Staff
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Renée Boynton-Jarrett, MD, ScD Founding Director
Renée Boynton-Jarrett, MD, ScD Founding Director
Renée Boynton-Jarrett is a practicing primary care pediatrician at Boston Medical Center, a social epidemiologist and the founding director of the Vital Village Community Engagement Network. Through the Vital Village Network, she is supporting the development of community-based strategies to promote child well-being in three Boston neighborhoods. She joined the faculty at Boston University School of Medicine in 2007 and is currently an Associate Professor of Pediatrics. She received her AB from Princeton University, her MD from Yale School of Medicine, ScD in Social Epidemiology from Harvard School of Public Health, and completed residency in Pediatrics at Johns Hopkins Hospital. Her work focuses on the role of early-life adversities as life course social determinants of health. She has a specific interest in the intersection of community violence, intimate partner violence, and child abuse and neglect and neighborhood characteristics that influence these patterns.
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Erica Pike, MS Communications and Policy Manager
Erica Pike, MS Communications and Policy Manager
Erica Pike believes that through listening and leveraging the strengths of individuals and communities, we can achieve positive health, education, and economic outcomes together. Her experience in public health has always been in partnership with community members, valuing both grassroots driven change & systems-level change. She now serves as the Communications & Policy Manager for the Vital Village Network at Boston Medical Center. With a Masters in Applied Nutrition from Northeastern University, Erica envisions a just, equitable future that ensures the best outcomes for all children and families.
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Yusuf Ali Network Coordinator
Yusuf Ali Network Coordinator
Yusuf Ali grew up and has worked professionally in the communities of Dorchester, Roxbury and Mattapan over the last 8 years. Yusuf graduated with a Bachelor’s of Science in Business Administration from Florida A& M University in 2008. Yusuf is passionate about holistic healthy lifestyles and has focused his work towards empowering and providing families & individuals with resources in the areas of access to wealth, food access, and civic engagement.
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Desiree Hartman Community Partnerships Program Coordinator
Desiree Hartman Community Partnerships Program Coordinator
Desiree (Desi) Hartman grew up in Minnesota and graduated from Colorado College in 2016 with a B.A. in Psychology and a minor in Global Health. During college, Hartman conducted field research on infant attachment in multiple caregiver settings and cultivated a GlobeMed partnership with the Western Organization for People Living with HIV/AIDS (WOPLAH) in Kenya. Desi is passionate about early childhood development, Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs), child rights, maternal child health, migration and working with local leaders in the pursuit of justice, dignity, and health equity for all children and families.
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Ronda Alexander, MA Director of Operations - Project NOW
Ronda Alexander, MA Director of Operations - Project NOW
Ronda Alexander is a native Detroiter dedicated to working with communities to reach their desired goals by aligning and leveraging their resources. Ronda joins us from the United Way for Southeastern Michigan where she served as the Director of Corporate and Community Alignment on the organization’s College and Career Pathways team. In her role at United Way Ronda worked to help external corporate partners find meaningful ways to engage with both students and educators; as well as worked across teams within the organization to align and leverage resources. Prior to joining United Way Ronda worked on the premier education initiative of Ford Motor Company Fund – Ford Next Generation (Ford NGL) for nine years. While at Ford Fund Ronda served a variety of roles including Professional Development/Technical Assistance Specialist and Program Manager for STEM initiatives. In all of her roles with Ford Fund Ronda worked with and supported multiple communities across the country as they worked to transform their communities through education.
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Diana Austria Rivera, MSW, MPH Program Manager - Project NOW
Diana Austria Rivera, MSW, MPH Program Manager - Project NOW
As a public health social worker, Diana is committed to advancing racial, economic, and health equity ensuring that our most vulnerable communities thrive in healthy communities of opportunity and are at the forefront driving policy and systems-level change. Born in the Philippines and raised in Houston, Texas, she graduated with a BA in Human Biology from Stanford University in 2008 and a dual Masters in Social Welfare and Public Health from University of California, Berkeley in 2015. Prior to joining the Vital Village team, she engaged in research, capacity building, and policy advocacy to build equitable food systems and inclusive health workforce policies at PolicyLink. Diana also brings experience in school-based health research, health career pathway programs, youth leadership development, community engagement, and immigrant health.
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Soojin Conover, PhD Senior Research Analyst
Soojin Conover, PhD Senior Research Analyst
Soojin is a public health professional who is passionate about advancing equitable health policy, addressing health inequities, and promoting data capacity building. Her expertise includes environmental health and health service research incorporating spatial information to provide evidence-based policy implications. Soojin previously worked as a Summer Research Associate at RAND Corporation and, prior to that, as an intern at UNESCO in Paris, France. Soojin earned her PhD in Public Policy and Political Economy from the University of Texas at Dallas and a Master’s degree in International Educational Development from Boston University.
