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Staff Biographies
Anne Austin, Deputy Director of Research and Education
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Born in Indonesia to a Norwegian mother and American father, and raised in Nigeria, Kenya and Saudi Arabia, Anne Austin brings a personal and professional global perspective to the MHTF. She holds a BA from Emory University, a MPH from the Rollins School of Public Health, and an ScD from the Harvard School of Public Health’s in Global Health and Population Studies and was named a Pritzker Fellow two years in a row.
Austin has conducted extensive research in areas that make her exceptionally well-suited to lead the MHTF’s innovative implementation research agenda on the quality of maternal health care. Her technical and analytical skills will enable the MHTF to contribute significantly to the global challenge of systematizing proven interventions to improve maternal health outcomes especially in high-burden settings. Among her studies, Austin has looked at maternal and child health trends in Egypt, analyzed global policy approaches to child nutrition, analyzed couple concordance on attitudes towards abortion and knowledge of abortion, and managed a unique CDC study on the prevention of malaria in pregnancy.
Christina Asquith, Senior Communications Manager
Christina Asquith joined the Women and Health Initiative in May 2013 as the Senior Communication Manager. For the past 4 years, she has been a founder and senior editor of Solutions Journal, an international academic journal, where she led coverage of global women’s issues. Prior to that, Christina worked as a reporter in Iraq and Afghanistan, writing an award-winning book about American efforts to spread women’s rights to the Middle East entitled “Sisters in War: A Story of Love, Family and Survival in the New Iraq”. In her 15 years experience as a journalist she has written hundreds of articles, published in The New York Times, The Economist, The Guardian and The Christian Science Monitor, and she has appeared as an expert on women’s rights in various media including NPR, ABC News, the BBC, PRI’s the World, and Al Jazeera. Christina began her career as a reporter for The Philadelphia Inquirer, where she covered education. She is also author of ”The Emergency Teacher”, the true story of an untrained teacher’s first year in a rough urban public school, based on her own experience as a new teacher in Philadelphia. Christina holds an MA in Philosophy and Public Policy from the London School of Economics, and a BA in Political Science from Boston University. She is fluent in Spanish.
Kate Bryant, Faculty Assistant
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Kate Bryant joined the Harvard School of Public Health in December 2012 as faculty assistant to Dr. Ana Langer. She provides administrative support to both Dr. Langer and the Women and Health Initiative. Most recently, she worked at the Center for Biomedical Innovation at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as Project Coordinator. She was involved primarily in event management and communications.
Ms. Bryant has been interested in women’s health since high school when she developed a passion for long distance running. Having completed a number of half and full marathons, she is particularly interested in female athletics, sports medicine, and nutrition. Ms. Bryant completed her BA at Wake Forest University in 2008.
Jacquelyn Caglia – Deputy Director of Administration & Operations
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Jacquelyn Caglia joined the Women and Health Initiative in August 2011 where she manages several projects and assists with overall coordination of the W&HI as the Deputy Director of Administration and Operations. Before joining the W&HI, Ms. Caglia was Program Director at World Connect, a non-profit organization dedicated to improving the health and wellbeing of women and children in low-resource settings. Prior to this, Ms. Caglia worked with the Institute for Community Health as a researcher investigating how race, ethnicity, language and culture affect health and the quality of healthcare services. She has worked with many organizations addressing women’s health to evaluate their health interventions and communicate about their work including the Massachusetts Alliance on Teen Pregnancy and Circle of Health International. Ms. Caglia has extensive experience in training development and grant writing and has held various positions focused on local and international health including work in survey administration with John Snow Incorporated and in community outreach and case study development with the Montgomery Country Health Department in Pennsylvania. Ms. Caglia served with the Peace Corps as a community health specialist in the Dominican Republic. Originally from Pennsylvania with roots in community organizing and service learning, Ms. Caglia holds a BA in Biology and Psychology and a MPH from Boston University. She is fluent in Spanish.
