Mentor Mondays: VIDEOS
Each Mentor Monday takes place as an online webinar and lasts around 45 minutes. Mentors each share:
Information on their background, career path, and current work
Important lessons learned
Their thoughts on the most valuable skills for working in global health
Responses to common career questions
Check out recordings from past Mentor Mondays below and visit this page to register for upcoming sessions!
Sarah Rhea - Oct 29, 2018
Sarah Rhea is an infectious disease epidemiologist and veterinarian at RTI. Following her tenure as a practicing veterinarian, Dr. Rhea conducted graduate work in vector-borne and zoonotic diseases. As an Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS) Officer with CDC, she investigated numerous infectious disease clusters and outbreaks in collaboration with local, state, and federal partners. Dr. Rhea conducted public health preparedness and response activities related to Middle East Respiratory Syndrome and Ebola. During her CDC Preventive Medicine Fellowship, she assessed the role of local health departments in HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) delivery and led program development and evaluation for hepatitis C testing and linkage-to-care activities in NC.
At RTI, Dr. Rhea serves as Principal Investigator for the CDC-funded NC Modeling Infectious Diseases (NC MInD) Network, conducting healthcare-associated infection transmission modeling research with a focus on antimicrobial resistant pathogens. She serves as Associate Director for an NIH-funded project to mitigate infectious disease outcomes associated with the injection drug use in Appalachia. Dr. Rhea provides expertise in surveillance system evaluation for the CDC Global Health Security Partner Engagement project in Guinea and supports epidemiologic and veterinary activities for a pilot project to validate molecular markers for surveillance of antimicrobial resistance in Nepal.
Morgan Garcia - Nov 19, 2018
Morgan Garcia is a clinical research manager at FHI 360, supporting the NIH-funded Microbicide Trials Network, with a focus on the dapivirine vaginal ring for HIV prevention. Morgan also provides technical support to the OPTIONS Consortium, a USAID partnership to expedite and sustain access to antiretroviral-based HIV prevention products in East and Southern Africa.
Morgan began her global health career working with HIV-positive women and families displaced by civil war in Northern Uganda. During graduate school, Morgan worked with Partners In Health in rural Peru, scaling up a TB response and treatment program. She later served as a Sexual Assault Response Advocate in Oregon, expanding support for Spanish-speaking survivors and building relationships with local hospitals, relief organizations, and clinical service providers.
Morgan then joined The Carter Center's South Sudan Guinea Worm Eradication Program, where she supervised surveillance and containment teams from her remote field station. She later returned to Uganda to work on supporting the health and rights of women and girls, including consulting with Raising Voices, an organization that prevents violence against women and children. Before joining FHI 360, Morgan managed CARE International's Sexual, Reproductive, and Maternal Health Program in Papua New Guinea, where she designed and implemented a rights-based approach to sexual and reproductive health in remote farming communities and urban, post-conflict youth.
Morgan is passionate about reaching the world's most vulnerable communities with the resources they need to thrive. She is committed to spreading understanding and support for survivors of violence, and is always eager to learn more from the world around her.
Katherine L. Turner - Jan 28, 2019
Katherine L. Turner, MPH is Founder and President of Global Citizen, LLC, a consulting firm that works in the United States and internationally to strengthen leaders' capacity to advance public health, human rights, global competence, equity, diversity, and inclusion and effect organizational and social transformation for a better world. As Adjunct Faculty at the University of North Carolina Gillings School of Global Public Health, she teaches and mentors the next generation of leaders. Katherine is a renowned organizational and community thought leader, senior global advisor, public speaker, educator, author, and change agent who has worked in English, French, and Dutch in more than 50 countries spanning five continents.
Global Citizen, LLC works in partnership with a diverse network of dynamic consultants and interns and collaborates with nonprofit organizations, academic institutions, K-12 school systems, funding agencies, health institutions, governments, corporations, and other client partners to conduct strategic visioning, strengthen capacity, and deliver mission- and values-driven, high-impact results.
Katherine has founded and led the board of directors of nonprofit organizations, provides strategic direction on global advisory committees, and has won numerous awards for excellence in leadership and advocacy. She has lived on both coasts of the United States and in London, Paris, the Netherlands, and Togo. She and her family are proud to call Durham, NC their home.
Connect with Katherine and Global Citizen, LLC for a better world on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter.
