About #MEACTION
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BOARD & ADVISORS
Beth Mazur
Board co-Chair
Beth is a technologist with extensive experience working to grow startup companies and non-profit organizations. She is interested in how to best use technology to empower people with ME and achieve health equality. Before developing ME and POTS, Beth worked as a developer and technical product manager for a wide range of organizations including HealClick, Grameen Foundation, and Jaspersoft. She was a member of the Voting Systems Task Force for the city of San Francisco which advised the city in the selection and development of a secure, transparent voting system. Beth co-founded #MEAction and earned her Bachelor’s in Computer Science and Electrical Engineering from MIT. @rndNumGen
Jennifer Brea
Jennifer Brea is an independent filmmaker based in Los Angeles. She has an AB from Princeton University and was a PhD student at Harvard until sudden illness left her bedridden. In the aftermath, she rediscovered her first love, film. Her Sundance award-winning, Emmy-nominated feature documentary, Unrest, has screened in over 30 countries and had its US national broadcast on PBS’s Independent Lens. She is also co-creator of Unrest VR, winner of the Sheffield Doc/Fest Alternate Realities Award. An activist for people with disabilities and chronic illness, she is a co-founder of #MEAction and served as Executive Director until 2021.
Jennifer England
Jennifer is Senior Director of Partnerships at Food Rescue Hero, a tech for good nonprofit that supports food recovery organizations across North America. Food Rescue Hero is the fastest growing food rescue network in the world. Her work at FRH grew out of the successful startup 412 Food Rescue, based in Pittsburgh, PA. Before her work in food recovery she ran Pink Coat Communications, a media consultancy working with advocacy groups, unions, and nonprofits helping them tell their stories to the media on a local and national stage. Jennifer has also dedicated herself to justice and the community through board service for a number of amazing organizations, including the League of Young Voters, Best Buddies Foundation, Grow Pittsburgh, New Leaders Council, Pittsburgh Food Policy Council and several board committees for the Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank. She also co-founded the project On the Spot to supply feminine hygiene products for girls in local schools who struggle to meet this need.
Jill Hinson
Board co-chair
Jill is an international business leader with twenty years combined experience in organization change, leadership development, and marketing. She is a founding member of ChangeFusion and supports a diverse range of clients to accelerate change, develop leaders, and build organizational effectiveness.
Jill holds master’s degree in Organization Development from American University/NTL and an undergraduate bachelor of business/marketing degree from James Madison University. Jill is the co-author of the article, “Leading in Complex Times” in the Practicing Social Change Journal and the book chapter, “Tapping the Power of Emergent Change” in The NTL Handbook of Organization Development and Change. She serves on the Board of Directors for #MEAction and NTL.
Judy Gayer
Secretary
Judy is Vice President and Deputy General Counsel – General Corporate at Freddie Mac, where she leads a team that handles commercial transactions, intellectual property, privacy, data security, real estate and other general corporate matters. Judy holds a B.A. in Economics from the University of Michigan and a J.D. degree from the Harvard Law School. She is a past President of Fairfax Court Appointed Special Advocates (Fairfax CASA), a nonprofit that serves the best interests of abused and neglected children in Fairfax County, Virginia. She also provides pro bono legal assistance and otherwise volunteers with various nonprofit organizations in her area.
Kehsi Iman Wilson
Kehsi Iman Wilson is the Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer of New Disabled South and New Disabled South Rising (C4), the nation’s first regional disability justice organization. Kehsi Iman brings over a decade of experience building and scaling mission driven orgs. She started her first company, Ntoso Nexus, a non-profit created to connect minorities pursuing post-secondary educational opportunities to mentors, in 2009. She had a first career working at the intersection of social justice, educational equity and access at a range of colleges and universities for almost a decade. She left higher ed in 2016 after starting the Office of Inclusion Initiatives and Cultural Competence (now the Student Center for Social Justice and Identity) at Vanderbilt University. An evangelist for remote work due to its impact on accessibility and equity since the early 2000s, she shifted her focus to business operations and strategy for fully remote orgs and runs a consulting company (kehsiiman.com) where she helps individuals and organizations define and align their operations and values and helps orgs build equity-centered HR policy. She has a Bachelor of Science in Communications from the University of Florida, a Masters of Education from the University of South Florida, a certificate to Teach English as a Foreign Language from International TEFL Academy, and is a certified Professional of Human Resources
Kehsi Iman began her health journey in earnest in 2012 after living with formally undiagnosed ME/CFS for many years. She lives in Tampa, Florida with her husband and 4-year old son.
