Dr Leonardo Santos Simão is executive director of the Joaquim Chissano Foundation (Fundaćão Joaquim Chissano). He is also the chairman of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) Mediation Reference Group, and chairman of the steering committee of the Business Environment Support Fund in Mozambique, a development initiative funded under Denmark’s development cooperation activities.

Trained as a medical doctor at the Eduardo Mondlane University, Mozambique in 1980, he later worked in rural areas of the country as medical officer at district and provincial levels. He earned a master’s degree in Public Health (Community Health in Developing Countries) from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine in the United Kingdom and taught in the Faculty of Medicine of the Eduardo Mondlane University, Mozambique.