Isabelle Defourny is a doctor trained in tropical medicine. Her career with MSF started in Yemen in 1999 and later included assignments in Eritrea, Burundi, Liberia, and Sudan's Darfur region. She moved to MSF headquarters as deputy program officer in 2004 and then served as program officer until 2011. From 2011 to 2015, she worked in Dakar as program director for ALIMA, of which she was one of the founding members. She was elected to the MSF France board of directors in 2013. She left that role to take up the position of director of operations from September 2015 to March 2022. She was elected as the president of the board for MSF France in June 2022.