Staff Bios: M-Z

Cheikh Mbengue has 15 years of experience with West African regional institutions and for USAID projects, has served as a technical expert on community development and health sector reform in West and Central Africa. Mr. Mbengue is particularly well versed in the decentralization of priority health services, the community-based health insurance movement, maximizing donor coordination to leverage support for health sector reform, supporting National Health Account activities, responding to the HIV/AIDS epidemic, and developing social marketing programs. An effective advocate and coordinator of regional networks and regional programs, Mr. Mbengue holds a post-master’s certificate in anthropology and a master’s degree in philosophy.
cheikh_mbengue@abtassoc.com

Linda Moll has worked in international development for more than 20 years, the past 10 as an editor/writer and editorial services coordinator for multiple health systems reform projects. Ms. Moll has been on the staff of a major metropolitan daily newspaper and done freelance writing for other major newspapers. She has edited technical documents, including reports, manuals, and presentations, and developed, managed, written, and edited newsletters, brochures, and briefs based on the technical work or independent publications. She also has taught writing at the university level. In addition, she has done events planning, and spent several years managing U.S. educational and training programs of international visitors. Ms. Moll received her BS degree in international relations from Georgetown University and her MA degree in linguistics from the University of Illinois in Chicago; she also has a certificate in editing and publications from Georgetown University.
Linda_Moll@abtassoc.com

Mr. Muñoz is an engineer and a senior associate at Bitrán y Asociados specializing in social sector studies, with a focus in the areas of health economics and poverty reduction. He has worked in Africa (Mozambique, Niger and Rwanda), Asia (Bangladesh, Cambodia, Timor Leste, and Pakistan), Latin America (Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Peru), and the Caribbean (Suriname, Jamaica, Bahamas). His expertise includes: research design for health evaluation projects, particularly including the design of their sample frames, data collection instruments, statistical analysis, and econometrics; the implementation of Living Standard Measurement Surveys; data modeling; the design and implementation of social sectors information systems; and the development of custom software for the social sectors.
rodrigo.munoz@bitran.cl

Stephen Musau is a Chartered Accountant with over 25 years experience in health financing, health systems, health sector reform, financial management systems design, cost analysis, and auditing. An accomplished trainer in financial management, he has worked extensively with NGOs in Eastern Africa to provide financial management systems design and performance improvement technical assistance. He is also an experienced financial auditor and advisor on business management. Mr. Musau is the National Health Accounts (NHA) Coordinator for Health Systems 20/20, as he was for Partnerships for Health Reformplus (PHRplus). He is the primary liaison with donor partners and country governments on all matters pertaining to the development and use of the NHA. Mr. Musau is also the Health Systems Strengthening Advisor to USAID/Africa Bureau’s Africa 2010 project, working with African institutions in the area of health systems strengthening. Mr. Musau received his bachelor's degree in accounting from the University of Nairobi and is also a Chartered Acountant with the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales. He speaks English, Swahili, and French.
stephen_musau@abtassoc.com

Takondwa Mwase has 15 years of experience in health services planning, health financing including budgeting and resource allocation and health care management. Currently, Mr. Mwase works on general National Health Accounts (NHA) as well as reproductive health (RH), HIV/AIDS, and child health subaccounts in a number of countries across Africa and the Near East. He is also responsible for facilitating international and regional courses on general NHA and HIV/AIDS, RH, and Child Health subaccounts. Previously, Mr. Mwase was a Regional Advisor for Health Financing and National Health Accounts at the WHO Africa Regional Office. He was responsible for providing technical support to WHO member States in the region on health financing policy design in social health insurance and National Health Accounts implementation. He has also served as a Fellow at the WHO headquarters in Geneva responsible for NHA for the Africa Region. For 8 years, he was responsible for health planning, health financing-assessment of health financing options, budgeting and resource allocation, and development and implementation of NHA, district health accounts, public health expenditures reviews, and economic evaluation at the Ministry of health in Malawi. Over the years, Mr. Mwase has consulted on various issues of health sector reforms for a variety of organizations such as DANIDA, DfID, EU, GTZ, UNICEF, UNDP, USAID, and the World Bank. His extensive experience also includes acting as an advisor in the development of NHA as well as investigator in a number of countries in Africa and the Caribbean. Mr. Mwase holds a master of social science degree in health economics from the University of Cape Town and is fluent in English and French.
takondwa_mwase@abtassoc.com

