Board of Directors
- Jeff Andrews, MD
Dr. Andrews is a husband, father, and physician. He is on faculty at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. He met Milton Ochieng’ in a faculty-student mentorship and became involved in the Lwala Community Alliance as a result of the impact that knowing Milton had upon him. Since then, he has been to Lwala, met most of the Ochieng’ family, and is currently sharing the Vanderbilt campus with Fred Ochieng’. Jeff is a specialist in Obstetrics and Gynecology, yet he has a broad-based understanding of medical conditions and global health beyond women’s health. He is a senior scientist in the Vanderbilt Evidence-based Practice Center, a Faculty Fellow in the Vanderbilt Institute of Global Health, and a volunteer physician with the Swinfen Charitable Trust which provides telemedicine support to providers in developing countries.
- Jeremiah Brown, PhD
Dr. Brown is an Assistant Professor of Health Policy and Clinical Practice at The Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice, and Section of Cardiology at Dartmouth Medical School. He received his M.S. and Ph.D. at the Center for the Evaluative Clinical Sciences at Dartmouth. He is trained as a medical care epidemiologist with expertise in health services research, biostatistics, health policy reform, shared decision making and quality improvement of health care. Dr. Brown specifically assists the Lwala Community Alliance in health surveys, prevention, education, and public health initiatives.
- Frederica Helmiere, MAR, MESc (Board Secretary)
Freddie is trained in the social sciences of conservation and development. She has an MESc degree from Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies focusing on international development and eco-justice, and an MAR degree from Yale Divinity School, focusing on ethics and environmental theology. Freddie first met Milton Ochieng’ on a Tucker Foundation service trip to Nicaragua in 2001. That experienced shaped the rest of her time at Dartmouth College, inspiring a double major in religion and environmental studies and leading her to join the Peace Corps after graduating in 2004. There she served as an environmental education volunteer on a small island in the Philippines. Freddie currently lives in Seattle and works as a researcher, writer, and editor. She also teaches Environmental Writing and Research Methods at the University of Washington.
- Fred Ochieng’, MD (Co-founder, Lwala Community Alliance)
Fred is the third born of Margaret and Erastus Ochieng’s six children born in Lwala. He attended Alliance High School in Nairobi, Kenya and graduated from Dartmouth College in 2005. He graduated from Vanderbilt University School of Medicine in May 2010 and is a first year resident in medicine pediatrics at Vanderbilt University. Family, faith, community support, and his friends in Kenya and abroad have helped him immensely in dealing with the painful loss of his parents. He and his brother, Milton Ochieng’, founded the Lwala Community Alliance and built the Ochieng’ Memorial Lwala Community Health Center to honor their parents who died of AIDS.
- Milton Ochieng’, MD (Co-founder, Lwala Community Alliance)
Milton Ochieng’ grew up in the small rural village of Lwala in western Kenya. He is the second born in a family of four boys and two girls. His parents were both teachers. He attended Alliance High School in Nairobi, Kenya then attended Dartmouth College in the United States for his undergraduate studies. He graduated from the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine in 2008 and is a third year resident in internal medicine at Washington University in St. Louis. He and his younger brother, Frederick Ochieng’, founded the Lwala Community Alliance and built the Ochieng’ Memorial Lwala Community Health Center to honor their parents who died of AIDS.
- Craig Parker (Board Chair)
Craig is the campus director for the Navigators Christian Fellowship at Boston University. Craig has served on the staff of The Navigators, an international, non-denominational Christian organization, for 30 years. His previous ministry assignments were in New Hampshire, Germany, and Virginia. For 17 years he was the Campus Director of the Navigators Christian Fellowship at Dartmouth College, where he led 14 service trips to seven U.S. inner cities and four countries. He has worked as a recruiting partner of two children’s relief organizations in Tegucigalpa, Honduras and Ain Leuh, Morocco. He specializes in fundraising and networking for the Lwala Community Alliance. He and his wife Nancy have four children and three grandchildren. Craig became involved with Lwala through his friendship with Fred Ochieng’ who was an active member of the Navigators at Dartmouth.
- David Pyke, PhD
Dr. Pyke is Dean of the School of Business Administration at the University of San Diego. Formerly, he was Professor of Operations Management, and Associate Dean at the Amos Tuck School of Business Administration at Dartmouth College. He obtained his BA from Haverford College, MBA from Drexel University, and his M.A. and Ph.D. from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. He has made major research contributions in inventory models, production planning and scheduling, and global operations and supply chain management. He has co-authored two books and has published numerous academic papers. His book titled “Inventory Management and Production Planning and Scheduling”, co-authored with E. A. Silver and R. Peterson (third edition, John Wiley & Sons, 1998) is used in numerous Ph.D. programs worldwide. He is a frequent serves as faculty at executive programs and has taught at the International University of Japan, the Helsinki School of Economics, and the WHU – Otto-Beisheim-Hochschule, Vallendar, Germany. He has consulted for The Rand Corporation, Accenture, Corning, DHL, Eaton, Home Depot and Markem, among others. He serves on the Board of Directors of GW Plastics and Concepts NREC. He is a scientific advisor for SignalDemand and is operating partner of Tuckerman Capital LLC. He and his wife Susan have three boys and enjoy skiing, hiking, biking and other outdoor activities.
