Pam Laird (Board Chair)
(im)patient. creative. Prior to onset, she earned her BS in Journalism and MBA from Northwestern University, won a San Francisco Woman Entrepreneur Award. Post onset, she got her MFA in Creative Writing at San Francisco State University. Her thesis, Looking for Pam, observes the process of re-making a meaningful life with a chronic, invisible, misunderstood, and maligned illness. She served on the Solve ME/CFS Initiative Board of Directors in 2013 & 2014.
Jennifer Brea (co-founder)
filmmaker, academic and community organizer. She earned her bachelor’s in political science from Princeton University and is a Ph.D candidate at Harvard in political science and statistics. In addition, she is directing a Sundance-supported documentary on ME, Unrest.
@jenbrea
Beth Mazur (co-founder)
Person with ME and science nerd. Beth earned her Bachelor’s in Computer Science and Electrical Engineering from MIT. She is interested in how to best use technology to empower ME patients and achieve health equality. She worked as a developer and technical product manager for various for-profit and non-profit technology companies including the Grameen Foundation and Jaspersoft.
Ryan Prior
is a multimedia journalist and social entrepreneur. He was the founder and editor-in-chief of the Georgia Political Review and went on to write for The Daily Beast and USA Today. Currently working at CNN, he was selected as a Stanford Medicine X ePatient Scholar and was recognized as ProHealth’s 2014 ME/CFS Advocate of the Year. He is president of the Blue Ribbon Foundation and serves on the Board of Directors for #ME Action Network. He is a graduate of the University of Georgia. @r_prior