The YTH Live 2019 Program Committee was a diverse group of technology experts, health professionals, and youth leaders who designed a cutting-edge conference. Learn more about about each of these fascinating committee members:
Amy Adelberger
Amy founded and leads Global Impact Advisors, a boutique strategy and evaluation advisory firm, where she is responsible for all aspects of the business including strategic direction, client engagement, and project delivery. She advises foundations, non-profits, and universities on achieving their program outcomes and enhancing their impact.
Her experience includes the development of strategic plans, including setting organization, portfolio, and program level direction, as well as assessing progress through a variety of methods. She regularly leads multi-disciplinary teams that conduct stakeholder analyses, capabilities assessments, and process evaluations. She also engages with a range of funders in global health and development, including both private foundations and public sector donors.
Prior to founding GIA, Amy was a Program Officer in Global Health at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. She managed an end-to-end program strategy, which included a focus on discovery, development, and delivery of Tuberculosis drugs, diagnostics, and vaccines. Amy received a BA in History from Brown University and an MPH from the University of Washington.
Duncan Cook
Duncan Cook is an Engineering Manager at Yelp, where he has worked for over 8 years building scalable systems on numerous teams, including Yelp Reservations and Yelp Transactions. Originally from London, he moved to California in 2006, where his British accent has continued to deteriorate, much to his disappointment. Duncan is gender-nonconforming, occasionally presents as female, and is an avid blogger about gender-nonconforming issues. He has been married for ten years, and is now a father of a rambunctious 1-year old. He also owns many cool T-shirts, knows how to pick locks, and has a pretty sweet tattoo of Ariel on his forearm.
Sujude Dalieh
Sujude Dalieh just graduated with a Bachelor’s of Science in Chemistry from the University of California, Berkeley. Throughout her studies, she has received certificates in Technology Entrepreneurship and Human-Centered Design. She is passionate about the intersection between the social sector and tech sector and has been working to make the field more inclusive. As a former YTH intern, she has worked on community engagement projects focusing on adolescent health and assisted in large-scale technology implementation for projects such as OregonReminders and DIY. During her time at the Berkeley Institute of Data Sciences, she has developed modules in Python to support a data science curriculum for a variety of courses, including those in the humanities and social sciences by utilizing packages to optimize student accessibility. Additionally, she has implemented a more data-driven diversity initiative at the Office of Undergraduate Admissions through utilizing a variety of demographic tools. She is also active in her own community as she has run UC Berkeley’s Recruitment and Retention Center for Middle Eastern students.
Eleanor Davis
Eleanor is a data nerd, an avid yogi, and a self-proclaimed Plant Lady, but most importantly she is a passionate believer in the power of young people to create social change. In her current role at Futures Without Violence, Eleanor develops national violence prevention initiatives that engage a variety of audiences including youth, men and boys, health care providers, and educators. Primarily, Eleanor’s work centers on engaging teens around issues of health, abuse, and relationships, and on building digital tools that prevent teen dating abuse and promote healthy relationship skills. Eleanor is currently a student at UC Berkeley where she is completing Master’s degree in Public Health.
Megan Falkenhan
Megan Falkenhan, is Acting Senior Manager at ViiV Healthcare, the only company solely focued on HIV, where she leads the company’s Positive Action community giving programs in the US. Her focus is on national initiatives that drive new insights, connection and impact for people living with HIV, as well as initiatives focused on increasing youth mentorship services to support youth living with HIV to successfully enter adult care. Prior to her role with ViiV Healthcare, Megan served as Manager, Government Affairs, Emerging Markets Asia Pacific at GlaxoSmithKline, where she was responsible for designing and leading integrated public and government affairs programs to support operations in 118 countries outside the US and Europe.
Her primary role was to support the development and implementation of partnerships that helped achieve GSK’s commitment to improve access to medicines, work with Governments to find innovative solutions to provide the best treatments possible for patients, encourage fair, transparent and pro-innovation pricing regimes, and improve and/or accelerate market access opportunities for GSK products, specifically for Asia Pacific, Russia/CIS, and the Middle East North Africa regions.
