Mary Callaway, MME
Chair, Board of Directors
Mary Callaway, MME, is a distinguished international palliative care leader with more than four decades of experience dedicated to expanding global access to palliative care through policy development, education, and advocacy. She also brings a deeply personal perspective to her work, having served as a caregiver for her mother and several other family members.
Ms. Callaway served as Associate Director of the Project on Death in America at the Open Society Foundations (OSF) in New York from 1994 to 2003, and as Director of the International Palliative Care Initiative from 1998 until her retirement in 2014. Prior to joining OSF, she worked for 16 years at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City as Administrator of the Pain and Palliative Care Service, and served as Executive Director of the World Health Organization Collaborating Center for Cancer Pain Research and Education.
Her international expertise spans health policy, education and training, medicines policy, advocacy, organizational development, and program design and evaluation. She has worked at national, regional, and global levels, with extensive hands-on experience supporting countries to integrate palliative care into their health systems.
Ms. Callaway was a founding member of the United States Cancer Pain Relief Committee; a nongovernmental organization focused on improving access to and the rational use of essential medicines for pain relief and palliative care. Through her philanthropic work, she helped develop practical roadmaps for country-level integration of palliative care, with a strong focus on sustainable national health strategies.
From 2016 to 2022, she served on the Board of the African Palliative Care Association and participated in its pain management working group, contributing to the planning and implementation of three regional advocacy workshops aimed at improving access to essential medicines.
In recognition of her international contributions to palliative care development, Ms. Callaway received a Presidential Citation from the American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine in 2015.
She joined the International Association for Hospice and Palliative Care (IAHPC) as a Lifetime Member in the 1990s, served on its Board of Directors from 2018 to 2025, and contributed actively to the Fundraising, Finance, Membership, and Executive Committees, as well as multiple working groups. She is the Chair of the IAHPC Board of Directors since January 2026.
Outside of her professional work, Ms. Callaway enjoys spending time with family and friends, playing golf, gardening, reading, listening to music, and training her two small dogs. She also volunteers with the Heartland Therapeutic Riding Program, which provides assisted riding services to children and adults with physical and developmental disabilities.