MIT Humanitarian Speaker Series: Drones for Delivery - How Zipline, Gavi and UPS are Changing the Conversation on How Critical Medical Supplies are Distributed in Rwanda

Rwanda is "the Land of a Thousand Hills". Unfortunately, the roads that traverse these hills often make delivery of critical medical supplies difficult and time consuming. In late 2016 Zipline, a California based drone operator, began transporting emergency blood supplies to hard to reach areas by drone. As the network builds, other emergency medical supplies like rabies vaccines will be included. The operation is co-funded by the Rwandan government and a public private partnership between the UPS Foundation and Gavi, The Vaccine Alliance. During his presentation Mr. Etter highlight the innovative and operational aspects of the initiative as well as provide background on a unique public private partnership funding strategy.

Guest Speaker:

James Coughlan
Loaned Executive to the Global Fund for AIDS, TB and Malaria
Global Solutions Director - Humanitarian Logistics, UPS

 Speaker Bio:

James was a member of the UPS management team for over 30 years.  During that tenure, he had responsibilities in Operations, Industrial Engineering, Network Planning, Special Projects, and Solutions.  His assignments led him to New York, New Jersey, Texas, and Atlanta.  The last 20 years were mostly in the Customer Solutions/Professional Services arena.  As the Southwest Region Customer Solutions Director, James managed a team of resources in support of complex UPS customers in the High Tech & Retail industry verticals.  As the Customer Solutions Vice President, he helped design and deploy the Global Accounts model for UPS’s most complex and international clients.  Additional rotations included Program Management, Client Facing Solutions Management, and then became the Global President for Customer Solutions in 2011. 

During the period of 2007-2010, he was involved in the design and development of a new strategy for the UPS Foundation.  That strategy was an integrated approach- combing Solutions support and Strategic gift- giving for the Humanitarian Supply chain needs of selected strategic partners of the UPS Foundation. These partners included, the American Red Cross, UNICEF, CARE, and World Food Programme. 

James retired from UPS in early 2014.

In early 2016, an opportunity was presented that combined this background and his personal goal of engaging the Humanitarian sector and providing support in some capacity.  UPS had agreed to provide a loaned executive to the international aid agency, The Global Fund.  This agency is based in Geneva, Switzerland and its mission is to eradicate the disease burdens of HIV, Tuberculosis, and Malaria.