The Minga Foundation is an all-volunteer organization. We work and live all over the world and have backgrounds ranging from public health to finance. Nevertheless, our number one passion is the same: improving the health and well-being of underserved communities. As a family and team, we have dedicated our time to this organization and the people it serves. We thank you for your support and generosity.

Brian Burke

President

Brian has found his passion working with grassroots development, environmental, and health projects around the world. He has worked with environmental health projects in Nogales, Mexico; farming cooperatives and fair trade programs in Colombia, Brazil, and Paraguay; ecovillages, alternative currencies, and barter systems in Colombia; and environmental movements in southern Appalachia. He is a socio-cultural anthropologist and a professor of sustainable development at Appalachian State University, where his students and colleagues study the theory and practice of community-based and genuinely sustainable development. Brian earned his Ph.D. in Anthropology at the University of Arizona in 2012.

Jessica Nadolski

Vice President

Jessica joined Minga in 2011 and has over 15 years experience in finance, planning, and analysis in multiple industries, including large corporations, financial institutions, and most recently healthcare.

Jessica earned her International MBA in 2011 from IE Business School in Madrid, Spain and holds a B.S. in Public Financial Management from Indiana University. During her MBA, Jessica spent several months living in South Africa working with nonprofit organizations. Jessica lives in the Indianapolis area and currently works in Finance within the healthcare industry.

Karin Friederic

Secretary, Co-Founder

Karin has a long history of working at our first project site in Ecuador, and now visits at least once a year (with multiple Ecuadorian godchildren to show for it!). In 2011, Karin received her Ph.D. in Medical Anthropology from the University of Arizona and is now an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Wake Forest University in North Carolina. A cultural anthropologist, Karin specializes in global health, human rights, development, gender, violence, and inequality. Her most recent research examines how ideas about human rights are changing both women and men’s experiences of and responses to intimate partner violence in rural Ecuador.

Julie Titus

Treasurer

Julie joined the board in 2010, but first became involved with our work as a volunteer in El Páramo in 2002, while working on education projects with community health promoters and women’s groups. She graduated from Macalester College in St. Paul, MN in 2000 with a degree in Women and Gender Studies. Julie lives in Forest Grove, OR with her husband and dogs, and does fundraising and volunteer coordination for a non-profit community health center.

Rebecca Andruszka

Project Development Officer

Rebecca joined Minga in 2017. She is a non-profit professional who has spent more than a decade focused on community solutions to poverty. She has extensive experience in the non-profit sector, doing everything from research and communications, to fundraising and project development. Rebecca received her BA from New School for Social Research and her MA from Hunter College. Both of her degrees examined the intersection of artistic expression and progressive politics.

Dan Kselman

Board Member

Dan has been a part of Minga since 2007. He earned his Masters in Economics and his Ph.D. in Political Science from Duke University in 2009, where he also participated in and led a variety of community organizing activities. Dan is currently the Academic Director at the IE School of International Relations in Madrid, where he teaches courses in Political Science, International Relations, and Game Theory, and continues to conduct and publish research on contemporary democracy and economic development.

Jessica Levy

Board Member, Co-Founder

In 2002, Jessica was the first gender health outreach coordinator at our project site in El Paramo, Ecuador. In years since, she has expanded her work with women to other regions of the world, continuing to focus on issues related to gender equality and women’s reproductive health. In 2013, Jessica received her PhD from the University of North Carolina, School of Public Health, in the department of Maternal and Child Health. Currently, she is a Senior Lecturer at Washington University’s Brown School of Social Work in St. Louis and is the Senior Reproductive Health Associate for Iris Group, a consulting firm focused on gender equality and social inclusion. She loves applying the lessons she learns in the field to her classroom and vice versa!

Erin Lund

Board Member

Erin has worked with our organization since 2003, when she received a Fulbright scholarship to serve as the doctor and women’s health outreach coordinator at our project site in Ecuador. She earned her M.D. from Harvard University Medical School in 2005 and an MPH at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. Erin lives in Northern California and works at a federally qualified health center, where she provides family medicine and obstetrical care to underserved populations and teaches family medicine residents.

