Joy Lawn, MBBS, MPH, PhD, is a paediatrician and perinatal epidemiologist with 30 years of experience in clinical care, epidemiological burden estimates and implementation/evaluation of maternal, newborn and child health services, especially in sub-Saharan Africa. She was director of the Maternal, Adolescent, Reproductive & Child Health Centre at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine from 2013 to 2023, overseeing growth from 200 to to more than 500 academics. Her main contribution has been developing the evidence base to measure and reduce the global burden of 2.3 million neonatal deaths, 2 million stillbirths and 13.4 million preterm births. She has published more than 350 peer-reviewed papers, including leading several influential Lancet series. Lawn and her research team work on multi-country studies regarding newborn health, stillbirths and child development, including large-scale implementation research on small and sick newborn care with NEST360 and novel work on Group B Streptococcus with the WHO. Lawn is a member of both the UK Academy of Medical Sciences and the USA National Academy of Medicine.