Jeanne Francoise Nizigiyimana is currently leading the Valleywise Center for Refugee and Global Health Center at Valleywise Health in Phoenix, Arizona, where she also chairs the Refugee Health Community Advisory Coalition (RHCAC). With over 20 years of extensive refugee work experience, she also co-founded the Refugee Women’s Health Clinic (RWHC). She is multilingual and holds a couple of master’s degrees. Originally from Burundi, her refugee journey and resilience inspire a passionate career as an international medical social worker and public health agent, impacting the lives of many underserved populations globally.

While promoting co-equal partnerships that involve shared leadership, she continuously designs, implements, and grows culturally grounded community health programs that are co-designed and co-implemented by an interdisciplinary, multicultural staff, volunteers, and community members. As a co-founder of the RWHC in 2008, she developed a robust and innovative team of Cultural Health Navigators—a model of care that is nationally recognized and a first of its kind in Arizona—to ensure a seamless transition for refugees in navigating the healthcare system.

In 1999, she co-founded Refugee Women United for Progress, Inc. in Phoenix, Arizona. In the summers of 2014 and 2017, she volunteered to join a global initiative sponsored by Arizona State University (ASU) – Global Center for Applied Health Research (GCAHR) to explore Culturally Specific Health Education Programs for Internally Displaced Women-Survivors of War, a Community-Based Participatory Research project in Burundi, Central Africa. In addition, her commitment to teaching has helped instruct and mentor over 24 graduate student interns from medical, social work, and public health schools.

She serves on various boards, including the ASU-Southwest Interdisciplinary Research Center (SIRC) Community Advisory Board, ASU-College of Health Solutions (CHS) Advisory Board, and Burundi-America Association for Humanity (BAAHO, Inc) Board of Directors. She is a local and national public speaker, delivering keynote speeches at various commencements, conferences, and fundraising events. She is an area expert on different steering and task forces addressing refugee health, behavioral health, and general integration concerns.