Ana-Maria Visoiu-Knapp 14PH
Senior Manager, Development Program Management | Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, Inc. | New York, NY
A native of Romania, Ana-Maria Visoiu-Knapp has lived and worked on three continents. Emory connected her to the opportunity to live and work in Zambia, leading a team to implement Johnson & Johnson’s first-of-its-kind HIV-1 Vaccine Efficacy Clinical Trial. While at Emory, she interned at The Carter Center, the global nongovernmental organization of former President Jimmy Carter. These experiences inspired Visoiu-Knapp to consult for state and national governments, which included working in Mozambique with the Department of Defense and the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief; in Hawaii with the State Department of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; and on Capitol Hill to conduct national-level advocacy and policy for infectious disease prevention. Now at Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, Visoiu-Knapp is senior manager in development program management, working across therapeutic focus areas. Her work has been published in four global scientific peer-reviewed journals.
With a passion for advancing gender equity in business and health, Visoiu-Knapp is a managing director at Golden Seeds—a nationwide investment firm focused on high-growth, women-led business ventures. She also serves on the board of HERhealthEQ, a nonprofit that seeks to improve women’s health in developing areas by providing access to medical equipment.
“Emory provided exceptional education and training and introduced me to people and opportunities that allowed me to work on solving the toughest challenges for the most people in our world.”
By the time Ana-Maria Visoiu-Knapp completed her master’s in public health in 2014, she had already worked in Zambia and had interned with The Carter Center. “I did a practicum in Zambia during the summer of my first year at Emory, and it was life-changing,” she said. A Romanian immigrant who’d moved to the United States as a child, Visoiu-Knapp “wanted to experience and work in a part of the world like the one I came from.”
Her work with the Rwanda-Zambia Research Group exposed Visoiu-Knapp to both the challenges and the rewards of public health work. Her time in Zambia, as well as her experience supporting The Carter Center’s efforts to raise funds for their health initiatives, eventually led to her work with a Washington, D.C., nonprofit focused on HIV prevention. The lure of Zambia, however, was strong.
“I was offered the opportunity to manage Johnson & Johnson’s HIV-1 Vaccine Efficacy Trial there, and that was an easy decision for me,” she said. Visoiu-Knapp stayed in Zambia from late 2016 to 2019, training and managing a team and implementing the trial. She also found time to pioneer a popular fitness program called ZamFit based on CrossFit training she had done in the United States.
Today, Visoiu-Knapp is based in New York, where she works for Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, Inc. leading cross-functional teams to plan and execute scientific research collaborations across therapeutic areas. In addition to pursuing an MBA, she is actively exploring another passion: supporting women’s health and business development. She is part of Golden Seeds, a nationwide investment firm focused on high-growth, women-led business ventures, and serves on the board of HERhealthEQ, a nonprofit seeking to improve women’s health in developing areas through access to medical equipment.
“I’m leveraging all my networks to make a difference,” she said. “Everything I do ties in so nicely it doesn’t feel like I’m taking on too much. I consider it my body of work.”