At the same time, Nally coordinated relief shipments and worked to restore access to care for survivors in the hardest-hit communities including the Abaco and Grand Bahama islands. Prior to re-joining Americares, Nally served as country director for Project HOPE’s Hurricane Dorian response in the Bahamas, where she led all aspects of the organization’s relief and recovery efforts.

Before working with Project HOPE, Nally served as a technical and project management consultant at Equipping Africa, a nonprofit organization that builds medical capacity through mentorship-based health care training. Prior to that, Nally served as a technical and project management consultant for The Mango Tree, an organization that improves educational opportunities and sustainable livelihoods for disadvantaged children and young people in Sub-Saharan Africa. Additionally, Nally served as a technical and project management consultant for John Snow, Inc., where she oversaw health programs in Nairobi, Kenya and Tbilisi, Georgia.

Nally’s global health work has also taken her to Russia, where she provided health education to immigrant communities, Malawi, where she created a health and child development curriculum training and assessment for 125 orphanage care givers and Sierra Leone, where she trained and equipped a community-based workforce during the height of the Ebola crisis while working with Partners in Health.

Nally earned a master’s degree in public health from AT Still University, a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Washington State University and is a current PhD candidate at Ghent University in Belgium, studying public health and health systems. Nally has lived and worked in eight countries on four continents, including seven years in Sub-Saharan Africa and four years in Eastern Europe.