Principal Mentor, Program Coordinator and Founding Member of MultiPOD Mentoring

Dr. Zacarías is the Principal Mentor, Program Coordinator, and a Founding Member of MultiPOD Mentoring.

Since 1987, he has helped dozens of students and young professionals (Mentees) advance their careers in international and global public health. Most of his former Mentees have been promoted at work or gone on to receive advanced degrees in Public Health, Economics, Political Science, Medicine, etc. or joined multilateral and bilateral agencies, international non-governmental organizations, or research centers and academic institutions.

In addition to his role in MultiPOD Mentoring, Dr. Zacarías is an International Mentor at MentorNet, the Mentorship program of the Canadian Society for International Health, and a member of the International Mentoring Association and the Mentoring Institute of the University of New Mexico.

Dr. Zacarías obtained his medical degree from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) and specialized in Family Medicine (University of Miami) and Infectious Diseases (Emory University). In addition, he obtained his Master and Doctor of Public Health degrees at Harvard University with a concentration in International Health Policy and Management and Tropical Public Health.

He worked as a Visiting Scientist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for five years, at the beginning of the AIDS epidemic. In 1984, he joined the Pan American Health Organization, Regional Office of the World Health Organization for the Americas (PAHO/WHO) in Washington, DC.

At PAHO/WHO, Dr. Zacarías was Chief of the AIDS/STD Program for seventeen years and subsequently became Senior Policy Advisor in the Family and Community Health Area; Acting Chief of Health Analysis and Statistics; and Coordinator of two editions of “Health in the Americas,” the quinquennial PAHO publication on the situation, trends and determinants of health in the Western Hemisphere.

More recently, Dr. Zacarías was Director of Operations of Global Health International Advisors, a not-for-profit organization based in Washington, DC, which works on community health projects internationally.