Board of Directors
The support, guidance and leadership of our Board is essential to our mission to improve the health and well-being of communities living under the threat of natural disasters.
Anna Stewart-Ibarra
Anna Stewart-Ibarra, PhD, MPA, is the Science Director of the InterAmerican Institute for Global Change Research (IAI). Dr. Stewart-Ibarra's research focuses on understanding climate, environment and social drivers of arboviruses and other infectious diseases in Latin America and the Caribbean. For more than 12 years, she has collaborated with academic and government institutions in the region to conduct social-ecological, epidemiological and modeling studies. She was formerly the Director of the Latin America and Caribbean Research Program of the Institute for Global Health and Translational Science at the State University of New York Upstate Medical University (SUNY UMU). She received her PhD in ecology from the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry and Masters in Public Administration from the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University.
Willy Dunbar
Dr Dunbar is a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the AIDS Prevention Program for the Department of Health Promotion and Disease Prevention, Florida International University (FIU) in the USA and a Scientific Collaborator at the Policies, Health Systems and International Health Research Center of the School of Public Health, Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB) in Belgium. His main research areas are health equity and inclusion policy initiative, sexual behaviour and health, health and social related stigma and discrimination and, social accountability of medical education. He is an author and co-author of multiple international publications.
Debbie Medina
A native New Yorker with Latina roots, Debbie studied International Relations and Latin American Studies at SUNY Geneseo, including an intersession abroad in Buenos Aires. For the past 5 years, she has worked in local state government in NY, international NGO’s, and in the non-profit sector for organizations such as Casa-Nica and Global Glimpse in Nicaragua. She has spent the last two years working with Global Student Embassy, Global Citizen Year and Walking Palms Global Health in Ecuador aiding in the development of cultural immersion, comprehension, experiential education and risk management. She is now working as the Community Affairs Representative for New York State Senator Kevin Thomas in the 6th District. Debbie wishes to continue empowering others through community work, active leadership, and travel.
Andrew Jeffery
Andrew brings his background in fundraising and strategy to benefit the Walking Palms Mission. Andrew founded and led several real estate investment partnerships in the San Francisco Bay Area before moving to Bahia to raise his family.
Jose Ortiz
A career spanning 27 years in IT covering several industries, disciplines and platforms; from Apparel, Consumer Packaged Goods, Healthcare and Pharmaceuticals. Current skills in IT Management, to hands-on Network Engineering infrastructure design and Administration to Programming on IBM Mainframes, Midrange, Micro, VM and currently Cloud technologies. Programming for over 20 years in IBM RPG, CL and Oracle Java and Web Technologies and currently a Project Manager and Consultant assisting companies in their B2B infrastructure and implementing standards such Electronic data transfers using ANSI X12 and EDIFACT. Jose coordinates and advises on all IT and systems-related work for WPGH.
Anita Hargrave
Anita Hargrave, MD is an Internal Medicine physician. Her work focuses on improving access to healthcare for vulnerable populations and analyzing health inequity to inform community based policy reform. She has been collaborating with local universities and organizations in Ecuador for over 9 years to understand factors impacting health and well-being throughout the country. Her clinical work has been conducted in clinics and hospitals run by the Ministry of Health. Anita completed medical school at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), where she graduated Alpha Omega Alpha with an MD with Honors Thesis in 2017, and is now finishing her Internal Medicine Residency at UCSF. She completed a Fulbright Fellowship in Ecuador (2010-2011),