MESA Ambassador
The Ambassador role is the natural evolution of the MESA Correspondent experience. Ambassadors are alumni of the Correspondents Program, who choose to deepen their engagement with MESA’s mission, moving from episodic knowledge sharing to an ongoing, embedded connection between their institution or country and the broader malaria community.
While MESA Correspondents expand access to emerging evidence by reporting from conferences and scientific meetings, MESA Ambassadors help strengthen the foundations on which MESA’s knowledge products are built. They act as connectors: professionals who understand both their local context and the global landscape and how MESA’s work can bridge the two.
What Ambassadors do
Portfolio stewardship: Ambassadors support efforts to keep institutional and country portfolios in MESA Track up to date, ensuring that the science of malaria control, elimination, and prevention of re-establishment carried out at their institution or country is visible to the global community and captured in the portfolio syntheses and Deep Dives that stem from MESA Track.
Information sharing and exchange: Ambassadors channel institution and country-specific malaria and malaria-related resources, events, and funding opportunities, to the MESA Resource Hub and MESA Calendar, extending their visibility and reach to the wider malaria community.
Dissemination: Ambassadors amplify MESA’s knowledge products within their networks, through their institutions, national malaria programs, and professional networks, helping ensure that insights reach the researchers, malaria programs, and policymakers who need them at the time decisions are being made.
Portfolio synthesis and Deep Dives: Ambassadors may contribute to Deep Dive and portfolio synthesis exercises relevant to their expertise. These are time-bound, structured activities, in which Ambassadors may take on either mentee or mentor roles, depending on their experience, supporting capacity strengthening through landscaping or portfolio synthesis. Where Ambassadors have the capacity and interest, mentoring may also extend across languages, broadening access to knowledge translation support beyond the English language.
What Ambassadors enable
By embedding professionals from institutions and malaria-endemic countries, the Ambassador role strengthens the quality and completeness of the knowledge products, increases the visibility of ongoing research, and ensures that synthesis and dissemination are more context-relevant. Overall, the Ambassadors strengthen efforts to accelerate the translation, dissemination and uptake towards malaria eradication.
This contributes directly to more coordinated research efforts.
What Ambassadors gain
Beyond supporting MESA’s mission, Ambassadors gain visibility for their work and their institution, expand their professional networks across the global malaria community, and build hands-on experience in knowledge translation, scientific communication, and synthesis. As embedded connectors, they contribute meaningfully to coordinated research efforts and evidence-informed decision-making for malaria elimination and eradication. In doing so, they build skills and networks that last throughout their careers.
