John Donnelly

John Donnelly is the author of "Lifeline: The Story of PEPFAR, the Greatest Humanitarian Initiative of our Time" (HarperCollins, October 2026). He was a journalist for the Boston Globe, Miami Herald, and Associated Press for more than 30 years, based in Jerusalem, Cairo, Pretoria, Washington, New York City, Miami, and Montpelier, Vt. For more than a decade, he covered the politics of AIDS and America’s response to the global pandemic, winning several awards for his coverage. Following his journalism career, he held senior positions at the World Bank for 10 years, including as advisor to the president. He has also written two other non-fiction books: "A Twist of Faith: An American Christian's Quest to Help Orphans in Africa" (Beacon Press, 2012), and "Beyond Murder: The Inside Account of the Gainesville Student Murders" (Penguin, 1994), co-authored with John Philpin. He is a former Duke University New York Times journalism fellow, a Kaiser Family Foundation journalism fellow, and received a Bellagio residency from the Rockefeller Foundation in 2024 to write "Lifeline." He lives in Chevy Chase, Maryland.

Photographer Photo Credit Name: Dominic Chavez.