Kathleen Novak served as regional coordinator for Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) on the Partnerships for Health Reform project (PHR) and has continued in that role on the Partners for Health Reformplus and Health Systems 20/20 projects. In this role, she provides technical leadership and direction, assures quality, and supervises regional staff for all technical assistance in the LAC Region. Dr. Novak conducted and managed activities that are essential for field-level policy development and implementation, including stakeholder analyses (Egypt, El Salvador), development of advocacy strategies (El Salvador, Peru), and participatory health planning with input from civil society (Peru). Dr. Novak was also responsible for planning, managing, and monitoring the implementation of regional activities under the Latin America Health Sector Reform Initiative. In 2003, Dr. Novak assumed responsibility for the Infectious Disease and Surveillance (IDS) component of PHRplus. The IDS strategy, which calls for a “bottom up” approach that emphasizes sound analysis and use of data at the point of generation, has resulted in improved timeliness and completeness of reporting in two African countries and has increased immunization coverage and decreased vaccine wastage in the Republic of Georgia. Dr. Novak received her bachelor’s degree in political science from California State University at San Jose and her MSW and PhD in clinical social work from Smith College. She is fluent in Spanish.
kathleen_novak@abtassoc.com

Liz Nugent has over 25 years of experience in the administration of publication and communication components of health and international programs. She currently serves as communications director for the Health Systems 20/20 project. Previously, she was associate communications coordinator for the Partners for Health Reformplus (PHRplus) project, overseeing an electronic and hard-copy resource center of over 6,000 select health systems strengthening materials with a searchable database on the web. Under PHRplus, Ms. Nugent served as editor for the project’s Highlights newsletter and directed outreach and dissemination components of the project, identifying channels for proactively sharing information about PHRplus expertise, materials, and achievements. Throughout her career, Ms. Nugent has managed or produced over 100 publications, reports, monographs, and articles in English, Spanish, French, and Portuguese. She has coordinated and evaluated the performance of health educators, research associates, marketing specialists, photographers, printers, designers, editors, proofreaders, and translators. Ms. Nugent has proven experience in identifying, organizing, and reviewing data to create easily accessed information; in formulating innovative strategies to ensure that information is widely shared with diverse audiences; and in leveraging opportunities for creatively sharing information and building knowledge from the field up. She earned a BA in Spanish and Latin American Studies from Vanderbilt University, a master’s degree in international administration from the School for International Training in Vermont, and a certificate in international management from the American Graduate School of International Management (Thunderbird) in Arizona. Ms. Nugent speaks Spanish fluently and is conversant in French and Portuguese.
liz_nugent@abtassoc.com

Ms. Ortiz has more than 15 years experience working in international health with significant experience in health economics and financing in Africa and Latin America. She has specialized in issues of cost recovery and risk sharing, leading numerous evaluations for international agencies such as UNICEF and the French Agence de Cooperation. Ms. Ortiz led a team that conducted an HIV/AIDS costing study in Côte d’Ivoire, providing key information for service delivery scale-up. She also led a team to the DRC to evaluate the business structure and operations of the Biamba Marie Mutombo Hospital, providing technical guidance to senior staff on care provision, referral structure, user fees, and community involvement. Ms. Ortiz’s work has focused on community-based efforts, providing financial advice to community health centers on cost issues, resource allocation, and revenue structure as well as providing training and local capacity development in health financing, budgeting, and cost control to health care workers and site administrators. She facilitated workshops in Nigeria and Ethiopia for UNICEF and the World Bank on streamlining budgeting and using cost data for decision making. As a technical adviser for the French Cooperation Service, and later for the European Commission delegation, Ms. Ortiz managed and contributed to numerous health system reform working groups on health insurance plans and other topics, to better manage costs and improve access to health services in West Africa. Ms. Ortiz received her M.Sc. in health planning and financing from the London School of Economics and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and her BS from the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service. She speaks English, French, and Spanish fluently.
christine_ortiz@abtassoc.com