Megan joined GlaxoSmithKline in 2009 as Team Administrator, Government Affairs, Emerging Markets & Asia Pacific. In 2012 she was promoted to Government Affairs Analyst, Emerging Markets & Asia Pacific, where she assisted with communication of key messages regarding the EMAP region to US-based political audiences. Other responsibilities included supporting the coordination of multi-faceted advocacy/influencing strategies to help promote, support and/or defend primary international business goals and policy objectives, as well as supported the implementation and coordination of both above and in-country lobbying strategies to influence healthcare, trade, economic and social policies that impact business growth.
Megan earned her Bachelor of Arts in Integrative Studies at George Mason University in 2004. She lives in Maryland with her husband, two sons and daughter.
Vicki Harrison
Vicki Harrison, MSW is Program Director of the Center for Youth Mental Health & Wellbeing within Stanford’s Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences. She has over twenty years of experience working within the public health, education and mental health sectors developing and managing innovative, community-based programs at the local, state, national and international levels. At the Center, she develops and directs a broad portfolio of projects promoting wellbeing, early intervention and increased access to mental health services, particularly for young people ages 12-25. She is leading the technical assistance team implementing a first of its kind integrated youth mental health model in the U.S. as well as building a new national Media and Mental Health Initiative, partnering with the media, mental health and technology sectors to enhance the positive impact of media on youth mental health and wellbeing. Locally, she also supports schools and the community with suicide prevention, stigma reduction, and mentoring and educational events such as the bi-annual Adolescent Mental Wellness Conference and Mental Health Innovation Challenge.
Rashad Hayes
Rashad Hayes is the Prevention Coordinator for AIDS ALABAMA. He graduated from the University of Alabama at Birmingham, with a Bachelor’s degree in Community Health and Human Services. He is currently working on his master’s in Social Work. He has a passion in making a difference in the community. Three years ago, he was diagnosed with a form of cancer called Follicular Lymphoma. He is now using it to advocate for individuals living with HIV as well as promoting testing among the communities. Although, Mr. Hayes is only 24 years old, he displays a strong desire to lead people out of health disparities and guided them into living a knowledge filled life.
Elise Healy
Elise Healy is a first-year graduate student in the Department of Global Health at the University of Washington in Seattle. Her primary interest is global mental health among marginalized populations within the United States. She received her B.A. in Psychology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In addition, Elise has been employed with FHI 360 for the past two years as a Technical Assistant in the Research Utilization department. Most of her work focuses on the development and adaptation of a holistic mentoring approach for adolescent girls and young women in developing countries.
Wendy Hussey
Wendy Hussey is public health professional with over 15 years of experience in maternal and child health. She currently serves as the program director for the California Preterm Birth Initiative. Prior to joining the team at UCSF, she served as the assistant director for the UC Berkeley Wallace Maternal and Child Health Center. Wendy brings deep experience in place-based community transformation to PTBi-CA from her work as the national program manager for the Best Babies Zone at the UC Berkeley School of Public Health, where she worked in support of infant mortality reduction. She began her career in public health as the assistant director of the Maternal and Child Health Program at the UC Berkeley School of Public Health. Wendy holds an MPH from San Jose State University and a BA in Psychology from San Francisco State University.
Jade Lopez
Jade Lopez (she/her) is completing her second year of a biostatistics Masters in public health at the University of Illinois at Chicago School of Public Health, where she serves as Vice President. Her background includes a Bachelor’s of Science from University of California at Davis in Neurology, Biology and Behavior, secondary science education with the United States Peace Corps in Mozambique, HIV/AIDS health education with the API Wellness Center, programs and development in rural India, and two plus wonderful years at YTH working in visual and digital health communications. Most recently, as part of her Masters program, she had the opportunity to work at the UCSF Bixby Center as a data analyst. In addition to her coursework, she is currently working on a study to highlight the mental health impacts Hurricane Maria and US colonial policy has on Puerto Ricans. Her professional interests tend towards working in conjunction with communities to manage their health, specifically around technology, data science and privacy and security. She counts herself as lucky to be able to once again participate in YTH Live and looks forward to what the Youth Advisory Board have in store this year!
