Ella Watson-Stryker was named a TIME Magazine 2014 “Person of the Year” as an Ebola Fighter presetned at TCNJ on October 21, 2015.
Ella Watson-Stryker received her B.A. in Geography and Religion from Rutgers University and her Masters in International Affairs and Public Health at Columbia University. She worked in the United States as a tobacco control researcher, conducting studies and supporting fact-based public education campaigns. Since 2006 she has focused on global health projects in both development and emergency contexts. In Thailand and Burma (Myanmar) she worked with displaced persons to develop capacity for community-based health care programs focused on malaria, TB, and maternal and child health. In West Africa she worked on strengthening child immunization and disease surveillance systems as part of the World Health Organization and US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention polio eradication initiative. She began her current work with Doctors Without Borders / Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) in March of 2014 as part of the initial response to the Ebola outbreak in Guinea and returned for subsequent missions to Sierra Leone and Liberia. In 2014 she was featured on the cover of Time magazine as a representative of the thousands of men and women collectively named Time Person of the Year for their role in combatting the West African Ebola outbreak.