Leilani Johnson, Executive Director
Leilani Johnson’s focus is on international health in complex situations. From her father's Peace Corps experience and trips around the world, to her mother's experiences in Hawaii, she knew that she wanted to live and work abroad. She holds a B.A. in both Psychology and Sociology from Pitzer College in Claremont, CA, and Stockholms Universitet in Stockholm, Sweden. She then went on to pursue a Master of Public Health degree from Boston University. There, she concentrated on International Health, with a focus on complex humanitarian emergencies. After graduation, she volunteered for the United States Peace Corps, serving in Mombasa, Kenya from May 2004-July 2006. In Kenya she was a technical adviser for public health matters and helped coordinate a drug abuse and HIV/AIDS prevention and care program. Upon returning to the United States, Leilani advanced her health related studies in nursing and science related classes, including becoming fully trained in the Minimum Initial Service Package (MISP) for Reproductive Health in Crisis Situations before returning to COHI full-time. Leilani continues to work and travel in the public health field in various capacities including local volunteering opportunities through Boston Area Returned Peace Corps Volunteers, Boston University, Boston and Worcester Medical Emergency Reserve Corps, and COHI. In her role as Executive Director at COHI, she hopes to continue the successful programs COHI has worked on in the past, as well as bring in new programs to help solidify COHI’s future. With this plan, COHI will show the international and maternal health fields its distinct place in crisis settings and help create an environment in which affected women have better access to women’s health services.

Chris Sutton, Information Technology Manager
Hailing from Portland, Oregon, Chris has a background in journalism and international development. Chris spent two years in the West African country of Benin, where he was a Peace Corps Education volunteer. In Israel, he worked in the Resource Development department of a Palestinian human rights organization. He has a Masters in Middle East Studies and currently lives in Beer Sheva, Israel, where he works as a technical writer.

Aisha Saifi
Aisha Saifi holds a B.S. in Nursing as well as a Diploma in Midwifery from Bethlehem University in Palestine. She currently works in a maternity hospital after spending nearly two decades working and raising awareness for various nonprofits and associations in East Jerusalem and the West Bank. She comes to COHI because she has always believed in empowering women and believes that her work in changing the social environment is an indicator of helping her to better know herself and further develop her own ideals. She states, “COHI is a place where I can transform my conscience into my consciousness and help me realize the necessity of struggling in this part of the world for a greater good.” Aisha is the proud mother of four children.

Gomer Ben Moshe, MA, CNM
Gomer is the Israeli Project Coordinator. She worked as a midwife in a hospital delivery room for many years, and now spends most of her time working for COHI in Israel. She also works as an independent midwife and teaches women's health issues at the Haifa University. She attained a BA of Nursing is from "Haddash", Jerusalem, then worked on a surgery ward in the Tel Aviv medical center for 3 years. She then went on to get her midwifery diploma and recently, her Masters degree in women's studies from Lesley University. One of Gomer's main interests are grief and loss during pregnancy and childbirth, in which she tries to support women and their families as well as health staff.

Jacquelyn Caglia, MPH, Public Relations Coordinator
Working with COHI to spread the word about our work, Jacque Caglia is a community health practitioner from Boston. Originally from PA with roots in community organizing and service learning, Jacque holds a Masters in Public Health from Boston University. She is a researcher at a community-based participatory research institute in MA where she is focused on how race, ethnicity, language and culture affect health and on working with community agencies to evaluate health interventions. Jacque served with the Peace Corps as a community health volunteer in the Dominican Republic and is the Vice-President of the Boston Area Returned Peace Corps Volunteers. Jacque is excited to be part of the COHI team and to further her commitment to a participatory process of improving health.

Rochel Ruth Englander, Volunteer
Rochel resides in Be’er Sheva, Israel and is assisting with a variety of COHI initiatives including the Israeli-Palestinian Coexistence Project. Rochel holds a Bachelors of Arts Degree in History from Goucher College and a Masters of Social Work with a specialization in clinical child and family counseling from the University of Maryland. In 2007, she completed her certification in trauma treatment through the Israeli Ministry of Social Affairs. Her professional work has focused primarily on child welfare, trauma counseling, and activism surrounding issues of gender-based violence. On the side, Rochel has trained and volunteers as a doula.