Elizabeth Claise, Project Coordinator
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Elizabeth Claise joined the Women and Health Initiative in November 2011 and is the project coordinator for the Maternal Health Task Force. Most recently, she worked at the Harvard Law School Library as an assistant to the acquisitions department for German and Spanish language materials, working specifically on the Nuremberg Trials Project. Ms. Claise began her career in social justice at age 16 when she traveled to rural Honduras with the Amigos de las Americas program. This experience opened her eyes to the developing world and led her back to Honduras and Latin America several times. She completed a three year intensive study on free trade agreements in Latin America and spent a summer in Mexico City interning with a non-profit organization focused on sweatshop workers rights. Ms. Claise also spent a semester in Ecuador completing an independent study project on low-income housing for single women residing in Loja. Ms. Claise completed her BA at Connecticut College, where she studied international relations with a focus on economic development.
Andrea Goetschius, Graphics and Content Producer
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Andrea Goetschius joined the Women and Health Initiative in May 2012 as graphics and content producer for the Maternal Health Task Force. Previously, she worked in communication for public health and educational organizations, including Ipas and the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health. Andrea completed her MA in interdisciplinary health communication at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where her research focused on the use of visual communications techniques to make reproductive health information more accessible for low-literacy audiences. Her case study on public relations strategies around football-related concussion won the grand prize in the 2011 Arthur W. Page Society case study competition. Andrea holds a BFA in graphic design from Alfred University and has more than 10 years experience as a designer for print and web.
Ana Langer, Director of the Maternal Health Task Force
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Ana Langer, M.D., recently joined the Harvard School of Public Health as the leader of the newly launched Women and Health flagship initiative. For the past five years, Dr. Langer served as the President of EngenderHealth, a leading international reproductive health organization working to improve the quality of health care in the world's poorest communities. Prior to joining EngenderHealth, Dr. Langer served as the Population Council's Regional Director for Latin America and the Caribbean, overseeing reproductive health, family planning, and HIV prevention programs and research in more than 10 countries. Prior to that, Dr. Langer was a special advisor to the Minister of Health in Mexico, and as Director of the Division of Research on Women and Children's Health for the Mexican National Institute of Public Health. Dr. Langer led efforts to advance policies aimed at reducing maternal mortality and disability. Dr. Langer has published in more than 30 peer-reviewed scientific journals, as well as in the popular press including the International Herald Tribune, Newsweek, and The Guardian. Dr. Langer sits on the World Health Organization's Advisory Committee on Health Research, and is the co-chair of the International Planned Parenthood Federation's International Medical Advisory Panel. Dr. Langer currently serves on several editorial boards, including The Lancet, the Bulletin of the World Health Organization, and the WHO Reproductive Health Library. Dr. Langer earned her medical degree from the National University of Buenos Aires, Argentina. She is board certified in pediatrics and neonatology. Originally from Argentina, she is fluent in Spanish, French, and English and is proficient in Portuguese.
Samantha Radcliffe Lattof, Senior Research and Evaluation Manager
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Samantha Radcliffe Lattof is the Senior Research and Evaluation Manager for the Maternal Health Task Force (MHTF) at Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH). She joined the Women and Health Initiative in December 2010 to provide project management and technical support and to help launch the MHTF at HSPH. Sam has had valuable work experience abroad while working for Columbia University and Harvard. She has collaborated with partners such Ghana Health Service, University of Ghana, International Service for Human Rights, and the U.S. Department of State to conduct research, launch projects, and author reports. Her work has primarily focused on advancing women’s sexual and reproductive health and rights as well as increasing access to education for women and girls. Sam began her career in public health while working for Washington University School of Medicine’s pediatric neurology department. She completed her MSc at HSPH in Global Health and Population (with an interdisciplinary concentration in Women, Gender, and Health) and her BA at Washington University in St. Louis, where she majored in Anthropology, International Studies, and Women & Gender Studies.