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Tiffany Rodriguez, MPH Program Coordinator - Project NOW
Tiffany Rodriguez, MPH Program Coordinator - Project NOW
Tiffany Rodriguez (she/ella) joined the Vital Village family in 2019 and is currently the Program Coordinator for the Vital Village Network's national initative -- Networks of Opportunity for Child Wellbeing. She is a recent graduate from the Masters in Public Health program at Boston University. Tiffany is a fierce advocate for Latinx communities, immigrant rights and food justice.
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Clare Viglione, MPH, RDN Research Coordinator - CK Ready Study
Clare Viglione, MPH, RDN Research Coordinator - CK Ready Study
Clare graduated from Columbia University in 2013 with an MPH. At Columbia, Clare worked in the Population and Family Health Department on the Getting Ready for School project and on SKIP!, the toddler physical activity intervention in Early Head Start. Clare has also held research positions with Harvard Prevention Research Center and New York University in addition to health education roles with Harlem Children’s Zone and the Department of Health. Clare also recently completed a Dietetic Internship at Brigham and Women's Hospital to become a Registered Dietitian Nutritionist (RDN). Clare ultimately plans to pursue a PhD to develop cost-effective familial interventions targeting social-emotional development and childhood obesity.
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Marisol De Ornelas, MSPH Research Associate - CK Ready Study
Marisol De Ornelas, MSPH Research Associate - CK Ready Study
Marisol De Ornelas has a Master of Science in Public Health at Boston University School of Public Health. Marisol’s passion for public health began while growing up in her home country, Venezuela, and experiencing first hand the devastating consequences of health inequity. She is passionate about the development, evaluation, and dissemination of public health interventions that focus on early childhood development and education. More broadly, her public health interests include environmental justice, translational research, public policy, Latinx communities, nutrition, and child and maternal health.
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Hassan Lubega Research Assistant - CK Ready Study
Hassan Lubega Research Assistant - CK Ready Study
Hassan Lubega graduated from Boston University in 2020 with a bachelor's in science in Behavior & Health from the Sargent College of Health Sciences and Rehabilitation. He particulary focused his studies on minority health disparities, and he values the importance of bringing an intersectional lens to healthcare. After working on the CK-Ready Team as a research intern, he joined the permanent staff and is excited to have the opportunity to continue to work with the study.
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Cathy Luo Community Mobilization Coordinator VISTA
Cathy Luo Community Mobilization Coordinator VISTA
Cathy Luo is passionate about improving healthcare equity through community empowerment. She is a recent graduate from Northeastern University with a B.S. and M.S. in Bioengineering and minor in art. Throughout her time in Boston, Cathy’s involvement with the Samaritans crisis helpline and Boston Healthcare for the Homeless Program motivated her to continue seeking opportunities to engage communities in health education and equip community members with tools to strengthen and support one another. She looks forward to applying her experiences in public health and advocacy to continue working with and learning from communities to enact positive and sustainable change.
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Lucas Sensius, MPH Community Mobilization Coordinator VISTA
Lucas Sensius, MPH Community Mobilization Coordinator VISTA
Lucas Sensius recently relocated to the Boston area after graduating from Kent State University with a B.S. in Global Health and an MPH concentrating in Epidemiology. During undergraduate, Lucas worked in refugee resettlement in his hometown through the International Institute of Akron and interned at the Federation of International Civil Servants’ Associations protecting the rights of international civil servants at United Nations Office Geneva, Switzerland. In graduate school, he worked at Kent State University to address gaps in student access to basic needs like food and housing. These experiences cultivated an interest in reducing health disparities, which drew him to the AmeriCorps program and Vital Village. Lucas strongly believes that early childhood wellbeing is the backbone of a healthy community, he looks forward to promoting child health and wellbeing with Vital Village and its partners during his VISTA year.
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Hailun Wang, MS, MPH Data Analyst
Hailun Wang, MS, MPH Data Analyst
Hailun Wang is a Master of Public Health candidate with a focus on Community Assessment, Program Design, Implementation, and Evaluation, at Boston University. She has diverse experiences in integrating Geographic Information System (GIS) into program design and evaluation, such as urban planning, disaster response, and health education. She is passionate about helping people live a healthier life by implementing health programs in less privileged communities. With this goal and the strengths and skillsets that she has obtained from her previous experiences, she is committed to increasing access to healthcare in under-resourced settings through community empowerment and mobilization.
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