Dr. John Osika, a public health physician, serves as HIV and Infectious Disease Advisor for Health Systems 20/20. He spent ten years focused on HIV/AIDS and malaria initiatives for the World Bank and has more than two decades of programmatic and clinical experience working on infectious disease programs. Dr. Osika, trained as an epidemiologist and physician with specialization in public health, is board certified in the United Kingdom and the European Union. Over his professional career he has provided technical leadership to the World Bank’s landmark Roll Back Malaria initiative and has served as the Bank’s principal source of technical advice and leadership on malaria programs and policy. Dr. Osika served as assistant professor in public health medicine at the University of Wales and as senior registrar in public health medicine for the British National Health Service. His combination of hands-on and research experience in surveillance of infectious disease in the UK have allowed him over the years to provide technical guidance and leadership at the highest level of HIV/AIDS and infectious disease policymaking. Dr. Osika has a medical degree from the Minsk State Medical University and a MPH and MHMPP from the University of Leeds. Dr. Osika, originally from Uganda, speaks Russian, Byelorussian, French, Spanish, Welsh, Kiswahili, Ateso, Luo, and Luganda.
john_osika@abtassoc.com

Dr. Nancy Pielemeier is an international health policy and program planner and implementer with 25 years of experience, including over 10 years of residential experience in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. She was project director of the three-year $45 million USAID-funded ZdravReform Program, which provided technical assistance in health finance and service delivery reform in the former Soviet republics. From 1997 to 2001, Dr. Pielemeier directed the five-year $65 million USAID-funded Partnerships for Health Reform (PHR) project, providing direction to a staff of more than 120 professionals carrying out technical assistance, training, applied research, and information dissemination on health reform in over 30 countries worldwide. Subsequently, Dr. Pielemeier directed the follow-on $98 million Partners for Health Reformplus project from 2000 to 2005, expanding health systems strengthening interventions to include improvements in health financing, organization and quality of health services, health information systems, and health governance in over 35 countries. Since 2005, as Vice President and Practice Manager for the International Health Division at Abt Associates, Dr. Pielemeier oversees a portfolio of health systems projects throughout the developing world, Eastern Europe, and Central Asia. Through her years of experience, Dr. Pielemeier has developed unique skills and expertise in dealing with health organizations and systems development. She received her master’s and doctoral degrees in public health from the Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health. She speaks Portuguese.
nancy_pielemeier@abtassoc.com

Dr. Prieto is a senior health economist with a PhD in health economics from Boston University and an MS in health economics from the University of Chile. She specializes in the study of health interventions’ cost-effectiveness, evaluation of health financing reform projects, the effects of health status on labor outcomes, accessibility to health services, development of training material in health economics, study of health care markets, including designing and implementing household surveys, provider costs and production, and analysis of equity, efficiency, and financial sustainability. While in Boston, she worked with the Center for Multicultural Mental Health Research in two major projects dealing with cost-effectiveness of depression treatment interventions and behavioral patterns in drug abuse treatment and social services. She has worked with Bitrán y Asociados on projects in Peru, Chile, Bolivia, Suriname, Paraguay, Argentina, Barbados, Honduras, Mexico, and Guatemala.
lorena.prieto@bitran.cl

