Rebecca is a physician, educated and trained in internal medicine and infectious diseases in the USA.
She discovered pharmacovigilance when she accepted a job at the Swedish Medical Products Agency in 2008 as a clinical safety assessor, reviewing both pre- and post-marketing safety data for a number of different types of medicinal products, including vaccines. Her passion for vaccine safety emerged with the narcolepsy/Pandemrix signal during the H1N1 influenza pandemic.
She subsequently moved to the Uppsala Monitoring Centre where she was engaged in the development of new methods using spontaneous reports and building pharmacovigilance capacity throughout the world. As the vaccine expert for the UMC, she participated in many global vaccine safety groups, such as the CIOMS Working Group for Vaccine Safety and meetings of the Global Vaccine Safety Initiative.
She currently works for the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) as Clinical Development Vaccine Safety Lead. In that role she is project leader for the partnership between CEPI and the Brighton Collaboration of the Task Force for Global Health, SPEAC or Safety Platform for Emergency vaccines.