Ashley graduated from Duke University with a major in Environmental Sciences and Biology. Shortly after, she moved to San Francisco where she served as an Executive Assistant and then Program Coordinator at the San Francisco-Marin Food Bank. As Program Coordinator, she worked with community partners in the Sunset, Potrero Hill, Oceanview, Merced, and Ingleside neighborhoods to ensure community members have access to nutritious, weekly groceries and food insecurity-alleviating resources.

Ashley loves supporting social justice movements, especially ones that involve empowering women.

Johnasies brings over a decade of experience working with a number of community-driven organizations where he has held a variety of support roles.  Most recently he worked as Operations and Contracts Manager at MPact, Global Action for Gay Men’s Health and Rights (formerly the Global Forum on MSM & HIV), an advocacy organization based in Oakland, California that brought funding, policy, and research support to regional and in-country LGBT-led organizations across 62 countries.  Prior to this role, he worked as an Operations Manager at Lotus Bloom Child and Family Center which provided child and family programs throughout Oakland, such as multicultural playgroups and nutrition workshops for families with children ages 0-5 .

Johnasies also spent the early part of his career working with commercial district revitalization programs and administering an AmeriCorps program that provided support to local community development corporations and other community-serving organizations throughout the San Francisco Bay Area.

Johnasies has a B.A. in Political Science with a minor in Urban Studies and continues to maintain his interests in community development and global issues.

Meg has spent her career focused on building the necessary consensus, resources and political will to bring health solutions to those who need them most. Prior to taking her dream job at WomenLIft Health, Meg was a Senior Program Officer and advocacy strategy lead at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) driving efforts to move the global agenda on malaria and neglected tropical diseases (NTDs). Prior to that role, Meg was the first-hired Director of Advocacy and Communications for PATH’s malaria program and drove the now-accepted best practice of integrating advocacy strategy into disease-specific global health programming. She has 25 years of experience in advocacy, public policy and resource mobilization for a range of global health issues from sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) to malaria.

A lawyer by training, Meg has taught courses on gender equality in law at Georgetown University, brought gender-based asylum claims pro bono and worked to influence policy from a village council in Botswana to the US Congress to the World Health Organization to improve the lives of women and girls. Meg sits on the advisory board of Speak Up Africa based in Senegal, a policy and advocacy action tank dedicated to catalyzing leadership, enabling policy change and increasing awareness for sustainable development in Africa. Meg earned her undergraduate degree at Kenyon College in anthropology and international studies and her law degree from the University of Michigan Law School.

Harleen Kaur (‘21/22) is an undergraduate at Stanford majoring in Anthropology. This past year, while on a leave of absence, she served as the Director of Research and Design for the South Asian Winter Camp, was a community researcher at ASRA: The Panjabi Alcohol Resource, and continued her work as a research assistant in the Intimate Partner Violence Research Lab.

At Stanford she is an active member of various South Asian cultural spaces, including South Asian Society, Sikh Students’ Association, and Stanford Bhangra and volunteers with SHAR(ED) and the Global Health Student Council.

Harleen’s global health interests include narratives of addiction and circuits of care within Panjabi communities, intergenerational trauma and its manifestation with health and wellbeing, and gender based violence within immigrant communities.

Prior to joining Stanford, Lauren spent five years working for the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, where she supported the Dean of the Graduate School and led operational activities on both their downtown and medical campuses.

She previously served as Executive Assistant to the Executive Director of an inpatient mental health facility, where she received a Governor’s Commendation for leading a project to restore an abandoned cemetery on the hospital grounds. She was also honored by the Oklahoma Board of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services for her work in discovering and memorializing a forgotten mass grave from a tragic fire at the hospital in 1918.

Outside of work, Lauren is an avid international traveler, having visited over two dozen countries on five continents, as well as living in China for a period of time. Beyond travel, she enjoys reading across a wide range of genres, hiking, and discovering new international restaurants.

Lauren earned her undergraduate degree in African and African American Studies from the University of Oklahoma and is passionate about supporting the work of anti-racism, advancing LGBTQ equality, and advocating for the dignity of people living with mental illness.