Dr. Ravishankar works on National Health Accounts, health resource tracking, monitoring and evaluation, and governance. She most recently was a research scientist at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, University of Washington, where she was lead author of the “Financing Global Health 2009” report and its companion article in the Lancet. Dr. Ravishankar has extensive evaluation experience including developing an evaluation framework for the African Health Initiative launched by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, undertaking an evaluation of the Seguro Popular de Salud, a publicly-funded health insurance program in Mexico, and coordinating an independent evaluation of Avahan, a HIV-prevention program in India funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. In the area of governance, she published “The Costs of Ruling: Anti-Incumbency in Indian Elections” in the Economic and Political Weekly and “A ‘Politically Robust Experimental Design for Public Policy Evaluation, with Application to the Mexican Universal Health Insurance Program in the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management. Dr. Ravishankar holds a PhD from Harvard University in political science, a M.Sc. in comparative politics from the London School of Economics and Political Science, and a BA in history and philosophy from Brandeis University.
Nirmala_ravishankar@abtassoc.com

Katie Senauer is a senior consultant at Deloitte Consulting with over 8 years of experience in international public health managing health sector activities related to health systems development, monitoring and evaluating interventions, conducting health assessments, and providing specialized technical capacity in the areas of maternal and child health and pharmaceutical management for projects supported by USAID and the National Institutes of Health. For the Health Systems 20/20 project Ms. Senauer is working with ministries of health to identify and address bottlenecks and gaps in health system processes. In Mozambique she is supporting the Ministry of Women and Social Welfare to address human resource constraints and strengthen institutional capacity to increase availability of qualified personnel. She is also working on building capacity for the selection, use, and understanding of standard, proven costing methodologies for health services. This activity includes the design and launch of a web-based costing diagnostic tool. Previously, Ms. Senauer worked as a health analyst in the Global Network for Women’s and Children’s Health Research at the Research Triangle Institute and served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Gabon as a community health educator. Ms. Senauer holds a master of public health degree with a concentration in management from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. She speaks French and basic Portuguese.
ksenauer@deloitte.com

Ibrahim Shehata is a senior manager in the Health and Social Protection practice of Deloitte Consulting. He has more than 17 years of experience in health financing and the financial management of health care organizations, domestically and internationally. Mr. Shehata’s understanding of how health systems function is derived from his work with developing countries’ health authorities and providers, as well as with U.S.-based health provider institutions. He spent nearly 4 years as chief of party on a USAID health-sector reform project in Bulgaria where he guided project activities with the ministry of health, ministry of finance, and the Parliamentary Health Commission. Prior to that endeavor, he was the technical manager for the National Health Accounts’ global activities in USAID’s Partnerships for Health Reform and Partners for Health Reformplus projects. He played a key role in the launch of the regional networks in East and Southern Africa, North Africa and the Middle East, and West Africa regions. Prior to his experiences in international health development, Mr. Shehata was a special officer for system integration at a multi-hospital integrated system in western Pennsylvania and was a financial manager at the University of Missouri Hospital and Clinics. He has a master’s degree in health-services management from the University of Missouri and an MBA from Central Missouri State University. He is fluent in Arabic.
ishehata@deloitte.com

Jeremy Snider works on the National Health Accounts team and has undertaken tasks related to resource tracking and health systems assessments for the Health Systems 20/20 project. Previously, Mr. Snider worked with the U.S. Department of State for five years on international development and global health policy issues, first in the Office of International Health Affairs, and later in the Office of the U.S. Global AIDS Coordinator. He has collaborated with the Global Fund’s Five Year Evaluation Technical Evaluation Resource Group, performing research on factors that impact performance and relationships of partner organizations with the Global Fund. Mr. Snider holds a master’s degree in public health with a concentration in epidemiology from the George Washington University School of Public Health and Health Services. He speaks conversational French and basic German.
jeremy.snider@abtassoc.com