Jessica Alderman, Volunteer
Jessica Alderman grew up in Massachusetts and studied photography in the darkroom for four years under the instruction of Anne Rearick. She published her first book called "The Children of Laos" in 2002. She continued her studies in college, both in Italy, where she had the opportunity to enroll in studio photography courses at the Academia Italiana in Florence, and at Colorado College where she published her second book, "Contours." While in college, she received a grant to go to Kenya to do a photographic comparison of the public health system at the Nakuru Provincial Hospital. An article about Jessica was published in the Colorado College bulletin. Jessica graduated from the Colorado College in 2007, completing a degree in Microbiology with a minor in the Arts in Theory and Practice and is currently working in Denver focusing on health policy.

Presha Rajbhandari, Intern
Presha works as a Senior Program Coordinator at Jhpiego, an affiliate of the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, USA. She backstops program on maternal and newborn health, cervical cancer, and family Planning in Indonesia and Nepal. Presha has a Bachelors degree in Chemistry in Environmental Studies from Grinnell College, Iowa. She is currently enrolled in a part-time Masters in Public Health program at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Presha is from Nepal. She is working with COHI to develop guidelines for identification and management of Posttraumatic stress syndrome in pregnant women in emergency- and post-emergency settings.

Sera Bonds, MPH, COHI Founder and President of the Board of Directors
Sera is a social justice, grassroots activist committed to working towards balancing the scales of access, equity, and availability in women's reproductive health care. She has training in massage therapy, midwifery, a Bachelor of Arts degree in Women's Studies, and a Master's degree in Public Health. Her community organizing background ranges from reproductive rights to violence against women, to welfare and poverty issues to anti-war campaigns. She has worked on women's health issues with teenage and minority moms in rural areas of the Western U.S.; with refugee communities in Boston, Massachusetts; and with rural midwives in Northern India, Guatemala, Tibet, Palestine, tsunami-affected Sri Lanka, Sudan, Tanzania, and Israel; with commercial sex workers on issues of HIV/AIDS in Vietnam; and with female evacuees from hurricanes Rita and Katrina in Louisiana. She founded Circle of Health International with the hope of giving voice to conflict- and disaster-affected women's reproductive health needs on an international scale. Sera recently served as a visiting lecture and Public Health Scholar-In-Residence at Ben Gurion University in Beer Sheba, Israel, an International Reproductive Health Fellow at NARAL-Texas, and was recently selected as a recipient of Boston University's School of Public Health's Distinguished Alumni Award. She currently lives and works 20 miles from Gaza with her husband and newborn son.

Imtiaz Kamal, Board of Directors Member
Imtiaz T. Kamal is a nurse midwife educator and public health scientist. She got her professional education from the U.K. and the U.S.A. She worked with the WHO as staff and in many countries in the field of Maternal and Newborn Health and Family Planning. She retired from WHO as the Regional Nursing Advisor for the Eastern Mediterranean Region, and established the office of Pathfinder International in Pakistan. She served in the Family Planning Association of Pakistan for 17 years as a volunteer and worked with IPPF as Director of Programmes for Middle East and North Africa Region. She has worked in more than 45 countries, has published in national and international journals, and has conducted and guided research and authored books. She is the recipient of many awards from the Government of Pakistan and national and international organizations for her work in the field of Maternal and Newborn Health and Family Planning. She is one of the three core members of the National Committee for Maternal and Neonatal Health and its secretary general. She established the Midwifery Association of Pakistan in 2005 and is its founder President. She was recently reelected the Vice President of Maternity and Child Welfare Association of Pakistan.