Maia Monell

Board Member

Maia joined Minga in 2015 after serving as a volunteer. With a BA in English and Anthropology from Wake Forest University and a MS in Marketing Strategy & Innovation from Cass Business School in London, she pursues a career in market research and strategy. Maia leverages her skills in marketing and communications to pursue her passion for supporting sustainable projects, dedicated to the protection and promotion of human rights.

John Ben Soileau

Carrazedo Partnership Coordinator

John-Ben is completing a doctorate in cultural anthropology from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He also holds an MA in Latin American Studies from Tulane University in his hometown of New Orleans. He has been conducting ethnographic research with peasant communities in the Brazilian Amazon since 2012. He joined Minga in 2015 as coordinator for the Carrazedo project, in which he organized the implementation of a water distribution network and led a re-forestry initiative. His academic research examines environmental value, territorial politics and the broader nature/society nexus. John-Ben is passionate about grassroots projects for community empowerment and sustainable livelihoods. He also loves cooking and climbing trees.

Eleni Angelides

Board Member

Eleni has always had a passion for education, criminal justice, and global health security. Eleni’s interests became more focused on education and the intersection of access and equity in college, I increasingly saw education and health through a policy and population level lens. Eleni’s academic work and work experiences taught her that health and education are impacted by a spectrum of factors, and she has come to realize that the population level perspective is just one side of the coin. Global health policy can impact the systems that affect the health of populations, but it is through medicine, education, and interaction with people on the ground that health interventions can directly improve a community. A native Texan, Eleni received her BA from Wake Forest University in Sociology and Politics and International Affairs which led her to Capitol Hill in D.C. where she worked for Congressman Mike Quigley. She now continues her passion for access to education in Denver, working for Guild Education, a start up that works at the intersection of companies and academic organizations to provide education benefits to an ever-growing number of working adults.

Megan Snair

Board Member

Megan Snair, M.P.H., is the Program Manager for a newly established Center for Populations Health Research at the Cleveland Clinic. Previously she worked in Washington, DC as a senior program officer with the Board on Global Health at the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. She directed the consensus studies on Global Health and the Future of the United States and Improving the Quality of Health Care Globally, planning multiple international meetings and site visits. Previously with the Board on Health Sciences Policy, she was part of the Global Health Risk Framework team at the National Academies and led the planning of multiple workshops related to the 2014 Ebola outbreak, examining both international and domestic impacts. Her portfolio consisted primarily of projects related to medical and public health preparedness, global health security, and community and health system resilience. Ms. Snair received her Master’s in Public Health from Boston University concentrating in Epidemiology, and holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Biophysics from St. Lawrence University in New York.

Rhianon Liu

Board Member

Rhianon Liu, M.D., joined the Minga board in 2018. She received her B. A. in Human Biology and M.A. in African Studies from Stanford University, followed by a M.D. at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, and is currently completing her family medicine residency in Santa Rosa, California. She has done global health and community development work in Zambia, South Africa, and Nepal, as well as research examining the relationships between child health and governance in conflict zones. Her other professional interests include refugee health, integrative medicine for the underserved, and medical education. She enjoys soccer, skiing, yoga, and exploring beautiful Northern California.

Jennifer Tucker

Board Member

Jennifer is currently in the process of becoming a “médico de ciencia y conciencia” (“doctor of science and conscious”) at the Latin American School of Medicine in Cuba. She looks forward to practicing community-based medicine, and she has demonstrated this passion throughout years of service to her own community in Northwest Indiana with her most recent service experience involving community and volunteer organizing through her local AmeriCorps program at the United Way of Porter County. With a foundational dedication to improve the health and social conditions of underserved and under-resourced communities both in the United States and abroad, Jennifer seeks to engage in and support community-level, sustainable projects that empower communities around the world to take charge of and maintain agency concerning their individual and population-wide health outcomes. In 2013, Jennifer received her B.A. in Biology from Washington University in St. Louis with minors in Spanish and Public Health.

Caitlin Murphy

Volunteer

Caitlin graduated from the University of Dundee in 2013 with an MA (Hons) in Politics and International Relations. After university, she worked within marketing and fundraising in the non-profit sector before pursuing a career in digital design. Caitlin has since gained a CPD accredited diploma in Digital Marketing and runs her own web and graphic design business in Broughty Ferry, Scotland.