Board of Directors

Aaron S. Allen is Director of the Environment and Sustainability Program and Associate Professor of Music at UNC Greensboro, where he also served as the institution’s first Academic Sustainability Coordinator. A fellow of the American Academy in Rome, he earned his PhD from Harvard in 2006 with a dissertation on the nineteenth-century Italian reception of Beethoven. He earned his BA in music and BS in environmental studies from Tulane University. Aaron’s research interests include campus sustainability, Beethoven reception, and ecomusicology. His co-edited collection (with Kevin Dawe), Current Directions in Ecomusicology (Routledge 2016), was awarded the 2018 Ellen Koskoff Edited Volume Prize by the Society for Ethnomusicology.

Rodrigo joined the Luis von Ahn Foundation as Global Director in September 2021. He has close to 20 years’ experience working in the field of social development both in Guatemala and the U.S.

Rodrigo holds an M.D. from Universidad de San Carlos de Guatemala and an M.B.A. from Universidad Complutense de Madrid, and he completed a fellowship in research at Harvard Medical School.

Rodrigo has close to 15 years’ experience serving on nonprofit boards. He has served on the boards of the Guatemalan National Cancer League, the Rotary Club Guatemala de la Ermita, WINGS Guatemala, Alas Guatemala, SERES Global, and the Antigua International School. His current board and advisory services include Population Connection in Washington D.C. and Fòs Feminista in New York.

He and his wife, Manola, are raising two feminist sons in Antigua, Guatemala.

Sachu has had a long career in clean energy and now leads Vote Solar, an advocacy organization working at the state level to make solar energy more accessible and affordable across the U.S. Sachu, who was on the Population Connection Board of Directors from 2000–2008, has worked for several nonprofits, including the Center for Sustainable Energy and the Alliance to Save Energy. He’s worked in government and the private sector as well, and has even taught math and science to elementary and high schoolers. Sachu received his Master’s in Public Policy from UC Berkeley.

Aaron’s banking career includes prior positions at Houlihan Lokey and Citi. He also served as CFO at the Lenox Hill Neighborhood House, a 130-year-old community-based social services organization located on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. Aaron’s government experience includes serving as Special Counsel at the White House during the Clinton administration, and as the Director of the Office of Credit and Investment at USAID, where he ran global credit programs supporting small and medium businesses as part of the U.S. government’s development assistance effort. Aaron holds an MBA from Columbia University and a JD from Georgetown University. He was born and raised in New York City, where he lives with his wife and twin daughters.

Amy Dickson is the Benefits Division Director of the Colorado Department of Health Care Policy & Financing, responsible for administering Colorado’s Medicaid program, the Child Health Plan Plus (CHP+), and related public health care programs. As the Benefits Division Director, Amy oversees several benefit programs, including physical, prescription drug, dental, transportation, and hospital programs, as well as benefits policy development.

Prior to joining the Colorado Department of Health Care Policy & Financing, Amy spent 20+ years in the sexual and reproductive health care field as COO/CFO of Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains, and the Chief of Staff at Essential Access Health. Her work included developing programs and initiatives that advocated and expanded access to equitable, high-quality sexual and reproductive health services, including abortion care.

Amy earned a Master of Public Health from the University of Arizona Zuckerman College of Public Health, and a BA in Anthropology from Fort Lewis College, in Durango, Colorado.

In his role at the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, Bruce Fallick leads the microeconomics group, which conducts research in various fields of microeconomics, including labor, education, public, and urban economics; oversees the regional analysis and outreach group; and provides advice on monetary policy. Dr. Fallick’s own work has focused on research related to labor and macroeconomics. His current research concentrates on job loss, unemployment, worker mobility, and wage rigidity.​​​

Prior to joining the Cleveland Reserve Bank in 2014, Dr. Fallick served as a Senior Economist in the Division of Research and Statistics at the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. He joined the Federal Reserve Board in 1993. Dr. Fallick also served as a Visiting Professor of Economics at Oberlin College and as an Assistant Professor of Economics at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).

Dr. Fallick holds a BA in Philosophy and Economics from the University of Pittsburgh and a PhD in Economics from the University of Pennsylvania.

