Cora Nally

As Americares director of international emergency response, Cora Nally, PhD(c), MPH, leads responses to earthquakes, floods, cyclones and other sudden-onset crises worldwide. 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.

Most recently, Nally has been leading Americares response to the crisis in Israel and Gaza, flooding in Libya and earthquakes in Afghanistan and the Philippines. She has been on the frontlines of several high-profile emergencies in recent years, including leading responses to the 2023 earthquakes in Türkiye and Syria and Hurricane Dorian in the Bahamas. Nally first joined Americares in 2019 as the organization’s Hurricane Dorian emergency response team leader, including overseeing a medical team providing primary care, mental health and psychosocial support services for survivors. Nally also 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 rejoining Americares in 2022.

Nally also served as a consultant for Equipping Africa, a nonprofit organization that builds medical capacity through mentorship-based health care training and 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 caregivers 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 is completing a PhD in public health and health systems from Ghent University in Belgium, a master’s degree in public health from A.T. Still University and a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Washington State University.