“We're at an exciting moment in the fight for better pandemic prevention and preparedness, but it's also a moment of jeopardy”, says Eloise Todd, co-founder and Executive Director of the Pandemic Action Network, an international network of more than 350 diverse organisations. Todd points out that with the invasion of Ukraine, attention shifted from COVID-19 “in terms of both political consciousness but also public consciousness”. Renewing attention on COVID-19 and pandemic preparedness and prevention is a key focus for the Network. “Getting political leadership and getting energetic leaders engaged in solving the problems that were exposed by COVID-19 is an absolute political priority for us”, she says. Early in the pandemic, Todd noted not only the varied government responses to the crisis, but also how civil society voices were largely absent from discussions. When she raised the issue of civil society engagement with David Nabarro, WHO's Special Envoy on COVID-19, he connected her to Gabrielle Fitzgerald in Seattle, WA, USA, who, with Carolyn Reynolds in Washington, DC, USA, and David Kyne in Dublin, Ireland, had been considering establishing a network to build on a monthly meeting they had set up. In April, 2020, the four co-founded and launched the Pandemic Action Network. “The founding principle of the Network is that we want to make sure that what happened during COVID-19 just simply isn't allowed to happen again so that every country is better prepared for a future pandemic”, explains Todd. “We want to gather people in and provide tools for existing organisations to be able to advocate and campaign confidently on pandemic prevention, preparedness, and response policy. And push for different rules of the game for low- and middle-income countries [LMICs] during a pandemic…So they're not just invited to the table at a time of high-income countries' convenience, but they're actually designing the future”, she adds. With this priority in mind, the Network is undergoing its own reforms and has appointed Aggrey Aluso as its Director for the Africa Region. Based in Nairobi, Kenya, Aluso is the Network's policy lead and is developing its Africa strategy. Todd emphasises that Aluso's team will not be an Africa hub: “we want the Africa team to be the engine of the organisation in terms of inspiration and direction of travel”. Among the Network's achievements has been campaigning for The Pandemic Fund, which launched in September, 2022. But Todd notes that it still needs adequate resourcing: “Pandemic prevention, preparedness, and response has been consistently neglected as a funding stream…We had the [2014–16] Ebola crisis and there was a ‘never again’ sentiment that just dissipated…We have to make sure there's a dedicated stream of funding for LMICs to fill the crucial country level gaps in their preparedness. The Fund only needs US$10·5 billion a year, which is a relatively modest amount—this should be a no regrets investment for all leaders.” Diah Satyani Saminarsih, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of the Center for Indonesia's Strategic Development Initiatives in Jakarta, has collaborated with Todd and admires her “passion and compassion for population health” and calls the co-founding of the Pandemic Action Network her “biggest success”, ensuring “pandemic preparedness is still the global priority”. Helen Clark, former Prime Minister of New Zealand and former Co-Chair of the Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response, describes Todd as “a very principled and effective civil society leader” and “an eloquent advocate” who “speaks with both knowledge and conviction”. Todd, who light-heartedly describes herself as a “Yorkshire Belgian Brit”, grew up in East Yorkshire, UK, and has lived and worked in Brussels and London for over 20 years. Her interest in current affairs and issue campaigning started early on. As a child in the 1980s she recalls “writing essays about how being vegetarian can help counter global warming”. After her undergraduate degree in Government and European Union Studies at Newcastle University, UK, she earned a master's in European Politics and Administrative Studies in 2000 at the College of Europe, Bruges, Belgium. Working as a political adviser for the Group of the Party of European Socialists in the European Parliament from 2002 to 2007 provided her with valuable experience. Building political coalitions to get legislation through in the parliament “set the tone for how I wanted to work and how I've ended up working in my career”, she says. At the Group, Todd also advised on political missions to several LMICs and worked on the ACP–EU Joint Parliamentary Assembly, which bought together parliamentarians from African, Caribbean, and Pacific countries with members of the European Parliament to work on common resolutions and political agreements. She later became Executive Director of Global Policy at the ONE campaign, where her achievements included helping to raise additional government funding for Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance and The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria and founding ONE's Brussels office. As for the Pandemic Action Network, Todd emphasises that the partnership wants to ensure pandemics are understood as an umbrella issue: “Epidemic and pandemic threats need to be detected, contained, and acted upon in the quickest possible way. The return on investment for doing that properly is so insanely huge, it shouldn't really need that much of a pitch. But in a world of short memories…we will continue to make the case that we absolutely have to do this for relatively small investments. And that it's not just a health issue. It really needs to be tackled with a whole of government approach and it needs political leadership.”