Bobby Jefferson - Feb 18, 2019
Bobby Jefferson, Chief Technology Officer with DAI Global Health, focuses on tech-enabled services for global health programs. Bobby has a relentless entrepreneurial passion for using mobile solutions for social development and community health. He serves as tech reviewer and judge on early stage health tech funds, Innovation to Action Challenge, Human Development Innovation, GHIC Innovation Prize, Aetna Foundation Prizes for Health Equity Innovation Advisory Board and mentors health tech startups. He was speaker at the 2018 Switchpoint Conference in Saxapahaw, NC. Bobby collaborates with incubator networks in Raleigh-Durham to support social entrepreneurs' brilliant ideas and innovations in healthcare.
Kathy Walmer - March 25, 2019
Kathy Walmer is the Executive Director for Family Health Ministries (FHM) and an Adjunct Instructor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Nursing. She has a passion for non-profit research, service, and education in global health. Using her background as a nurse practitioner and educator, Kathy guides an active volunteer board and over 60 US and Haitian employees.
Kathy's diverse background includes working as nurse practitioner with children from premature infants to adolescents, and experience overseeing both government and industry-sponsored research. In 2003, Kathy's skills in maternal and child health came together. She became the Executive Director for Family Health Ministries, focusing on the health and education of women and children in low resource communities.
Florence Amadi - April 29, 2019
Originally from Kenya, Florence is a passionate public health professional with over eight years' experience working in developed and developing country settings. She has special interest in promoting community and policy makers' involvement, public-private partnerships, and local systems capacity building in finding and embracing evidence-based approaches to improve programs and community based service delivery to vulnerable populations – particularly women/girls and children.
Florence holds a Masters degree in Public Health with a concentration in Maternal and Child Health and certification in global health from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Gillings School of Global Public Health, and a Bachelor of Science in Public Health Education from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. She is a Certified Health Education Specialist, a member of the Program Committee for the Triangle Global Health Consortium, and a member of CORE Group's Social Behavior Change Working Group. She is currently a Senior Technical Advisor, Community Engagement at Ipas. Prior to recently joining Ipas, she was the Program Manager for Africa at Curamericas Global. During her free time, Florence enjoys spending time with family and friends, traveling, cooking, volunteering, Zumba, doting on her children, nephews and nieces, and motivating others.
Brian Cooper - May 20, 2019
Brian Cooper is the Chief of Staff for Bluedoor and the Director of Grant Development at the Digital Health Institute for Transformation (DHIT). With a career spanning from academic medical centers to oversight of government programs, Brian is a seasoned leader of statewide initiatives with a particular emphasis on telehealth programs. Brian is an advocate for rural and underserved communities and he is passionate about the use of digital health to impact access to care, clinical pathways, wellness, and the human condition.
Brian's previous roles have involved operational program management, strategic planning, performance improvement, partnership development, grant funding, and execution of complex workplans. His work with the North Carolina Statewide Telepsychiatry Program and the North Carolina Flex Program has achieved national attention from the White House Rural Council, the National Governors Association (NGA), the Health Resources & Services Administration (HRSA), and the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials (ASTHO). Brian's previous roles at UNC Health Care, Duke Health, Ciox Health, and the North Carolina Office of Rural Health have established him as a telehealth subject matter expert and thought leader. He regularly serves in an advisory role to organizations wishing to redesign healthcare delivery, including the Mid-Atlantic Telehealth Resource Center, the North Carolina Healthcare Information & Communications Alliance (NCHICA), and the North Carolina Rural Health Leadership Alliance, where he serves as Co-Chair of the Telehealth Delivery Taskforce.
Laura Hoemeke - August 19, 2019
Dr. Laura Hoemeke has more than 25 years of experience in global health leadership, advocacy, communications, and program design and management, including 15 years of residence in Francophone Africa and short-term assignments throughout East, West, and Central Africa. She is currently an independent consultant, a senior consultant with Clear Outcomes, and an adjunct professor at UNC's Gillings School of Global Public Health. Laura has significant experience in health policy development and analysis, program design and management, advocacy and communications. She is an internationally recognized and invited public speaker, trainer, and facilitator. She has technical expertise in family planning, reproductive health, HIV/AIDS, maternal and child health, and malaria control, as well as good governance, decentralization, health financing, and community health. At IntraHealth International, starting in 2003, Laura served as the Regional Director for West and Central Africa based in Dakar, Senegal, overseeing country programs and successfully launching several new programs in the region. She then moved to Kigali, Rwanda, where she served as Director and Chief of Party of the Twubakane Decentralization and Health Program. At IntraHealth's headquarters in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, Laura served as the director of communications and advocacy, helping to grow IntraHealth's advocacy unit.