Terri Clark, PhD, MSN, CNM, RN, Board of Directors Member
Terri Clark is an Associate Professor at Seattle University College of Nursing. She has a degree in philosophy from Yale College, a PhD in sociology from University of California, San Diego, and an MSN in Maternal-Newborn Health/Nurse-Midwifery from Yale School of Nursing where she was also on faculty for many years. She has a total 25 years of clinical experience as a CNM, including nine years as Director of Obstetrics Education in a Family Practice Residency Program the South Bronx in the 1990s. She has worked in Southern Africa, Mexico, Cambodia and Haiti where she developed and participated in global midwifery educational and service partnerships, as well as volunteered in HIV nursing educational collaboratives. Her most recent publication is a Malaria, HIV, and TB clinical resource guide in the Journal of Midwifery and Women’s Health.

Mindy Levy, Board of Directors Member
Mindy Levy currently works as a homebirth midwife and a midwifery educator in northern Israel. She worked as a hospital midwife for nine years in Haifa, left the hospital three and half years ago and has been working independently ever since. She has a Masters Degree in Women's Studies from Lesley University. Mindy teaches midwives, midwifery and nursing students, doulas and childbirth educators. Her special interest is trauma and its effect on women's maternity experiences, a topic that she has researched in the past and continues to investigate today. She is now training to become a Somatic Experience Practitioner. She serves as the Israeli coordinator for the Israeli-Palestinian Coexistence Project and joined the Kisarawe-Kilimanjaro Challenge in Tanzania last summer.

Courtney T. Hilbert, MSN, CNM, RN, Board of Directors Member
Courtney T. Hilbert is a nurse-midwife practicing in the United States. She brings to COHI her extensive business background and her passion for providing health care to women in underserved areas of the U.S. and abroad. She has worked at two community health centers in Connecticut as a member of the National Health Service Corps and has provided health care services to women in South Africa, Nicaragua, and Honduras. She has also trained local midwives in Haiti. Courtney received her Bachelor of Science in Economics (BSE) degree from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and her Master of Science in Nursing (MSN) degree from the Yale School of Nursing.

Laura Fitzgerald, Board of Directors Member
Laura Fitzgerald, a Connecticut native and certified nurse-midwife, comes to COHI with a clinical and programmatic background in women's health and HIV/AIDS. After receiving an undergraduate degree in anthropology from Bowdoin College, Laura served with the Peace Corps in Malawi. She then attended Yale School of Nursing where she received her Masters of Science in Nursing. The belief that all people, particularly the world's most vulnerable, have a right to high quality, compassionate, and comprehensive health care has taken Laura to South Africa, Haiti, Tanzania, Ethiopia, Zambia, and Lesotho. Currently, she works for Jhpiego, an international health organization based in Baltimore, Maryland. When Laura isn't traveling for work, she is traveling for pleasure, lost in a book, scribbling down a story, or jogging somewhere along the Atlantic coast.

Erica Meadows, Sudan Project Manager & Board of Directors Member
Erica has been in Sudan for nearly one year and has been working with COHI that entire time, starting a training program for Sudanese midwives and traditional birth attendants. The main focus of the project is to provide lifesaving skills to midwives. Erica has a long-standing interest in international health work, as her background in Public Health led her to work in Haiti on a project with HIV-positive adults on a tuberculosis prophylaxis project sponsored by Johns Hopkins School of Public Health. She has worked with refugees and displaced persons in refugee camps on the border between Cambodia and Thailand. She spent more than seven years in former Yugoslavia, working with the United Nations in Bosnia and Croatia, focusing on health and humanitarian issues and refugee returns. She also has a strong commitment to human rights, gained through her many years of service with the United Nations in South Africa, Haiti, and the Balkans.

Sharon Craig Economides, Board of Directors Member
Sharon Craig Economides is a licensed midwife, currently working in a homebirth practice in California's San Francisco Bay Area. She has worked in Afghanistan, Russia, and the Philippines as a midwife and maternity health educator trainer. Sharon coordinated Birth Life-Saving Skills (BLiSS) trainings in Afghanistan, where maternal and infant mortality has been the second highest in the world. Sharon is currently completing her Masters degree in Midwifery through the University of Sheffield in the UK and continues to write freelance for midwifery publications and teaches courses through the Aviva Institute of Midwifery.