Lindsey Leslie
As a Program Officer II within the Johns Hopkins Center for Communication Program (CCP), Lindsey provides technical and operational support to several USAID-funded integrated health programs in Bangladesh, Ethiopia and Nigeria. Within CCP, Lindsey manages a digital health platform used across several CCP projects. Lindsey enjoys incorporating strategic and innovative behavior change approaches to generate interest in health. Lindsey has worked in Latin America, South Asia and East Africa in health areas including Maternal and Child Health, Nutrition, Sexual and Reproductive Health, Water, Sanitation and Hygiene, and Zoonotic diseases. Before pursuing her Master’s of Science in Public Health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Lindsey served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Nicaragua. She sits on the Advisory Board of Youth Empowered Society (YES); a non-profit seeking to end youth homelessness in Baltimore.
Rob Joyce
Rob believes that we have a historic opportunity to design new ways for people and organizations to make the world a better place, and he founded Social Impact Designs to greet this opportunity with creativity, collaboration, and action. His career includes experience in business development, communication design, and project management that spans the private, nonprofit, and civic sectors. In 2015, he led the development of the Founders Pledge program for Full Circle Fund, where he created programming and resources for a community of startup founders that have pledged company equity to nonprofits. Recent experience also includes marketing and communications for HealthRIGHT 360 during multiple mergers and the launch of a $15MM capital campaign. His civic engagement includes continued volunteer service as the director of Please Touch Garden, an interim use project in San Francisco that has transformed a blighted Civic Center lot into a thriving arts garden. Rob has also been an Instructor with the Stanford Continuing Studies Program, where he taught Social Impact Marketing
Melisa Price
Melisa Price is a Research Associate with the Philip R. Lee Institute of Health Policy Studies of University of California, San Francisco. Her work is focused on delivering training and technical assistance to Adolescent Sexual Health educators across California. She earned a Masters of Public Health (MPH) degree from University of California, Berkeley with a specialization in Maternal and Child Health. She has fifteen years of experience in delivering, coordinating and evaluating social and public health services for marginalized groups including African-American and Latino populations, families living in poverty, foster youth, LGBTQI youth, and homeless population. She also has extensive experience in the field of youth development acting in various roles including program coordinator for an afterschool program, health educator at a community clinic and program manager for a youth leadership program.
Surabhi Srivastava
A proud intersectional feminist and reproductive justice activist, Surabhi currently works as Program Manager at Love Matters India. She is passionate about advancing a rights- and pleasure-based discourse on abortion to end the shame and stigma around abortion and reproductive justice issues She believes this cannot happen without also talking openly about sex, pleasure, bodily autonomy, and intimate justice.Surabhi loves everything pop-culture, listening to podcasts, and eating pizza! She has a masters degree in public health from Yale University and is currently based in New Delhi, India.
Siavash Zohoori
Siavash Zohoori received his B.A. at UC Santa Barbara, where he studied Sociology, Economics, and Applied Psychology. In response to the Isla Vista tragedy, he began sharing his story to end interpersonal violence and cleanse toxic masculinity. Realizing the profound impact it had on himself and his peers, he is grateful to continue helping others share their stories through his storytelling work in San Mateo County’s Office of Diversity and Equity. There, he developed a framework and approach to facilitate stories through the Digital Storytelling and Photovoice methods that is healing, empowering and inspires change. Working with local leaders in San Mateo County, Siavash has facilitated workshops to address topics such as recovery, housing, incarceration, spirituality, and more.
We would also like to acknowledge the contributions of our YTH Youth Advisory Board. This diverse group of youth leaders and technology and health experts will help design a fantastic conference.