Laura has a doctorate in health policy and management from UNC's Gillings Global School of Public Health and an MPH from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Laura completed her undergraduate studies at Northwestern University, where she received a BS in journalism with from the Medill School of Journalism. Laura is professionally fluent in French and Sango (the national language of the Central African Republic).
Stephanie Watson-Grant - October 28, 2019
Stephanie Watson-Grant, DrPH, has 17 years of experience in public health and development, with 14 years of which is working with organizations at the country level. Dr. Watson-Grant held positions in USAID and UNAIDS and has extensive experience in a diverse portfolio of work including routine monitoring with mHealth resources, outcome monitoring surveys, outcome evaluations, evaluation capacity building, causal loop mapping to assess risks to task shifting from facilities to communities and has publications focused on measurement of country ownership in global health.
In her most recent position, she serves as the Director of Field Operations for MEASURE Evaluation where she leads a team of four country portfolio managers who provide oversight to 36 country operations, implementing activities related to more than eight different earmarks.
Julie Casani - November 18, 2019
Julie Casani, MD, MPH is the Director and Medical Director of Student Health Services at NC State University where she oversees the delivery of primary care, women's services, physical therapy, nutrition services and pharmacy to students, faculty and staff. She is an Adjunct Associate Professor in Biological Sciences where she instructs in Global Public Health, Agriculture Security and One Health and mentors pre-health students.
Until June of 2017, she was the Director of Public Health Preparedness and Response in the North Carolina Division of Public Health. This Branch coordinates the preparedness system for 85 Local Health Departments and 4 regional offices and provides response/recovery coordination, subject expertise and support to the Local Health Departments. From 1999-2006, she was the Preparedness Director at the Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. She has been a policy and health practice consultant to several national workshops and committees in Weapons of Mass Destruction for Federal and State agencies, serving on 3 Defense Science Boards. She also served three consecutive terms as a member of the Homeland Security Science and Technology Advisory Committee for DHS. She recently co-authored the text: Disasters and Public Health: Planning and Response.
Dr. Casani practiced clinical Emergency Medicine in the Johns Hopkins system for 17 years. She has been actively involved in Emergency Medical Services since the 1970's serving at every level from ambulance provider to an appointed member of the Maryland State EMS Board. Dr. Casani received her Medical Degree from New York University School of Medicine and her Masters in Public Health from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
Paul Domanico - December 16, 2019
Paul Domanico, PhD is an executive with over 30 yrs of life sciences R&D experience. He leads large international & multidisciplinary teams through all phases of drug discovery, drug development, and technology development. He has extensive knowledge of drug discovery, chemistry, biology, pharmacology, clinical sciences, and information technology. He served on the boards of biotechnology companies and serves as a mentor to several NC schools and firms.
Paul is the Senior Director of Global Health Sciences at CHAI. This group develops and transfer better and less expensive process chemistries for manufacturing; ensures key products meet quality standards; supports the development and regulatory filing of critical products and dose-optimized regimens; provide clinical guidance on disease prevention and management, support the timely transition to optimal treatment paradigms and improving quality of clinical service delivery for patients in resource-limited settings; and confirm the benefits and cost-effectiveness of interventions; model expected health outcomes and costs of public health programs; and accelerate the real-world implementation of highly-effective interventions.
From 2007-2012, He was a Managing Partner at Innovalyst, a life sciences consulting company that catalyzes product development and commercialization in diagnostics & devices, drug discovery and development, and life science informatics. He created and led Innovalyst's business development and operations strategy, and grew the corporation into a multi-million dollar international enterprise.
From 2001-2007, Paul was the VP of Technology Development at GSK, he delivered advanced technologies, assessed new investment opportunities for GSK's Technology Investment Board, and designed future scenarios for the pharmaceutical industry. Paul created the industry's first technology accelerator for early-stage companies that combined GSK's formidable expertise and infrastructure with external investment.
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