Kathleen McDonald, Project Manager
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Kathleen McDonald joined the Women and Health Initiative in March 2012 as the Project Manager for the Hansen Project on Maternal and Child Health. Ms. McDonald previously managed an obstetric hemorrhage clinical trial in the Copperbelt of Zambia for the Safe Motherhood Program at the University of California San Francisco Bixby Center for Global Reproductive Health. During her time in Zambia, she coordinated project operations and logistics in the Copperbelt Province, working closely with frontline health workers, district and provincial health officials, and hospital administrators. Prior to this, Ms. McDonald mentored young refugee women in Seattle through the International Rescue Committee. Ms. McDonald has a strong background in training and operations in the private sector and has held various global health positions, including survey design and administration in rural Kenya and monitoring and evaluating supply chain management of PMTCT drugs and testing kits in southern Zambia. She holds a MPH from Boston University, a Graduate Certificate in International Development from Johns Hopkins University SAIS, and a BA in Psychology from the University of Maryland.
Kate Mitchell, Manager of the Knowledge Management System
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Kate Mitchell joined the Maternal Health Task Force as the Managing Editor of the Knowledge Management System in January 2012. From 2010-2011, Kate served as a Clinton Fellow in Jharkhand, India where she helped to coordinate training for frontline health workers and community organizations. She also explored community perceptions of India's cash transfer program that aims to increase institutional deliveries—and shared photos and stories from the field on various global health blogs. Before heading to India, Kate worked on the first phase of the Maternal Health Task Force where she helped to launch the MHTF Knowledge Management System, facilitated online dialogue among global health practitioners around specific maternal health issues, and produced ongoing content for the MHTF Blog. Kate earned her MPH from Boston University. She completed her practicum in the Dominican Republic and Haiti where she produced a multimedia piece documenting the stories of Dominican and Haitian women who experienced life-threatening barriers to quality maternal health services. Kate holds a BA in International Relations, with a focus on Latin America and the Caribbean, from Florida International University. She is fluent in Spanish and a lover of yoga. Kate is fascinated by the intersection of public health and journalism--and is always on the lookout for new links between storytelling and community engagement and mobilization.
Mary Nell Wegner, Executive Director
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Mary Nell Wegner did her undergraduate work in cultural anthropology (BA, Yale) and graduate work in international education (EdM, Harvard) and public health (MPH, UCLA). She has spent the last 20 years working in international public health with a focus on gender, reproductive health, and maternity care. She has worked directly for donors (the Rockefeller Foundation, UNFPA, and the Empower Foundation) as well as community-based and nonprofit organizations at both the local and global levels (Jubilee Refugee Camp, The White Mountain Apache Tribal Health Authority, The Women's Dignity Project, Planned Parenthood of CT, Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains, The Margaret Sanger Center, and EngenderHealth). She has worked with teams to help strengthen reproductive health programming in a variety of contexts in Colombia,Ethiopia, India, Ghana, Hong Kong, Kenya, Mexico, Pakistan, South Africa, Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda, and the US. She has a special interest in work with adolescents. In the last ten years, Mary Nell has written and spoken on maternal health in low resource settings, including issues of quality of care in labor and delivery, obstetric fistula prevention and treatment, mens' roles in family planning, and reproductive health choices.
Tim Thomas, Senior Advisor
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Tim began his career at The Population Council in New York where he was the Special Assistant to the President, charged with cultivating and maintaining institutional relationships with government overseas development assistance agencies, as well as foundations, NGOs, multilateral institutions and UN agencies. He also served as the primary point of contact with the U.S. Government, managing the Council's multi-million dollar co-operative agreement with the U.S. Agency for International Development. In 2001, Tim joined the London-based communications agency InterScience as a senior consultant where he worked with a range of clients on their sexual and reproductive health programs. In 2005, Tim was appointed Executive Director of the Staying Alive Foundation at MTV Networks International based in New York. As a global grant-making and advocacy organization, the Foundation encouraged and enabled young people who are involved in HIV and AIDS awareness, education and prevention campaigns especially in developing countries. When MTV changed its philanthropic directions in late 2007, Tim returned to private consulting. He serves on the board of Artists Striving to End Poverty and is on the board of advisors of The Condom Project. He has traveled extensively in Africa, South Asia and Europe. He graduated with honors from the Interlochen Arts Academy; he holds a Bachelors of Arts degree from Iowa State University and a Masters of Fine Arts degree from New York University.