Bryce is originally from Iowa and grew up in Colorado. After graduating from Colorado College in 1998, Bryce became a public high school science teacher and football coach in the Mississippi Delta with Teach For America in one of the poorest corners of the United States.

Bryce then completed the Coro Public Policy Fellows program in St. Louis, an intensive one-year fellowship in public policy leadership where you work in leadership roles in all sectors and then a Master’s of Science in public policy management from Carnegie Mellon University.

In 2004, Bryce moved back to Colorado, and took over the role as the Executive Director of a private foundation where he oversaw the transition from supporting local scholarships and outreach to science teachers in high school science education.  After this, Bryce took on the role of Executive Director of a multi-sector collaborative effort to reduce homelessness in Fort Collins, Colorado.

In 2013, Bryce and his family made an intentional move to Falmouth, Maine.  Bryce initially served as the Development Director of Maine Audubon and taught a graduate course in nonprofit and public management at the Muskie School, the University of Maine’s public policy school.  In 2018, Bryce and his wife started a business called Maine Food for Thought, an educational food tour based on locally and sustainably-sourced food, which had a great run until the COVID-19 pandemic made it impossible to run the business.

Bryce started at North Yarmouth Academy, in Yarmouth, Maine in 2020 as the biology and environmental science teacher.  Bryce is also a graduate and serves on the Board of Directors of the Maine Master Naturalist Program.

Mark J. Hathaway is Director of Family Planning Services at Unity Health Care, Inc. and Senior Technical Advisor for Reproductive Health at Jhpiego, an international NGO focusing on international maternal child health. A board-certified Ob/Gyn, Mark served on the National Family Planning & Reproductive Health Association (NFPRHA) board and the IOM Standing Committee on Family Planning. He is currently on the Clinician Leadership Council of Upstream USA and on the board of the Association of Reproductive Health Professionals (ARHP).

He holds appointments at Georgetown University and George Washington University Schools of Medicine. Mark’s MPH in Sexual Reproductive Health is from Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, his MD is from the University of Kentucky College of Medicine, and his BA in Biology is from the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota.

Dr. Gladys is the Founder and CEO of Conservation Through Public Health (CTPH), a Ugandan NGO that promotes biodiversity conservation by enabling people, gorillas, and other wildlife to coexist by improving their health and livelihoods in and around Africa’s protected areas.

Dr. Gladys has won innumerable awards for her work, including a United Nations Environment Programme’s Champion of the Earth for Science and Innovation (2021), and a Uganda Veterinary Association World Veterinary Day Award (2020). She was profiled in the BBC documentary, Gladys the African Vet; and has featured in documentaries on National Geographic, Animal Planet, MNet, and Uganda Television.

Dr. Gladys trained as a veterinarian at the University of London’s Royal Veterinary College. Between 1996 and 2000, she set up the first veterinary unit at the Uganda Wildlife Authority. From 2000 to 2003, she completed a zoological medicine residency and masters in specialized veterinary medicine at North Carolina State University and North Carolina Zoological Park.

Seema Mohapatra, a leading expert in health law and bioethics, is M.D. Anderson Professor in Health Law at SMU Dedman School of Law (Dallas, TX). She teaches Torts, Critical Race Theory, and Race, Health, and Justice.

Prior to joining SMU, Mohapatra was tenured at Indiana University law school, twice earning the Dean’s Fellow title and award for outstanding scholarship. Upon graduating law school, she practiced transactional health law and compliance at Sidley & Austin and Foley & Lardner.

Mohapatra researches health care equity, the intersection of biosciences and the law, assisted reproduction and surrogacy, reproductive justice, and public health law. Her research during the COVID-19 pandemic has focused on how public health laws and policies impact marginalized populations, particularly people of color. She is an international authority on assisted reproduction and surrogacy.

She has published in a range of top law reviews, including Emory Law Journal, University of Colorado Law Review, Harvard Law and Policy Review, and Yale Journal of Health Policy, Law, and Ethics, as well as peer reviewed journals, such as Hastings Center Report. Her co-edited books include Feminist Judgments: Health Law Rewritten (2022, Cambridge University Press), and Reproductive Technologies and the Law.

