SOPHIA LEADERSHIP

Executive Leadership Team

Sandra Whitehead, President 

Professor and Program Director, George Washington University Sustainable Urban Planning Program.

Sandra has worked on over ten HIAs on a range of topics including climate change, food access, transportation, and brownfield redevelopment. She has trained over 300 public health and planning professionals to conduct HIAs and has worked extensively with communities to implement Health in All Policies (HiAP). At George Washington, Sandra teaches applied courses including the Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (JEDI) class, HIA and health assessment methods.

Contact Sandra by e-mail sandra@hiasociety.org

Katie Hirono, Past President

PhD Candidate, Global Public Health Unit, School of Social and Political Policy, University of Edinburgh.

Katie Hirono is a PhD candidate in the Global Public Health Unit at the University of Edinburgh. Her research focuses on the role of participatory engagement in citizens’ juries and health impact assessment for improving policymaking and health equity.  She is a former research associate at the Centre for Health Equity Training, Research and Evaluation at the University of New South Wales, Australia where she specialized in conducting, training and teaching HIA. She has contributed to 30 HIAs throughout her career. Before joining CHETRE, Katie worked at the Health Impact Project, a collaboration of the Pew Charitable Trusts and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, to increase the use of health impact assessment in the U.S. Katie also has a long-standing record of helping to support underserved communities. She served on the board of directors for a health clinic in Maryland that serviced undocumented Latino populations, and volunteered as a Spanish medical translator at a free health clinic in Virginia. She has worked as a consultant to the Pan American Health Organization/World Health Organization in the department of Gender, Diversity and Human Rights. She is also a certified hatha yoga teacher.

Emily Bever, Vice President Member Services 

Senior Associate, Health Impact Project

The Health Impact Project, a collaboration of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and The Pew Charitable Trusts, encourages state, local, and national level organizations to include health considerations in policy decisions across multiple sectors, such as housing, transportation, and education. Research shows that the conditions in which people live, learn, work, and play influence their health, so the Project works to create cross-sector partnerships that include communities. In her role, Emily provides technical assistance to national grantee partners, collaborates with partners to plan and execute convenings, and coordinates with Pew communications staff to create content for the Project website. Emily also participates in an interdepartmental working group to improve grantmaking processes, procedures, and software at Pew.

Prior to joining the Health Impact Project, Emily was the assistant for the Center for Military Health Policy Research at RAND Corporation. Emily received her Bachelor of Science in International Affairs from the Georgia Institute of Technology.

Contact Emily by e-mail members@hiasociety.org

Steering Committee Members

Marcus Chilaka

Assistant Professor of Public Health at the University of Bradford, UK

Marcus is passionate about public health and contributing to people’s health and wellbeing (in the widest sense) through teaching, research and management techniques. His main research interests are in health impact assessment, health needs assessment, and the wider social and environmental determinants of health. Marcus has done a number of training and consultancy projects in health impact assessment – covering policies, the built environment, development projects and sustainable waste management. He has also contributed to the human health sections of several environmental impact assessment (EIA) Statements.

 Gabriell Gassaway

Director of Research, Health Equity Innovation Hub at the University of Louisville

Gabriell is the Director of Research for the Health Equity Innovation Hub at the University of Louisville.  Previously she served as the Chief of Staff at the Louisville Metro Department of Public Health and Wellness where she collaborated with the division directors on department strategy and community relationship building. While at the health department she also supervised the Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention Program where she worked closely with agency and community partners to address lead poisoning by focusing on community education, policy analysis, and development of cross-sector partnerships using a Health in All Policies framework.

Ukaegbu Kingsley O.E

Health Impact Assessment Inspector, Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria

Kingsley is a young professional with over three years of HIA-related working experience in the Upstream Oil and Gas Industry with specialties in the use of geospatial intelligence in environmental pollution control with keen skills in geospatial intelligence. He was one of the winners of 2015 Emerging Space Leaders of the International Astronautical Federation and has been the project coordinator for He Space Children Foundation where he developed a STEM program called “Take Space to Grassroots” Nigeria. His professional and research areas are in the use of Geographic Information System (GIS) and Remote Sensing techniques in developing logic models for HIA in diverse host communities of Niger Delta Oil-Producing and host communities in Nigeria, with focus in Environmental Impact Assessment of development projects and environmental evaluation studies where he coordinates the scoping workshop for stakeholders, community engagements, field data gathering, reporting and mitigation monitoring exercise. Kingsley has led over 20 HIAs and is currently pursuing an advanced degree in Environmental & Public Health. He holds a B.Tech in Environmental Pollution Control and a Masters in Environmental Management.

Abe Moland
Public Health & Built Environment Analyst, City of Portland, Bureau of Planning and Sustainability

Abe has been active in the intersection of health, place, and transportation for the past 10 years. He has a background in exercise science and holds Master’s degrees in public health and regional planning. He interested in systems and environmental change to create opportunities for healthier living from cellular to city levels and reduce disparities in health outcomes. He has spent time in the private sector at Urban Design 4 Health and GridWorks IC and in the public sector at Clackamas County Public Health Division and the City of Portland. He has led two HIAs and is passionate about implementing Health in All Policies practices to advance health equity.

Cynthia Stone

Professor, Indiana University Richard M. Fairbanks School of Public Health

Cynthia has a background in Community Health Nursing, viewing the world through a public health lens.  Her funded research includes The Use of a Health Impact Assessment in the Development of a Full Service Grocery Store within a Food Desert (Indiana Minority Health Coalition - 2012/2013), a Community Health Assessment for Parkview Health (2016), and most recently, the Inter-professional Education IU Grand Challenge (2018-2021).

Benjamin Woelk

Director of Strategic Initiatives, Urban Design 4 Health

Benjamin has spent more than a decade leading and impacting a range of community development, planning, and placemaking projects to improve the health, quality of life, and revitalization of communities across the nation.  In his most recent role he joined Urban Design 4 Health (UD4H) to guide the strategic goals of the firm and support the firm’s innovative, evidence-based and objectively-measured data and tools including the National Public Health Assessment Model (N-PHAM) developed for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.  With his prior experience authoring four different HIAs in housing and built environment and his continued work as a certified planner through the American Institute of Certified Planners (AICP), Benjamin's goal is to continue to advance health informed decision-making in the realms of transportation, urban and rural planning, land use, and built environment projects with an emphasis on prioritizing health equity for vulnerable populations.  Benjamin earned his M.S. from the Center of Multidisciplinary Studies at the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) in 2013 with concentrations in Public Policy, Tourism, and Marketing and currently resides in Rochester, New York. 

Kerry Wyss

Director, Environmental Health, Association of State and Territorial Health Officials (ASTHO)

Kerry leads ASTHO’s program implementation and policy development and analysis on environmental health issues such as health in all policies (HiAP), HIA, safe water, and food safety. Since 2008, Kerry has managed ASTHO’s grants to state and local health departments to conduct HIA capacity building activities, collaborated with a broad spectrum of HIA partners across the country, and participated in many HIA and HiAP projects and presentations as a result. Together with her team, Kerry has developed numerous resources related to HIA and HiAP, including policy guides, program reports, and research briefs. Kerry currently leads ASTHO’s monthly HIA practitioner calls and ASTHO’s HiAP advisory groups. Kerry received her Masters of Environmental Management from Duke University where she focused on children’s environmental health and health policy.