Yael Velleman
Director of Policy & Innovation

Yael Velleman is a public health and development policy specialist with a passion for a clean and healthy environment free of infectious disease. She has worked with Unlimit Health since 2018.

Yael holds a BA in International Development from the University of East Anglia and a master’s degree in health policy, Planning and Financing (a joint programme of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and the London School of Economics and Political Science).

Before joining us, Yael worked with the international organisation WaterAid, mostly as a Senior Policy Analyst focused on health and hygiene, developing the organisation’s programme and policy approaches on water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) and health. More recently, she supported the World Health Organization in its work on WASH and neglected tropical diseases.

Over the past 15 years, Yael’s work has focused substantially on cross-sectoral collaboration for health, translating policy change into programme outcomes. Her past experience includes researching access to healthcare services in rural Nicaragua, integration of hygiene promotion into routine immunisation in Nepal, and supporting WASH-NTD collaboration in Uganda and Ethiopia.

In her current role, Yael leads Unlimit Health’s policy influencing strategy and activities, including engagement with international agencies and policy and advocacy networks globally and in the UK. She also oversees the organisation’s work on WASH engagement, including ongoing engagement in international initiatives on cross-sector collaboration.

Yael is currently co-chair of the FGS Integration Group, and leads the WASH sub-group of the WHO Technical Advisory Committee on schistosomiasis and soil-transmitted helminths.

In her free time, Yael enjoys being creative, including making ceramics.