Mohapatra earned a J.D. degree from Northwestern University School of Law and has a master’s degree in Public Health with a concentration in Chronic Disease Epidemiology from Yale University. She earned her bachelor’s degree in Natural Sciences at Johns Hopkins University.

Melvine Ouyo is a health policy expert and reproductive rights activist. She holds a BS in Nursing from Great Lakes University of Kisu; a master’s degree in Public Health with a specialization in Population and Reproductive Health from Kenyatta University; and an MPA from Harvard Kennedy School of Government. She is the founder and Executive Director of Hope for Kenya Slum Adolescents Initiative (HKSAI).

Melvine previously worked with marginalized communities at Family Health Options Kenya (FHOK), a Member Association of IPPF. For the past few years, Melvine has consulted for Population Connection Action Fund and the #Fight4HER campaign, expanding its network with organizations in Kenya and greater East Africa. She recently became a member of Population Connection’s Board of Directors.

Bob grew up in Royal Oak, Michigan. He then went to Michigan State for eight years of undergraduate work where he received two Bachelor of Arts degrees: one majoring in humanities, and the other in religion. In 1967, he moved to Detroit to teach and where he has lived until today.

His subsequent degrees are in education; Master’s and EdD, from Wayne State University where he majored in General Secondary Education and Social Studies Education. His doctoral thesis was on teenage unwed mothers.

Dr. Pettapiece taught in Detroit Public Schools for 29 years (1967-1996) and part time in the College of Education for 15 years before becoming full time at Wayne State in 1996. His public school teaching experiences include social studies at the high school level, math in the middle and high school, and computing to children from kindergarten through adult.

At Wayne State he taught elementary social studies education methods courses, social studies master’s classes, and computer applications in teaching. In addition to his teaching, he was also the coordinator for both middle level education and social studies education.

Bob joined ZPG (the original Population Connection) somewhere in the 1970s and used its teaching materials extensively as they became available. In the past, he served on the board of directors for 9 years, and is currently on his second term, serving as the treasurer.

Heather L. Smith is a Foreign Service Officer specializing in Health, Population, and Nutrition programs at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).

Before joining USAID, Heather served as Deputy Country Coordinator (Kenya) and acting PEPFAR* Country Coordinator/Deputy Country Coordinator (Uganda) at the U.S. Embassies in Kenya and Uganda. In both roles, Heather provided HIV/AIDS program planning, coordination, and implementation for ~$500-$400m annual country budgets. She also worked as a grants officer at the U.S. Embassy in Windhoek, Namibia, and as a consultant/grants writer for the Catholic Relief Services in Guinea and West Africa. Prior to her work overseas, Heather worked in public policy on reproductive health, environmental, and state and local government finance issues. She was Director of National Advocacy Programs and Legislative Affairs Manager at Population Connection.

Heather holds a Doctor of Management (DMgt), MBA, and MS in Procurement and Contract Management (supply chain management) from the University of Maryland (UMD) University College. She also holds a BA in political science at University of California, Berkeley.

* U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for HIV/AIDS Relief

Eleanor has two decades of experience working in sexual and reproductive health and nonprofit leadership, and has spent most of her career at direct service health organizations, including Planned Parenthood of Illinois, the Charles River Community Health Center, Camino Seguro (Safe Passage), and WINGS, where she’s been for nearly eight years. She has worked in youth programming, patient counseling, and rights-based health care. Eleanor has lived in Guatemala for a decade and is a board member at the Guatemalan women’s health center Asociación Manos Abiertas, another of our Global Partners. She has a Master’s degree in Nonprofit Management from Northeastern University.

Mary Beth Weinberger worked for 25+ years as a demographer in the United Nations Population Division and was chief of the Population and Development Section when she retired. She received an MA in sociology, with specialization in population studies, from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor.

Kevin Whaley has worked for the last 30 years on the development of multipurpose prevention technologies (MPTs), i.e. products that simultaneously prevent sexually transmitted diseases and unwanted pregnancy. He co-founded Mapp Biopharmaceutical and ZabBio to develop antibody-based MPTs, therapeutics, and mucosal vaccines that are appropriate for large, cost-sensitive, global health markets, including Ebola and other re/emerging infectious diseases.