Kimberly Switlick, MPH, is a senior consultant at Deloitte Consulting with 7 years of international development experience. During her career, she has provided advisory services to countries on issues related to health systems development, health insurance and financing mechanisms for the poor, reproductive health policymaking and service delivery, poverty reduction strategies, and organizational development to countries in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. At Deloitte, Ms. Switlick is working with the government of India to promote, develop, and regulate the health insurance market, with a particular emphasis on financial protection for health services for the poor and micro health insurance. She is also working with India’s state governments to develop social health insurance programs and is working with microinsurance implementers to strengthen their program activities through the design of a Micro Insurance Resource Center. Ms. Switlick also has accomplishments in research within the area of health disparities, determinants of health outcomes, barriers to care, and policy analysis. Projects and publications include studies of youth-focused HIV/AIDS programming, supply and demand of maternal health services, male involvement in reproductive health, and alternative financing mechanisms for health. She has worked at a variety of institutions such as the World Bank, Futures Group: POLICY Project, PATH, and ICDDR, B: Centre for Health and Population Research in Bangladesh. Ms. Switlick received her master’s in public health and international policy from George Washington University.
kswitlickprose@deloitte.com

Amy Taye, MPH, has 4 years experience in international health promotion with expertise in implementing health systems assessments, human resources for health assessments, and HIV/AIDS service provision programs. For Health Systems 20/20 she works with a local Vietnamese organization to conduct health system assessments in the Ninh Binh and Can Tho provinces. Ms. Taye has experience conducting Service Provision Assessments (SPA) in both Nigeria and Côte d’Ivoire. She is also involved with work on development of a standardized package of human resources for health assessment tools for use by country human resource managers. Ms. Taye received her MPH from the George Washington University. Prior to joining Health Systems 20/20, she wrote and received a grant to work with a local NGO focused on HIV prevention through needle exchange in Chapaevsk, Russia, conducting a social marketing campaign entitled “The Race for AIDS Awareness.” Ms. Taye speaks French and Russian fluently.
amy_taye@abtassoc.com

Gloria Ubilla is an industrial engineer and an MBA from the University of Chile. She has more than 12 years of experience in economics, management, and operations research in the health sector. Currently, she is the general manager of Bitrán y Asociados, a leading health economics consulting firm in Latin America. She has participated as director and co-researcher in more than 30 studies in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, including the evaluation of investment projects in the health sector, and work on financing, demand, and costing of health services. Mrs. Ubilla is also executive director of the Flagship Program for Health Sector Reform and Sustainable Financing in Latin America.
gloria.ubilla@bitran.cl

Juanita Ubilla is an industrial engineer specializing in information systems. She has experience in projects and studies in Honduras, Niger, Panama, and Chile involving database management, web-based information systems, data modeling, and statistical analysis.
juanita.ubilla@bitran.cl

Mr. Urcullo is a senior economist with a master’s in management and public policy and a diploma in labor economics. He has more than 10 years of labor experience in Bolivia’s government holding various key posts for the Council of Ministries in the areas of industry, tourism, telecommunications, mining, environment, and transport. He has also worked in the fields of economic regulation, promotion of the competition, public credit, and decentralization of planning. In addition, while in Bolivia he worked on the formulation of public strategies to reach the Millennium Development Goals. Mr. Urcullo has published widely in the areas of pension systems, regulation, and economical development. Since January 2006, he has worked on health projects in Bolivia, Chile, El Salvador, Bangladesh, and Guatemala for Bitrán y Asociados.
gonzalo.urcullo@bitran.cl

Hailu Nega Zelelew is an economist with 20 years of experience working in a wide range of development activities. He previously served as a civil servant in the Ethiopian government, as a grassroots development practitioner, and technical staff person and manager coordinating the work of an NGO umbrella organization. Mr. Zelelew joined Abt Associates in 2004 as senior health care financing specialist for the USAID-funded Essential Services for Health in Ethiopia project where he led a national team of health financing professionals working on implementation of health care financing reform in Ethiopia. His areas of expertise include designing and implementing health care financing and health sector reform projects; capacity building and technical support to government counterparts; health financing resource tracking using NHA and other tools; evaluation of HIV/AIDS and health projects; costing; policy advocacy; revolving drug funds; and reproductive and overall health pharmaceutical financing. His country experience includes Liberia and Nigeria, in addition to his home country, Ethiopia. Mr. Zelelew obtained his first degree in economics from Addis Ababa University and a master’s degree in development economics from the University of East Anglia, UK.
hailu_zelelew@abtassoc.com