Jordyn Bonds, Founders Circle Member
Jordyn specializes in web and print wizardry, spinning straw into gold for non-profits and rock bands across the nation. She also has a deep background in feminist issues, focusing on pro-choice and reproductive rights. Jordyn's area of focus at COHI is in design and web-related activities. She is a student of religion and critical theory, and an activist for feminism and music.

Sarah Chynoweth, Founders Circle Member
From 2004 to 2005, Sarah worked as COHI's Tibet Project Manager during which she designed, managed, and implemented maternal and child health trainings for rural Tibetans. She currently works with the Reproductive Health Program at the Women's Commission for Refugee Women and Children. In this position, she strives to improve the lives and defend the rights of refugee and internally displaced women and girls as well as helps to ensure that their voices are heard from the community level to the highest councils of governments and international organizations. Sarah's professional experience includes projects in Sudan (Darfur), Tibet/China, the Thai-Burma border, Romania, Palestine/Israel, Nepal, Malta and Germany. She holds a Master's degree from Columbia University where she specialized in the sexual and reproductive health issues of Tibetan women. Sarah is a certified carpenter, has been studying Tibetan for the past two years, and is originally from Germany. Sarah focuses her activities at COHI on technically advising the field staff in Tibet, and elsewhere, to ensure a high level of quality in COHI's programming.

Dr. Nathalie Kapp, Board of Advisors Member
A warm and motivated OB/GYN hailing from Idaho, Nathalie Kapp is a Medical Officer in the Department of Reproductive Health and Research at the World Health Organization in Geneva. She completed her training at Dartmouth-Hitchcock in New Hampshire after graduating from the University of Utah Medical School. Her current research topics include innovations in techniques of induction abortion, medical eligibility for use of contraception and detection of fetal genetic material in maternal blood. She recently completed her Masters in Biostatistics at Boston University's School of Public Health. She is an active member of multiple professional associations. When she is not providing instruction or conducting research, she practices yoga, is an active modern dancer and fabulous chef, plays a mean game of boggle, and passionately pursues adventures in rock climbing.

Kerri Kimball, Founders Circle Member
An advocate for global humanitarian and environmental causes, Kerri Kimball focuses her time at COHI on financial planning, management, and strategy. She earned her BA in Business Administration and Finance from Brigham Young University and went on to work for eleven years in corporate advertising and financial management in San Francisco, Sydney, and New York City. Currently a financial planner and coach, Kerri is also a student of Buddhism, ontology, and modern literature.

Adam Rosenbloom, MPH, Founders Circle Member
Adam is a budding young humanitarian aid worker who is currently earning his MD at Columbia University's Middle Eastern affiliate, Ben Gurion University, focusing on International Health. Adam served as COHI's Project Manager, demonstrating his ability to lead, work under incredibly challenging conditions, and his commitment to women's health. He has circumnavigated the globe (only once) and hopes to continue his journey while working to alleviate the suffering of the poor through small and focused community-based programs affecting women and children. Adam cites his experience as a High School teacher in rural Henderson, North Carolina, as a catalyst to use his privilege to serve those who are less privileged in an attempt to address issues of inequity. In his free time, Adam likes playing music, listening to music, and dancing to music.

Monica Onyango, RN, MPH, Volunteer
Monica is currently working at Boston University (School of Public Health) as a lecturer on Reproductive Health in disasters and emergencies. Monica focuses her attention with COHI in technically advising on issues of programming in emergency settings, and she recently conducted COHI's needs assessment in Sudan to determine COHI's programming in the region. She worked for more than six years with international non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in relief and development in Southern Sudan, Kenya and Angola, managing community health programs and training health workers. She served in the Kenya Ministry of Health (MOH) for ten years as a nursing officer in management positions at two hospitals, and as a lecturer at the Nairobi Medical Training College – School of Nursing. She has a proven ability to start and manage health programs under difficult conditions. She is presently earning her Ph.D. at Boston College in Nursing while focusing her research on Post-Abortion Care in conflict settings.