Joris de Vries is Director of Strategic Partnerships at Millennium Promise. Joris has worked internationally for over a decade in the corporate and nonprofit sectors in market research, marketing and external relations. While at Merck and Co. in New Jersey he was part of the global launch team for two multi-billion dollar products and at the International Longevity Center-USA in Manhattan he worked with corporations, foundations and advocacy groups to improve the lives of older people in the US and worldwide. Prior to joining Millennium Promise, Joris spent two years in Africa setting up a Millennium Village type project with funding from a private Dutch foundation. The project served a community of 4,500 people in a deeply poor and drought stricken area of northern Tanzania and used a holistic approach with interventions in the areas of education, health, infrastructure and (agro-)business development.

Joris hails from the Netherlands, he has a degree in African Studies from the University of Leiden and also studied at Edinburgh University, Scotland and conducted research for his master thesis in Windhoek, Namibia. He is a graduate from the Fordham Graduate School of Business in New York City. He lives in New Jersey with his wife Sarah and young son Jonah.