Fil-Am director of Gates Institute to retire after distinguished career championing global health causes

Jose G. “Oying” Rimon II is the Filipino-American director of the Bill & Melinda Gates Institute for Population and Reproductive Health and a senior scientist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health | Contributed photo

Los Angeles – Jose G. “Oying” Rimon II, the Filipino-American director of the Bill & Melinda Gates Institute for Population and Reproductive Health and senior scientist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, has announced his retirement after a notable career spanning more than 40 years.

A prominent figure in the fields of family planning and reproductive health, Rimon will continue as director of the Gates Institute while a global search is conducted for his successor.

Rimon joined the Gates Institute in 2012 after leading the policy and advocacy portfolio for family planning, maternal and neonatal health, and nutrition at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation from 2008 to 2012.

In addition to his instrumental role in convening the family planning community at ICFP, Rimon served as the founding director of the Hopkins Center for Public Health Advocacy from 2017 to 2020.

He also established a groundbreaking global program on urban reproductive health at the Gates Institute called The Challenge Initiative, which now spans 176 cities in Asia and Africa.

Jose G. “Oying” Rimon II: A visionary leader

“Oying is a visionary leader with an entrepreneurial spirit that he brings to his work and to the organizations he leads,” said Dr. Ellen MacKenzie, dean of the Bloomberg School.

“Building on the work of his predecessors, he transformed the Gates Institute into a formidable force with multiple platforms dedicated to reproductive health advocacy, large scale family planning program implementation, and research, monitoring and evaluation.”

“I have worked closely with Oying, including co-teaching a course on transformational leadership. He often comments that when you recruit a leader, you not only recruit the person but also the entire network he or she brings to the job,” said Dr. Cynthia Minkovitz, William H. Gates, Sr. professor and chair of the Department of Population, Family ,and Reproductive Health.

“He will have a lasting impact, in part, because he is a master at making connections and tapping into a powerful network of collaborators worldwide to achieve shared goals.”

Rimon’s contributions were pivotal to the success of the London Summit on Family Planning in 2012, where he played a key role in reigniting the global family planning agenda.

Improving the lives of millions

The summit raised $2.6 billion and launched the FP2020 movement. Rimon’s creative approach and humor were exemplified in his “bringing sexy back to sex” campaign, aimed at promoting family planning, for which he received an annual recognition award from his peers at the Gates Foundation.

“I am deeply grateful for the opportunity to have served alongside hundreds, if not thousands, of colleagues in a collective effort to improve the lives of millions worldwide through advancements in universal access to reproductive health, gender equity, demographic futures, and environmental sustainability,” Rimon said.

Rimon’s expertise in evidence-based policy and advocacy, social and behavioral change, and strategic communication is widely recognized. Prior to his tenure at the Gates Foundation, he served as senior deputy director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Communication Programs (CCP), which he helped establish in 1986.

His leadership at CCP extended to overseeing health behavior and knowledge management programs in over 50 countries worldwide and directing several multimillion dollar health communication flagship projects supported by USAID.

Rimon holds an undergraduate degree in journalism from the University of the Philippines and graduate degrees in communication research and population studies from Cardiff University in the United Kingdom. He was a Parvin Fellow at Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs in 1983-84.