Board of Directors
The Universities Allied for Essential Medicine (UAEM) Board of Directors is the authority that handles all of the business affairs of UAEM, as well as providing long-term guidance to the student-led organization. The Board has the power, inter alia, to appoint and remove officers of UAEM, to manage the affairs of UAEM and make new rules for the organization, to determine its principal location, and to manage the non-profit’s financial resources.
Members
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Rachel Kiddell-Monroe, President Rachel, a member of the United Kingdom Law Society since 1991, has worked in the humanitarian field for over 20 years. After starting an advocacy organization in London as a result of witnessing injustices faced by indigenous peoples in Asia, she began working with Medecins Sans Frontières (MSF) in 1991. Rachel began her extensive field experience with MSF as head of mission in Djibouti. She went on to head emergency humanitarian missions in Rwanda, during the civil war, and Democratic Republic of Congo. After starting up an advocacy office for MSF in Ottawa, Rachel spearhead a Regional humanitarian/advocacy coordination office for MSF in Latin America, where she worked for four years. Returning to Montreal, 2003, Rachel was asked to head MSF’s Access to Medicines Campaign in Canada. She became well-known and respected for her groundbreaking work on the Canadian initiative to allow the export of generic versions of brand name drugs to developing countries under the 2003 World Trade Organization patent waiver. |
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Kavitha Kolappa Kavitha is currently a 4th year medical student at Johns Hopkins University. A North Carolina native, she graduated from UNC-Chapel Hill with a BA in International Studies in 2005. She then left to work for the Global Health Council where she was involved in various advocacy initiatives and led the University Coalitions for Global Health (UCGH). Her interest in the global access movement was sparked by her work in the summer of 2006 with the Positive Women's Network (PWN+), a Chennai-based organization advocating for affordable treatment and programs for women and children affected by HIV in India. Kavitha has been involved with UAEM ever since, helping to revitalize the Hopkins chapter, serving on the national coordinating committee, and participating in the fundraising committee of the board. She is currently writing a briefing paper on non-communicable diseases. |
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Dave Chokshi Dave is an internal medicine resident at Brigham & Women's Hospital and clinical fellow at Harvard Medical School. Dave's work experience spans the public, private, and nonprofit sectors, including positions with the Louisiana Department of Health, the U.S. Department of Health, a startup clinical software company, and with a nonprofit organization working in a red-light district in Mumbai, India. Dave graduated with honors from both Duke University and the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. He was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship in 2002 and studied global health sciences and policy at the University of Oxford. There, he helped organize MalariaGEN, a global consortium of scientists and laboratories which investigates the genetic epidemiology of malaria susceptibility. Dave has worked with UAEM since 2003, having helped form the national coordinating committee, leading the Penn chapter, serving as interim executive director, and organizing the Philadelphia Consensus Statement. |
| Rebecca LeGrand | |
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Sandeep (Sunny) Kishore Sunny is enrolled in the Weill Cornell Medical College/ Rockefeller/Sloan-Kettering Institute Tri-Institutional MD-PhD program. His scientific research concerns characterizing gene activation in the parasite responsible for malaria. Sunny has successfully advocated for the inclusion of a cholesterol-lowering statin on the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Model List of Essential Medicines. He currently serves as a Global Health Specialist for the Earth Institute at Columbia’s Master’s in Development Practice program and consults for the New York Academy of Sciences Scientists Without Borders program. He completed his B.S. in Biology at Duke University in 2004 and his M.Sc in Immunology at Oxford University in 2006. In April 2011, Sunny represented a coalition of leading global health organizations, at the WHO conference on non-communicable diseases in Moscow. Language he presented about the importance of making treatments for these diseases affordable in developing countries was included in the policy declaration that emerged from the conference. He is a very active member of the fundraising committee of the board. |
