Rachel G. Liao, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the International Common Disease Alliance (ICDA) and Scientific Advisor to the Director at the Broad Institute in Cambridge, USA. She oversees ICDA's administrative office and advises other priority projects, including the Variant to Function (V2F) Initiative and the COVID-19 Host Genetics Initiative. Prior to this, she spent three years managing projects and working groups for GA4GH, an international data sharing standards organization, including coordinating and guiding the launch of BRCA Challenge, which hosts the largest open-access dataset of BRCA1 and BRCA2 variants and clinical interpretations in the world. She holds a PhD in cancer genomics from Harvard University.