About Us

LARA HALL, MD. Dr. Hall is an urgent care physician at Kaiser Permanente in Portland, Oregon and has worked in clinical medicine, public health, teaching, and global health for more than two decades, focusing on maternal and child health, HIV, tuberculosis, and malnutrition. In addition to her work as a physician in the United States, Lara has worked with Ministries of Health in Haiti, Madagascar and the Republic of Congo to strengthen public health systems at the hospital, health center and community levels. Most recently, she was the HIV-AIDS and Tuberculosis Program Director for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Haiti. Prior to her work in Haiti, she worked in rural Madagascar as the Medical Director of the health systems strengthening NGO Pivot, for whom she continues to provide clinical support and technical guidance as the Pivot Board Clinical Committee Chair.

ALEXIA HALEN. Alexia is a licensed clinical social worker with over 17 years of experience in non-profit development and consultation. She has worked in both international and local settings, including Tanzania and Nepal, where she was involved in economic development, healthcare, and education projects. Alexia has provided consultation to local nonprofits with a focus on youth mental health, environmental conservation, and human trafficking. She has also managed successful campaigns for former Portland City Commissioner Dan Saltzman and the Portland Children’s Levy. In her most recent role, Alexia served as the Director of Development for Marylhurst University.  

JAMES HUNTZICKER, Ph.D. Dr. Huntzicker is a professor at the Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU) in the Division of Management where he has held numerous leadership positions. He teaches in the areas of health systems and policy, leadership and management, and quality and patient safety. Jim has an active collaboration with colleagues in Africa to promote health system quality improvement, leadership development and scholarship.

LAUREN MUTRIE, MD, MsC. is an Associate Professor of Pediatrics and Co-Director of Doernbecher Medical-Legal Partnership in the Department of Pediatrics at Oregon Health and Science University. Dr. Mutrie obtained her medical degree from Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia and her Masters of Science in Control of Infectious Disease at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Her post-graduate research and clinical practice centered on maternal-child health in low-resource settings in Sub-Saharan Africa with further specialization in helminth infections, HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and malnutrition in Lesotho and Eswatini. With a background in global health and medical-legal partnership, her career has centered on strategies to achieve health equity, safety, and justice for children living in poverty. 

Dr. Mutrie currently works as a pediatric hospitalist with a focus on clinical medicine, teaching in community and academic forums, interdisciplinary collaboration in healthcare systems, and health justice. Dr. Mutrie has expertise in equity-centered program and curricula development with emphasis on interdisciplinary, experiential learning, transformation of clinical care practices, and translation of knowledge into policies that promote health. She is involved with the education of care teams, students, and communities about the social and legal determinants of health, disparities, inequities, and why these phenomena exist. In partnership with other professions, Dr. Mutrie is committed to providing impactful medical and legal care to improve health and health equity for children and families worldwide.

RAHEL NARDOS, MD, MCR. Dr. Nardos is a urogynecologist with a career-long passion for global health. She began by serving for a year as a staff surgeon at the Hamlin Fistula Hospital, treating women in Ethiopia suffering from obstetrical fistulas and other pelvic floor conditions. Dr. Nardos went on to found Footsteps to Healing, a global women’s health initiative focused on providing surgical and medical services to rural Ethiopian women with pelvic organ prolapse and incontinence. This project has evolved into supporting healthcare capacity-building initiatives involving multidisciplinary teams from academic, NGO and community partners in Ethiopia and the U.S. She helped to establish the first formal fellowship program in Ethiopia to comprehensively train Ethiopian doctors to perform advanced pelvic surgery.

Rahel is currently an Associate Professor at the University of Minnesota in the Division of Female Pelvic Medicine and Reconstructive Surgery, and is the Director of Global Woman’s Health within the Center for Global Health and Social Responsibility. She served for years on the board of the Worldwide Fistula Fund, and has served as the Chair of Global Health Interest Group at the American Urogynecologic Society. Her scholarly work includes women’s health research projects in Ethiopia, Uganda, and the U.S.

AMELITA (AMI) PASCUAL is the Regional Director of Philanthropy at Mercy Housing California, an affordable housing developer.

She previously served as Chief Operating Officer and Management Services Officer III at the University of California–San Francisco’s Department of Cellular and Molecular Pharmacology where she oversaw facilities expansion, budget analysis, grants management and faculty recruitment for 14 principal investigators and 160 postdoctoral students.

Ami was the Founding Executive Director of the South of Market (SoMa) Foundation in San Francisco, an economic development nonprofit offering working capital and a space locator service for small businesses displaced by rising rents. She operated a sidewalk steam cleaning and mural production social enterprise, SoMa Steam Clean, which employed formerly homeless youth and adults.

DAVID SCHMIDT, MD, Ph.D.  Dr. Schmidt is a pulmonary and critical care medicine physician who held leadership positions in intensive care medicine and in medical education at Kaiser Permanente prior to his retirement. He has a long personal interest in global health, and has participated in medical care and research in Thailand, Tanzania, Uganda, and Ethiopia. Dave and his team of nurses and physicians collaborated with partners at an ICU in Northern Ethiopia to improve the quality of care with an emphasis on nurse training.  Currently this team is developing and delivering comprehensive curriculum for training African nurses in critical care, and is helping to start up critical care services at a hospital in Rwanda.

ELLEN SINGER, MD. Dr. Singer works as a physician development coach at at Legacy Health and provides care for both adults and children at Kaiser Permanente in Portland, Oregon. Ellen cares deeply about the well-being of her patients, her colleagues and her community — with special concern for the marginalized. She has held numerous leadership positions at Kaiser and in community organizations, including Director for Graduate and Undergraduate Medical Education at Kaiser and the Medical Director of the Foundation for Medical Excellence.