Ruth Simmons, PhD, is Professor Emerita of the Department of Health Behavior and Health Education at the University of Michigan School of Public Health and President Emerita of Partners in Expanding Health Quality and Access, a US-based 501(c)3 nonprofit organization. With a PhD in Political Science from the University of California at Berkeley, Dr. Simmons worked for more than 45 years to improve the lives of women, girls and families around the world. She worked with the World Health Organization and several country programs in the development and implementation of the Strategic Approach to Strengthening Reproductive Health Policies and Programmes, which led to the founding of ExpandNet. For the majority of her career, she worked on research, practice and writing in the areas of institution-building, international health systems management, family planning and related reproductive health policy and program development, quality of care, user perspectives and scaling up. An expert in organization development and health services action research, Dr. Simmons worked extensively in South and East Asia, Africa and Latin America and, together with WHO, in 2003 helped establish ExpandNet. For 20 years Dr. Simmons helped convene the ExpandNet network as a global learning community of senior health professionals, policymakers and scholars engaged in efforts to take health service innovations to scale. Dr. Simmons officially retired from her work with ExpandNet and Partners in Expanding Health Quality and Access in 2021.