Dr. Yvette Efevbera is the Founder and CEO of SHE Thinks Group LLC and an Adjunct Assistant Professor at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. A strategist, scholar, and advocate with nearly two decades of experience, she works at the intersection of global health, gender equality, and adolescent girls’ rights — spanning philanthropy, research, advocacy, partnerships, and social impact.

Through SHE Thinks Group, Dr. Yvette advises philanthropic and social impact organizations on strategy, systems, and equity-centered leadership. She has delivered board-level strategy and senior advisory support to organizations including the Gates Foundation, Girls Not Brides, Girls First Fund, the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and others. Recent engagements include serving as Strategic Advisor and Interim Director of Learning at Girls First Fund, and as Advisor to the Ending Child Marriage Partnership, coordinated by Panorama Global, where she supported advocacy and grantmaking leveraging the platforms of Melinda French Gates, Michelle Obama, and Amal Clooney.

Prior to founding SHE Thinks Group, Yvette held strategic leadership roles at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (2018 – 2023), where she where she built strategy and structure for a new adolescent girls’ and gender norms team, guiding a US$70M investment portfolio, launched the Child Marriage Learning Partners Consortium, and built evidence and advocacy partnerships that shaped the global agenda on ending child marriage and gender-based violence.

Dr. Yvette’s research focuses on child, early, and forced marriage and gender-based violence and its intersections with girls’ health, rights, and wellbeing. As an NIH-funded Principal Investigator at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, she conducted field research in Guinea and Burundi and has since led and co-authored 35+ peer-reviewed articles, practitioner publications, and policy briefs on child marriage and women’s health. She funded two special supplements in the Journal of Adolescent Health dedicated to ending child marriage, directing resources to center community voices and advance the field’s evidence agenda. Her scholarship is complemented by an active presence as a keynote speaker, moderator, and panelist at 65+ global convenings on adolescents, gender, and health.

Dr. Yvette’s commitment to creating spaces where underrepresented voices participate in decision-making is reflected in her board and service experience. She has served on the boards of the Global Health Corps and the Adolescent Girls Investment Plan, contributed to the Gates Foundation Bold Conversations initiative, and advised the UN Women Technical Advisory Group and the IHME Gender, Equity, and Human Rights Group. She is also a CQ® Certified Facilitator and Intercultural Development Inventory® Qualified Administrator, credentials that ground her equity-centered approach in both practice and accountability.

Dr. Yvette holds a Doctor of Science (ScD) and a Master of Science (MSc) from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and a Bachelor of Arts with High Honor from Michigan State University.

She is committed to a world where every girl can shape her own future — healthy, happy, unafraid, and unapologetic.

Languages: English, French