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Samantha Chaifetz Samantha is one of the founding members of Universities Allied for Essential Medicines. She received her B.A. from Harvard College and her J.D. from Yale Law School. While at Yale, Samantha drew upon work experience in strategy consulting for life sciences companies as she focused on issues at the intersection of law and public health. She was co-Editor-in-Chief of the Yale Journal of Health Policy, Law, and Ethics. Samantha is currently an appellate lawyer for the Civil Division of the U.S. Department of Justice. Prior to joining the Department of Justice, she clerked for the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit (for Judge Betty B. Fletcher) and the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Philadelphia (for Judge Louis H. Pollak). |
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Rachel Belt Rachel graduated with a degree in International Politics from Columbia University in 2008 where she wrote her thesis on Innovation and Access to Pediatric Medicines for Tropical Diseases. While at university, she interned with the World Health Organization’s STOP TB program and the Doctors Without Borders' Access to Medicines Campaign. Afterwards, she traveled to Uganda with the UK’s Medical Research Council to write the history of their HIV/AIDS program. Currently, Rachel studies distance for a Masters degree in epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Rachel is aslo working for the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative in New York City. |
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Jane Andrews |
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Connie Chen Connie is a 3rd year medical student at the University of California at San Francisco (UCSF). Connie completed her B.A. in Economics and Health Policy at Harvard University where she grew the nascent UAEM chapter into a university-wide coalition spanning 7 schools. She continued her involvment with UAEM at UCSF as an active leader in the California campaign and served on UAEM’s coordinating committee from 2005 to 2010. Connie has worked with the Chilean Ministry of Health and the Clinton Foundation HIV/AIDS Initiative's Cambodia office. She was previously programming chair at the Phillips Brooks House Association where she oversaw the day-to-day running of 73 service and advocacy programs with over 1,800 student volunteers serving 10,000 constituents in the greater Boston area, as well as California regional director for the physician grassroots advocacy group, Doctors for America. |
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Ady Barkan Ady received his B.A. from Columbia University, where he wrote an honors thesis in economics on the production and distribution of low-cost tuberculosis diagnostics in India. He graduated from Yale Law School and led Yale's UAEM chapter, as well as helped to coordinate the campaign that led to the adoption of the Statement of Principles and Strategies for the Equitable Dissemination of Medical Technologies. Ady is a currently Workers' Rights Advocate at the community organization Make the Road New York, advising and representing workers who have been unlawfully denied minimum wages and overtime pay and providing legal support on legislative advocacy campaigns. Ady is the chair of the fundraising committee of the board. |
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Gloria Tavera Gloria is enrolled in the Case Western Reserve University MD/PhD program. She is currently in the medical school phase of the program, but holds research interests in genetics and immunology, particularly in malaria. She graduated from the University of Florida in 2009 with degrees in neurobiology, political science and a minor in public health. In 2009, she conducted research in the neuropathology of dengue hemorrhagic fever in Maxico as a Fulbright scholar. The following year, she completed a research internship at the NIH as an intramural training fellow at the National Institute of Allegy and Infectious Diseases, studying malaria drug resistance research. She co-founded a chapter of UAEM at the University of Florida and is currently fostering the chapter at CAse Western. Gloria is a proud past-member of the UAEM Coordinating Committee, where she worked primarily on UAEM empowerment and neglected disease projects during her 5-years tenure. |
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Aria Iiyad Ahmad
Aria is a doctoral student of international pharmaceutical policy at the University of Toronto where he holds affiliations with the Graduate Student Alliance for Global Health, the Initiative for Drug Equity and Access, as well as the Laboratory for Collaborative Diagnostics. His Masters thesis elucidates key vulnerabilities in informal pharmaceutical supply chains, providing a theoretical framework for drug quality evaluation at the point of use. In addition to having published in peer reviewed journals and presented at over two dozen international conferences, Aria has also testified before the Canadian Senate on pharmaceutical policy matters as well as organized academic and civil society conferences. With global health field research experience in sub-Saharan Africa and South-east Asia, Aria holds the inaugural UAEM-Médecins Sans Frontičres Fellowship in India, where he spent the summer exploring a range of access to medicines policy projects. Most recently, he has been working with the Young Professionals-Chronic Disease Network preparing for, and conducting follow-up analysis of the UN High Level Meeting on Noncommunicable Diseases.
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