I am also a new member of Planned Parenthood's Activist Council and hope to volunteer for the Sex Ed Advocacy Group and the Political Action Group. I am extremely grateful to the Brush Foundation for helping me pursue my passion for working in the reproductive health field.

Most recently I have worked in major gifts fundraising at the Harvard Kennedy School, developing partnerships and strategy for the school's international development and international and global affairs programs. Prior to that I worked with Ashoka, an international non-profit that identifies and invests in leading social entrepreneurs, where I supported the organization's work in Africa and Central Europe. As an undergraduate I spent several months in Africa researching social movements and sexual health issues, and upon return founded an internship program that places college students with community-based organizations in Uganda.

This transition into the Research department at Guttmacher has been a wonderful move for me and has allowed me to directly apply many of the skills that I developed during my time at Columbia.

I just got back from a summer practicum in South Africa working on early childhood development in a township in the Free State. It was an incredible experience and I hope to return in the near future.

My internship will run until end of December and I will return to Columbia in January for my last semester. I plan to continue to support the Specialized Service for Adolescents and Young people here in the Amazon through providing technical assistance to further strength the group and to build the capacity of young people living with HIV/Aids to improve health services at the local and state level.

I am very grateful to the Brush Foundation for its support in helping me pursue a MPH. Without their support, I wouldn't have been able to come back to my country and be part of such an amazing and passionate group of young people.

Carol has a Master's in Public Health from the University of Michigan and experience working in the offices of several members of the US Congress. Carol has worked for Save the Children for more than eight years, serving first as the Associate Vice President for Policy and Advocacy – where she launched Save the Children into the Washington policy arena. Working with Save the Children colleagues around the globe Carol also initiated the production and practice of "Advocacy Matters: An International Save the Children Alliance guide to advocacy."

In 2006 Carol moved to 'the field' as Director for Policy and Communication in Africa, helping to build the advocacy and communication skills of Save the Children colleagues working on the continent. Highlights of Carol's work in Africa include her support to countries in their efforts to launch the EVERY ONE Campaign and support of activities around the recent African Union Summit; highlighting Save the Children around the annual State of the World's Mothers Report and building capacity of colleagues around the Rewrite the Future (education in emergencies) initiative; and her support of Ethiopia's “Positive Change: Children, Communities and Care” (orphans and vulnerable children) project around World AIDs Day (06 Madeleine Albright, Meseret Defar; 07 Adama two-day pledges, parade and football events), production of the award winning children's television shows for OVC (Tshai Love's Learning); and coordinating schedules for celebrity supporters – Cokie Roberts and Jessica Lange. Carol lead the coordination of Ethiopia's communication response to the 2008 food emergency, creating emergency communication guidelines across the Save the Children membership, including coordinating global media and VIP trips to the region. Overall, Carol has been recognized at all levels of the organization for raising the visibility of Save the Children programs across Africa with our partners – donors, policymakers and the media.

Additionally, Carol has hands-on experience in program management from her work in Turkey where she worked for a small Turkish NGO and later co-managed the USAID family planning portfolio out of the US Embassy – which including strategic planning, budget monitoring and monitoring and evaluation. She currently participates on the Cross Functional HIV/AIDS Team, the PR1 (child protection) Team, the global Popular Mobilization Team of the EVERY ONE Campaign, and the Africa Technical Advocacy Team.

Prior to joining CMMB, Sara managed East African health programs for the Solidarity Center and served as a Journalism Program Officer at McCormick Foundation in Chicago, IL. Sara received her B.S.J. from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University and her M.P.H. from Tulane University School of Public Health & Tropical Medicine.

Madina's research interests pertain to the social and policy determinants of women's sexual and reproductive health, including HIV/AIDS and sexually transmitted infections; access to contraception, abortion, and other sexual and reproductive health services; HPV and cervical cancer; and gender-based violence. She is particularly interested in how inequities related to gender, race/ethnicity, sexuality, socioeconomic position, and immigrant status affect the sexual and reproductive health and rights of socially and economically marginalized women. Her dissertation research is a mixed methods study exploring social inequalities in cervical cancer screening by race/ethnicity, immigrant status and country of birth, and sexual orientation among U.S. women.

Prior to joining ASCNYC, Gina worked as a research assistant on different sexual and reproductive health projects at Columbia University, an adolescent health educator in South Africa, and an HIV/HepC treatment education workshop coordinator in New York. Gina holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Sociology from Vassar College, an Honors Bachelor of Social Science in Gender Studies from the University of Cape Town, and a master's degree in public health from Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health. She currently lives in Brooklyn and loves escaping out of the city at the end of the work day.

Currently the Sexual and Reproductive Health Action Group Co-Chair for last year and working on Sex-Positive on Campus.

In this role, Alexandra is responsible for:

• Developing curriculum and implementing comprehensive sexuality education programs for adolescent groups in a targeted New York City public school
• Conducting individual and small group counseling sessions around sexuality-related topics
• Ensuring that each student has access to reproductive health care as needed
• Designing and facilitating adult sexuality education program for parents

Prior to her work with the Carrera Program, Alexandra has also led education, training, and research efforts at Planned Parenthood of New York City, Young Men's Health Clinic, Barnard Columbia Rape Crisis/Anti-Violence Support Center, and Planned Parenthood Federation of America.

Anna writes: In December 2009, I was posted to Ghana (which is where I was a Peace Corps volunteer, so it was fun, but also strange, to be back). Our work in Ghana was pretty varied; I did a lot of work with on HIV prevention, as well as some work on community-based family planning.

Most recently I have been involved in programming for HIV prevention among young people in Maharashtra. We have developed a multi-media campaign to reach young people with prevention, testing and counseling messages through mass media, community activities such as entertainment education games, and a music video which will be launched soon. I have been involved in facilitating participatory workshops for developing state level communication strategies to address family planning, maternal and child health issues in three northeastern states of India. Most recently I am working with a group of people in the field of entertainment education at the Center to understand how folk media, dance, arts can be integrated into life skills training for young people, or can be used as a way to mobilize communities to collective action. More recently I have been involved in writing grants/proposals for an urban health family planning project in Uttar pradesh where we plan on integrating communication with public private partnerships to ensure quality of care in selected clinics.

I continue to be very grateful for the fellowship I received which enabled me to get my MPH from Michigan and work in the field of health communication which allow me to bring together both my creative and public health sides together. I hope the Brush foundation continues to support more young people as it has provided me with the skills to work in the field of reproductive health and gender.

Kari loves being a mom to her 18-month old son, Maxwell Nicholas Moore, born in 2009.

Sydney writes: Up until March of 2009 I was a Program Officer with PATH/Global Campaign for Microbicides. I was brought to supervise projects on international HIV prevention advocacy and increasing community involvement in clinical trial research. I coordinated, monitored and facilitated program implementation. A lot of my time was spent in the field, probably 35-40% time in field as I lived in Johannesburg from August to December 2007. My achievements included:

• Oversight of staff of 4 in India, Kenya, and South Africa; provided technical, resource, and professional development support.
• Planned and convened an informal planning meeting of 20 experts on community involvement in HIV prevention clinical trials, Johannesburg, South Africa, November 2007.
• Developed program plans and budgets, managed project financials, maintained budget authority, prepared budgets, monitored progress, and deliverables.
• Designed, organized, and delivered international presentations, skills-building workshops, and advocacy trainings.