Holly (Shakya) Baker is a Professor of Global Public Health at the University of California San Diego. Her primary research interests are the social determinants of health, with a focus on the intersections of social networks and social norms theory in the context of behavioral change interventions both locally and globally, in Honduras, India, Nepal, Niger, and Cameroon. Her work has been funded by the National Institutes of Health, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and UNICEF, with a focus on gender and marital norms, family planning, and gender-based violence. She has served as an expert advisor for both donor foundations and multilateral organizations, and her publications have been featured in international news outlets across more than 30 nations.

She is also Deputy Director and Technical Lead for Research on Agency for All, an international, multi-institutional effort to better understand and promote agency for individuals, communities and local organizations in low- and middle-income countries.

She is also Co-Principal Investigator on Tipping Point, a large 4.5 year grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to study the impact of a social network based intervention to promote family planning use among married adolescents in rural Niger.