Home » Symposium » 2006 Symposium
Out of Africa: The Perils and Promises of the HIV/AIDS Pandemic
- Amanda Agaba Thompson
Ugandan AIDS Educator and Graduate Student, Salem State College School of Social Work -
Ms. Agaba Thompson has worked for a small non-governmental organization called Seeya Nursing Home in Kawempe, Uganda. She was involved in creating and providing culturally competent HIV/AIDS awareness education for the organization's service area. Presently, she is enrolled in the graduate degree program at Salem State College, School of Social Work.
Ms. Agaba Thompson has first-hand experience of this devastating disease having not only many relatives living with HIV/AIDS but also having lost many family members to it. Upon completion of her MA, Ms. Agaba Thompson intends to return to Africa to be a part of the struggle against HIV/AIDS. Motivated by her own professional experience and personal loss, she is particularly invested in providing HIV/AIDS prevention education for families in Sub-Saharan Africa.
- Edward M. Cardoza
Director of Development, Partners in Health -
Mr. Cardoza holds a MA and a BA from St. John's Seminary in Boston. He also attended the University of Lisbon where he studied Portuguese and worked with refugees from East Timor. While in the seminary, Mr. Cardoza served in the Office of AIDS Ministry and the chaplaincy office at MGH.
In 1998, Mr. Cardoza took his final leave from the seminary. He has served as a development researcher at Tufts University and Harvard Medical School among other organizations. In December 2002 he joined Partners in Health as director of development. He is currently fundraising for PIH programs in Boston, Haiti, Russia, Peru, Rwanda, Mexico, and Guatemala. In the spring of 2002, he completed a practicum in spiritual direction at the Center for Religious Development through the Weston Jesuit School of Theology in Cambridge.
Mr. Cardoza was born and raised in Boston. He currently resides in Cranston, RI. He serves as a spiritual director and is a retreat director for churches throughout the New England region. His focus is on spirituality and social justice.
- Pride M. Chigwedere, MD
Oak Foundation research fellow, Harvard AIDS Institute, Harvard School of Public Health -
Dr. Pride M. Chigwedere, from Zimbabwe, is an Oak Foundation Research Fellow and a Doctor of Science candidate in Immunology and Infectious Diseases at the Harvard School of Public Health. He was a founding member of the Africa Health Forum at the Harvard School of Public Health and served as its President for the 2003–04 academic year. Under the leadership of pioneer retrovirologist, Max Essex, D.V.M., PhD, Dr. Chigwedere is currently working on a team designing a subtype specific HIV vaccine for Southern Africa, and doing trials to optimize AIDS treatment regimens in Africa. He has published original research in peer review journals including the Journal of Virology, and Human Immunology, and he is a reviewer for the British Medical Journal.
Dr. Chigwedere graduated from the University of Zimbabwe Medical School with several subject and general prizes, worked as a Resident Medical Officer at Harare Central Hospital and the Parirenyatwa Group of Hospitals in Zimbabwe, before joining Harvard. He has also held a visiting fellowship to the McGill University AIDS Center and the Lady Davies Institute for Medical Research, Montreal, and has certifications from the Foundation for Advanced Education in the Sciences at the NIH and the Pennsylvania State University Biotechnology Program. He has been interviewed on CNN, has archived presentations on the WGBH Forum, served as a health columnist for the Daily Newspaper, Zimbabwe, and his opinions have appeared on HBO television.
- Jennifer Furin, MD PhD
Director for the Howard Hiatt Residency in Internal Medicine and Global Health Equity, Brigham and Women's Hospital -
Dr. Furin is an anthropologist and infectious diseases specialist with expertise in the treatment of HIV and MDR-TB in resource-poor settings.
An expert on the social roots of infectious diseases, she conducts training, consultation, and research on the application of qualitative and ethnographic methods to management of complex health interventions in resource-poor settings. Dr. Furin is responsible for the design and oversight of several ethnographic studies relating to systems and scale-up in community-based management of HIV and MDR-TB.
Dr. Furin received her PhD in Anthropology from the University of California and her MD from Harvard Medical School. She completed an Internal Medicine residency at the Brigham and Women's Hospital, followed by advanced training in Infectious Diseases at Case Western Reserve University. She divides her time equally between the Brigham and Women's Hospital and field sites in Peru, Haiti, and Russia.
- Nilgün Gökgür, MPA
Consultant and Associate, Boston Institute for Developing Economies -
Ms. Gökgür works on state-owned enterprise reforms, enterprise restructuring and corporate governance, privatization, private sector participation in infrastructure, and privatizing state-owned banks. She works closely with government officials, managers of state-owned industrial, infrastructure and financial enterprises, representatives of labor unions, business leaders, and academics while conducting field work. She has assessed the design, implementation, and economic and social impact of several privatization programs for equitable and sustainable outcomes in countries throughout the world on behalf of international organizations such as the World Bank, African Development Bank, Asian Development Bank, USAID, and others.
Besides privatization, she has also worked on private sector development, international trade, foreign direct investments, and domestic direct investment strategies, among other things.
Prior to joining BIDE, Ms. Gökgür worked as a Research Associate at the Harvard Business School and at the former Harvard Institute for International Development, Harvard University. She holds an MPA in development economics from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University, and MA and BA degrees in economics from the University of Basel, Switzerland. She is a dual citizen of Turkey and the United States. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
- Herma Williams, PhD
Associate Provost, Gordon College -
Dr. Williams is Associate Provost of Gordon College, a non-denominational Christian College in Wenham. She is the former Professor of Leadership, Administration and Human Development at George Mason University's Graduate School of Education. During calendar years 1996 and 1997 Dr. Williams held a Fulbright Fellowship as Director of CAPEX (Cape Program for Educational Excellence) Program in South Africa in which she worked collaboratively on school leadership, comparative education, and faculty development.
Having also served at Bryn Mawr and Ithaca Colleges, as well as Howard and Morgan State Universities, Dr. Williams also directed the inter-institutional Washington Metropolitan Area Teaching Portfolio Project. She received her PhD from Iowa State University.