- Susan Pyke
Susan is the Director of Development at The Cambridge School in San Diego. She is pursuing a master’s degree in Nonprofit Leadership and Management at USD. She earned her undergraduate degree in English from the College of William and Mary. In 1990 she was a founder of Crossroads Academy, an independent K-8 school in Lyme, NH. She taught English composition and literature in grades 6 through 8 at Crossroads Academy from 1996-2005. She then became the Teaching Director of the interdenominational Upper Valley Women’s Bible Study from 2006-2008. Susan and her husband have raised three sons. She enjoys traveling and outdoor activities, including skiing, hiking, and biking.
- Caitlin Reiner, MPH
Caitlin is the Global Program Manager for the Prevention of Mother to Child Transmission of HIV with the Clinton Health Access Initiative. In this capacity, she supports governments to strengthen national and district programs to care for HIV positive moms and protect infants from infection. Prior to this, she worked as the Kenya Program Manager at the Lwala Community Alliance for 2 years and served on the board of the organization from 2005-2008. Caitlin received a master’s degree in public health from Columbia University and a bachelors of arts degree in history and education from Dartmouth College. She has worked with a number of global health organizations including the International Family AIDS Program and the Millennium Villages Project and is the recipient of the 2010 Award for Excellence in Global Health from Columbia University. She is based in New York City, but spends about 30% of the year in the developing world.
- Marcia K. Stone
Marcia has spent 30 years helping nonprofits structure and execute their development programs. She directed various programs at Phillips Exeter Academy, the William Penn Charter School, the University of Vermont, Vermont Law School, and Dartmouth College. In the Upper Valley of New Hampshire, she served for 11 years on the board of a family service agency, The Family Place. An active Episcopalian locally, she also serves in several capacities in the Society of the Companions of the Holy Cross. Marcia met the Ochieng’ brothers through Sarah and Bill Young and now serves on the development committee for the Lwala Community Alliance. Earlier she worked for several years in the international oil business in New York and conducted business research at the State Historical Society of Wisconsin. She received her BA from Vassar College and MA from Harvard. An avid angler, Marcia and her husband, John, fly fish in New Zealand and South America and enjoy hiking and skiing in Vermont and Wyoming.
- Tina Swenson, CPA
Tina is a CPA and has worked most recently for Deloitte & Touche as a Tax Manager specializing in high net worth individuals and their closely held entities including not for profit organizations. She graduated from Pacific Lutheran University in 1997 Magna Cum Laude with a degree in Business Administration with an emphasis in Accounting and Financial Resource Management. She continued her education with a Masters in Accounting at the University of West Florida in 1998. After 7 years with Deloitte & Touche, she has taken a 5 year sabbatical to invest in her personal interests of being a mother to her two daughters Kate and Sarah and wife to her husband of 10 years, Aaron, who is in his medical residency. In her spare time she enjoys women’s Bible study as well as skiing, hiking, snow shoeing, fly fishing, and walking with her Doberman pinscher.
- Richard Wamai, PhD
A Kenyan, Richard G. Wamai is an assistant professor at Northeastern University in the Department of African American Studies. He earned his Ph.D. in international health and development from the University of Helsinki, Finland. Prior to joining Northeastern, Wamai was a research fellow at the Department of Global Health and Population at Harvard School of Public Health. Before that, Wamai was a research associate at Oxford University Department of Social Policy. Wamai has previously worked in a number of institutions including the Johns Hopkins University Institute for Public Policy and the Bloomberg School of Public Health, the World Bank, the London School of Economics Center for Civil Society, the Nordic-Africa Institute in Sweden, and the University of Nairobi in Kenya. Wamai conducts research in the areas of health systems and HIV/AIDS epidemiology and policy in developing countries.
- Bill Young, MD (Board Vice-Chair)
Dr. Young met Milton Ochieng’ in 2001 on a Dartmouth College Community Education and Service trip to Siuna, Nicaragua. The friendship expanded to siblings Fred and Grace who lived off and on with Sarah and Bill’s family in Hanover, NH over many years. Dr. Young is a retired academic clinician at Dartmouth Medical School and a former member of the Executive Board of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. He continues to direct a medical student exchange program between Kosovo and Dartmouth, but dedicates much of his time to Lwala. Bill has worked in Lwala almost yearly since 2005 and was the first Chair of the Lwala Community Alliance Board from 2007-2010. Improving maternal and child health in the Lwala region is an area of special interest. Bill introduced the Home Based Life Saving Skills or Umama Salama program to the village in 2009, championed the building of a proper maternity, and established collaborative care with regional hospitals.
- Sarah Young, R.D.
Sarah received her BS in dietetics in 1974 from the University of California Davis. She volunteers at the Good Neighbor Clinic, a free clinic in White River Junction, Vermont. She, her husband William Young, and their two daughters have become a second family to the Ochiengs’.
