About Diversify Research
Strategy, science, and community, brought together.
Diversify Research is a woman-led firm that helps mission-driven organizations turn research into results. Our work spans research and evaluation, program management, community and international development, and specialized health and regulatory support. We serve government, nonprofit, academic, international, and private-sector partners in the United States and around the world.
Our story
Built on one discipline: research.
Diversify Research was built on a simple observation. The organizations doing the most important work, in health, in government, in communities, and in global development, are often stretched thin and working without the senior research and program-management expertise they need to turn evidence into results.
One discipline runs through everything we do: research, and the skill to act on it. Our founder spent more than two decades in drug development and global health and more than three decades as a community organizer and development strategist, and the common thread across all of it is rigorous research applied to real-world problems, with the scientific rigor regulated work requires and the grounded engagement community work depends on.
The result is a firm equally at home overseeing a clinical safety program, evaluating a national initiative, or building a community engagement model, with the same senior team carrying the work from evidence through implementation.
Founder & CEO
Dr. Magalie Emile-Backer is a research scientist, drug development expert, and global health and development leader, with more than 20 years in research and biopharmaceutical leadership and more than three decades of community and international development work.
On the research and health side, Dr. Emile-Backer most recently served as Director of Global Pharmacovigilance Sciences at Moderna, where she led safety work on the COVID-19 vaccine program supporting more than 1 billion doses worldwide. Earlier she served as an industry consultant during Operation Warp Speed, worked across more than 100 NIH clinical research protocols, and held senior roles at AstraZeneca and MedImmune, Otsuka, and Merck.
She has applied the same research discipline to development. Dr. Emile-Backer co-founded the Haiti Renewal Alliance and co-authored the first Global Diaspora Framework, an engagement model used in more than 10 countries for disaster and conflict response, developed in partnership with USAID and the UN International Organization for Migration. Her advocacy contributed to bipartisan support for new language in the Locally Led Development and Humanitarian Response Act, and she has worked alongside local governments, NGOs, donors, and communities on disaster response, risk reduction, recovery, and economic development.
She holds a Doctor of Pharmacy from Howard University, completed a post-doctoral fellowship at Rutgers University and Hoffmann-La Roche, and earned her Bachelor of Science in Biological Sciences from Temple University.
Recognition & service
Recognized at the highest levels.
- 2023Inaugurated into the Congressional Record, Extensions of Remarks E627
- 2024Contributed to bipartisan support for the Locally Led Development and Humanitarian Response Act
- 2010Co-author of the first Global Diaspora Framework, used in more than 10 countries
- 2019 – 2023Board Director, Fairfax County Health Systems
- 2010 – NowCo-Founder and Board Director, Haiti Renewal Alliance
- 2019 – 2021Member, Alexandria, VA HIV Commission
Our mission
To bring strategy, evidence, and community insight together so that health, research, and development programs reach the people they are meant to serve.
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