Margaret Loma Phiri is a nurse and midwife with a Masters in Nursing Education and Leadership from Teachers College, Columbia University, USA. She also holds a postgraduate diploma in community health from the Medical University of Southern Africa. She has held a number of leadership positions including Regional Adviser for Nursing and Midwifery for WHO African Region; Human Resources for Health Adviser, WHO Swaziland Country Office; Regional Capacity Building Coordinator for East-Central and Southern Africa Health Community; Maternal and Child Health Adviser for WHO Sierra Leone Country Office; and Quality Assurance Director and Senior Lecturer in Education and Leadership for the University of Malawi, Kamuzu College of Nursing, Malawi. She is currently a Nurse Midwife Adviser for Seed Global Health’s Malawi Team.
Examples of Phiri’s work include the development and facilitation of regional professional regulatory frameworks; competency-based nursing and midwifery regional curriculum models; the International Council of Nurses (ICN) and East, Central and Southern African Health (ECSA) Community Leadership for Change Programme; work with the WHO Collaborating Centre for Interprofessional Education and Collaborative Practice at Kamuzu College of Nursing; nursing and midwifery policies and planning; and promoting priority interventions in improving maternal health.
In her current work with Seed Global Health, Phiri has provided key leadership for the development of effective, responsive and contextually relevant activities in close collaboration with academic and clinical partners in Malawi. With her deep ties to Malawi stakeholders and breadth of experience as a leader, she has helped advise and support the integration of US educators (nurses, midwives and physicians) into the academic and clinical environments in her native country to ensure success. Her engagement as a Nursing and Midwifery Technical Adviser at the country level is also promoting alignment of Seed Global Health’s programmatic areas with national health policy context to ensure relevance and responsiveness to national health needs.
Phiri has taken a leadership role in supporting the 2020 Year of the Nurse and Midwife activities. As a member of the Quad Council (a collaboration between regulatory, policy, education, and clinical leaders), she has been leading the development of the Nightingale Challenge to ensure mentorship for young nurses and midwives in these four areas. Additionally, she supported data collection activities for the State of the World’s Nursing and Midwifery reports.