Blair Gifford

Blair Gifford is the founder and Board Chair of Global Health Connections, Inc. GHC leads empowerment initiatives in poor villages in Kenya. GHC’s Community Health and Empowerment Club model has proven to be very effective at lessening illness, improving income and helping balance partner relations. All of this is described in a new book, Villages Rising. Today, GHC is considering scaling the CHEC model to other nations, including the U.S.

Blair is a Visiting Professor in the Center for Global Health at the U. of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus. He was a Professor in the Business School at the U. of Colorado Denver for 32 years. He started the Sustainability program (Business School) and the Center for Global Health (Medical Campus) at the U. of Colorado. He was awarded as a New Century Scholar (Fulbright) and has had visiting appointments at Northwestern, UCLA, Yale, and Tsinghua (Beijing) universities. Blair has a PhD in Sociology from the U. of Chicago and a BA in Economics from the U. of California, Santa Cruz. Prior to graduate school, Blair worked as a Systems Engineer at IBM and then had a software startup company in Chicago.

Blair works on community development in the Ballparks neighborhood in Denver and enjoys family activities and competing in sports (baseball, tennis, and golf). He has houses in Denver and Kenya.