When Caitlin Goggin talks about global health, she rarely starts with systems or strategy. She starts with people.
Her approach is one shaped by more than two decades working in international development and humanitarian contexts — experience that has informed how she approaches leadership, partnership and the pursuit of justice and human dignity in global health.
In January 2026, Goggin became CEO of the Canadian Partnership for Women and Children’s Health (CanWaCH), bringing with her experience spanning large-scale humanitarian responses, health systems initiatives and community-based partnerships across the Global South.
Yet for all the breadth of that experience, Goggin tends to describe her career in simple terms. “Over time, I have become increasingly interested not just in delivering programs, but in helping sustain the broader support and understanding that makes that work possible.”
Goggin is a proud Maritimer, raised in Antigonish, Nova Scotia — a small university town known for its long tradition of social justice and community engagement.
Looking back, she sees that environment as formative. Antigonish is home not only to St. Francis Xavier University and the internationally known Coady Institute, but also to grassroots organizations dedicated to social justice, including a nationally recognized and pioneering women’s resource centre founded in the early 1980’s.
Those influences were personal as well. Goggin speaks with admiration about her grandmother, one of nine children in Saint John, New Brunswick, who went on to become a registered nurse and later director of nursing at a large hospital in the province.
“While I never had a desire to become a medical practitioner myself,” Goggin said, “I always had a strong appreciation for how important health is, and for all the people who come alongside doctors to deliver care.”
One of two daughters raised by feminist parents, Goggin grew up in a household where issues of justice and equity were openly discussed, and where gender equality was never questioned — an upbringing she does not take for granted.
Those social justice learnings began translating into action early on. As a teenager, Goggin became involved in peer education focused on adolescent reproductive health, visiting schools to speak about sexual health and contraception and staffing a local youth drop-in centre.
“Growing up in the ’80s and ’90s, some of Canada’s policy victories in comprehensive reproductive health and rights were still relatively new and, in small towns, youth peer champions were needed to keep the conversation active and combat stigma,” she said. “I was always taught that we champion what we believe — we live into our convictions.”
Like many people entering international development, Goggin once imagined a future inside one of the sector’s most recognizable institutions. But early in her career, she began to see the system differently — and realized where she felt most compelled to contribute.
“I came to understand that funding often flows from capital cities into the United Nations system and then gets sub-granted out to implementing organizations,” she explained. “It was at that point that I realized I wanted to be on the implementation side. It’s where I found most personal value, and where I could most contribute, at the direct service provision end of the aid continuum.”
That choice would shape the trajectory that followed. Goggin went on to spend more than two decades working across complex humanitarian and development contexts, including senior leadership roles with CARE International in Ethiopia and Jordan, Marie Stopes International in Malawi and Boston University’s Zambia Center for Applied Health Research and Development.
Along the way, she also increasingly found herself speaking on behalf of organizations navigating those environments — representing peer organizations within international NGO forums and helping to effectively communicate the realities of global health work to governments and partners around the world.
“The direct delivery of services remains paramount, “she said. “But the advocating and defence of the work, building and sustaining a constituency that understands it, has become critically important too — perhaps never more so than now.”
After more than two decades working internationally, Goggin’s return to Canada was less a long-planned homecoming than a moment that felt like the right next step.
“I’ve always remained very connected to Canada,” she said. “Even while living overseas, I stayed interested in what was happening here and how Canada engages globally.”
The opportunity to lead CanWaCH brought together several strands of her career — program delivery, advocacy and the challenge of sustaining support for global health work at a time when the sector faces increasing pressure.
Central to that work is partnership — something Goggin sees not as a static arrangement between organizations, but as an ongoing process of reflection and inclusion.
“It’s not just about who’s sitting around the table,” she said. “It’s about asking who isn’t there, and why.”
In practice, Goggin argues, partnerships must continually evolve. As contexts change, organizations need to reassess whether the right voices, particularly those closest to the challenges, are present.
“Partnership, especially from a Global North lens, should be about listening more than speaking,” she said.
Listening, Goggin says, is not always the top trait people expect from organizational leaders. She often jokes that she is “an introvert who masquerades as an extrovert professionally,” but the remark reflects something deeper about how she approaches the work.
For Goggin, listening has become central to how she leads — particularly when leadership means stepping into organizations with deep local knowledge and long-serving highly-capable national teams.
“As an international hire, in many contexts you’re entering organizations where people have been doing incredible work for decades in their home countries and communities,” she said. “There’s a shared understanding that you’re not going to be there forever. So you have to think about how you support others to succeed long-term.”
That perspective, she believes, requires leaders to focus less on directing the work themselves and more on supporting the people and partners already driving it forward.
“At its core, leadership is about service,” she said.
Nearly three months into the role of CEO, Goggin says she has been struck by the strength of the community CanWaCH has built across Canada’s global health sector.
“I knew the organization had a strong reputation,” she said. “But coming to understand the depth of that respect, and the well from which it rises, has been incredibly inspiring and energizing.”
As the organization begins shaping its next strategic plan, Goggin sees an opportunity to build on that foundation at a moment when the global health landscape is evolving rapidly.
“There’s been a seismic shift in the global world order,” she said. “Much of what we once thought was stable or assured is now in question or even shattered.”
In that environment, she argues, one of the most urgent priorities is sustaining global health gains — recognizing that progress rarely unfolds evenly.
“There might be a country that’s made great progress on nutrition interventions, for example,” she explained, “but maternal mortality rates remain stubbornly high. Every context is different.”
That uneven progress requires agility and evidence-based responses, she says — and a recognition that the work cannot pause when crises emerge. “There’s no one-size-fits-all approach. And there’s no pause button.”
In wealthier countries, major crises can create the perception that everything everywhere must pause while institutions reassess how to respond. But in the communities where global health and development programs operate, the work continues regardless of global shocks or political changes.
“There are people every day trying to keep electricity running in a health clinic or stretch a three-week supply of medicines to last three months,” she said. “Their clock just keeps ticking.”
Within that shifting global context, Goggin believes Canada still has an important role to play — particularly in defending and advancing sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR).
“Canada has had a strong and unapologetic focus on comprehensive reproductive health and rights, including access to safe abortion,” she said. “And that matters enormously.”
In her view, comprehensive SRHR is foundational to broader progress in health and development.
“Ensuring that women and girls have bodily autonomy and the choice of if and when to bear children is a right we must defend, and one for which services must be readily available and sustained,” Goggin said. “Ensuring a woman doesn’t die in childbirth means she is there to raise her children, advocate for their education and contribute to her community. Women are critical to strong families, resilient communities and thriving economies. The assurance of their health rights, all of their rights, is non-negotiable.”
Where Canada can go further, she believes, is in embracing its unique leadership role more confidently.
“I think it’s a particularly Canadian trait to not always recognize our own value,” she said. “But we can’t rely on others to defend this space. We need to remain committed and not shy away from our role as moral leaders on the rights agenda.”
Despite the challenges facing the global health sector, Goggin does not see the moment as one defined by despair. Instead, she believes the tendency to catastrophize can obscure a deeper truth.
“We sometimes focus so much on the crisis that we forget to look for the people who are stepping forward to help,” she said.
She points to a familiar piece of advice from children’s television host Mr. Rogers: when things feel overwhelming, look for the helpers. “In my experience, there are always far more helpers than not.”
In global health, Goggin believes that spirit of collective effort is visible every day — in communities, clinics and organizations quietly but diligently working to move progress forward.
It’s a perspective reflected in one of her favourite quotes from anthropologist Margaret Mead: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”