Michelle Pinedo
Treasurer
Michelle Pinedo is chief financial officer with AFS-USA, an organization that delivers meaningful intercultural experiences that empowers people to become globally engaged citizens. In this capacity, she is responsible for ensuring that all the support functions – Finance, IT, Human Resources, Logistics, and Operations – are performing at peak level.
Michelle has over 20 years of senior-level experience in leading non-profit organizations to new degrees of efficiency and impact. Before joining AFS-USA Michelle worked at Episcopal Relief & Development, a global relief organization that works with Anglican and ecumenical partners around the world to find solutions to hunger, poverty, disaster and disease in collaboration with local communities as their vice president, administration & finance. During her tenure, she led a web transformation project, implemented a performance management strategy that furthered professional development amongst staff, and optimized organizational cash flow and forecasting.
Prior to her work with Episcopal Relief & Development Michelle held the most senior finance position with Amref Health Africa, a Nairobi, Kenya based organization that provides health services and health worker training to over 30 African countries. As director of finance and administration, Michelle managed the financial and operational aspects of the organization.
A proud graduate of the City University of New York, she holds a BA in business from the CUNY School of Professional Studies and an AAS in accounting from Borough of Manhattan Community College, where she was named a BMCC Scholar. She resides in Harlem and has 3 sons.
Niranjan Shekar
Niranjan Shekar has worked at the intersection of science, products and business for over two decades. His background is in genetics and making the most of science through the process of commercializing discoveries. He has worked in Australia, the United Kingdom, Singapore and the United States. Currently, he works at Invitae, a genetic testing company; his focus is on insurance coverage of rare diseases. He has previously worked at Spiral Genetics, a Y Combinator company as the lead product manager and later, as CEO. He spends some of his time coaching leaders in the carbon capture space. The rest, he spends with his wife. He is committed to making a difference in the field of disease – to ensure that everyone has an equal chance at a full life of their own. LinkedIn.
Robert M. Sklans
Rob Sklans is a senior Human Resources executive with an extensive track record of transforming and building HR functions globally. A trusted adviser and coach to executive teams and boards of global companies, he has also served as an HR leader for multiple internal start-ups.
Currently a Principal Consultant with Enspira LLC, Rob provides consulting services for start-up through mid-sized companies in the biotech, consumer products, pharmaceuticals and technology industries.
Before, as Chief HR Officer at Innophos, Rob created and launched a 4-year global HR strategy to help it grow into a $1.25Bn company by 2022. Previously, as CHRO at Elementis, he led the global HR function and served as a Supervisory Board Member for Elementis Specialties, Netherlands BV. Before joining Elementis, Rob served in a variety of leadership roles for Royal DSM North America, Evonik Industries and Johnson & Johnson.
He earned an MA in Organizational Psychology from Columbia University and a BA in Psychology from Connecticut College. Rob has two family members who have been impacted by the disease and he serves as a strong ally and advocate for proper recognition and medical care for patients globally.
Ryan Prior
Ryan is a multimedia journalist and social entrepreneur. He fell ill with ME/CFS in 2007, at age 17. After graduating from college, he founded the Blue Ribbon Foundation to raise awareness about ME/CFS and built a team, setting off on a journey across the US as co-director, producer, and writer of the feature-length documentary film “Forgotten Plague.” During the film’s production, he was recognized as ProHealth’s 2014 ME/CFS Advocate of the Year. The film was released in 2015, and is available on Amazon Prime, iTunes, and Google Play. Since 2015, he has been working as a writer and producer for CNN, covering hundreds of stories ranging from the 2016 election to cutting-edge medical innovation. In 2019, he reported and wrote the CNN story with the highest overall reader engagement across the entire outlet. He has also written for USA Today and the Daily Beast, and is a five-time Stanford Medicine X ePatient Scholar. He is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the University of Georgia, and was named to the school’s 40 Under 40 list in 2018. @r_prior
Shaquile Coonce
Shaquile is a nonprofit expert with almost ten years of consulting experience working with over 150 organizations on strategic and business planning, merger negotiations, organizational culture, and executive search, executive coaching, leadership structure, team building, and change management. Shaquile is currently a consultant at DRG and Chief Financial and Operations Officer at the start-up, Euforeia Golf.
Shaquile experienced the sudden onset of ME in 2017 but was fortunate to be diagnosed within eight months of falling ill. The challenges she experienced during her first four years of having ME and the incredible resources she found through #MEAction as well as the millions being diagnosed with Long COVID spurred her to join #MEAction.
Shaquile holds a B.A. in Psychology from Purdue University and resides in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.