Meet TLP’s Global Health Advisory Board
The Leo Project has established a Global Health Advisory Board comprised of leading global health experts and clinical professionals. The formation of this Board marks an important milestone as we continue to strengthen our community-based healthcare delivery through The Caitlin O’Hara Community Health Clinic, alongside our health education and mobile outreach programs.
As we expand our services through the construction of an inpatient hospital offering enhanced maternal care and the launch of Laikipia County’s first oncology center, this Board will play a critical role in ensuring that our health services, clinical operations, and long-term growth are grounded in evidence-based care, aligned with globally recognized best practices, and rooted in local realities.
TLP Global Health Advisory Board Members:
Ahmet Uluer, DO, MPH
Dr. Ahmet Uluer is a medicine and pediatric trained pulmonologist and Director of the Adult Cystic Fibrosis Program at the combined Boston Children’s Hospital and Brigham & Women’s Hospital Adult Cystic Fibrosis Center. He is also Director of the local Therapeutic Development Network (TDN) and oversees a highly effective team of Research Coordinators and Assistants to conduct corporate sponsored and investigator-initiated clinical trials, along with two phase 2 trials as national PI. He is Co-Chair of the Protocol Review Committee of the TDN.
His clinical and research interests involve all aspects of cystic fibrosis care, including quality improvement initiatives, transitional care and outcomes research. He has been interested in complications related to acute and chronic pulmonary therapies in an aging CF population, including kidney disease and hearing loss.
Dr. Uluer completed a translational research project while earning his Master’s in Public Health degree at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, looking at urinary biomarkers associated with kidney injury, as well as a prospective study of monitoring hearing loss utilizing point of care hearing assessment. He is Director of the Weitzman Family Bridges Adult Transition Program at Boston Children’s Hospital, providing age-appropriate care and transitional care support to all adult survivors with congenital or pediatric acquired chronic illness. He is working on transitional care processes and outcome measures for those with childhood-onset chronic diseases and along with other collaborators, working on building the capacity, from many perspectives, for them to be cared for in an adult medical home. Learn more about Dr. Uluer here.
Arlene Samen
Arlene is a trained Family Nurse Practitioner with over 40 years experience in Maternal Child Health and Psychedelic Assisted Therapy. For over 24 years she was the CEO of One Heart World Wide, a US based non-profit working in developing countries to reduce maternal and newborn deaths. In 1998 she met His Holiness the Dalai Lama who asked her to go to Tibet and help save the lives of pregnant women and their newborn babies. TO date, One Heart World Wide's model "the Network of Safety" has reached over 1 million mothers and babies in Nepal. In 2016, she graduated from the California Institute of Integral Studies in the first Psychedelic Assisted Therapy Certificate Program. She is trained by the Ketmaine Research Foundation as a KAP trainee and is a consultant for Journese to train new therapists in KAP. In 2021, she started working for Novamind as a dosing monitor and now works part time at Numinuss Wellness as a Clinical Research Dosing Monitor. Learn more about Arlene here.
Connie Ochola
Dr. Cornelia Ochola is a pediatrician and Maternal, Newborn, and Child Health (MNCH) expert with more than 15 years of experience advancing the health of women, newborns, and children across Kenya. She has led major USAID-supported MNCH and immunization programs across thirteen marginalized counties, coordinating implementation with WHO, UNICEF, Jhpiego, Core Group Partners Project, and county governments. Cornelia brings extensive experience in health systems strengthening, quality of care, immunization strategy, polio surveillance, and integrated service delivery.
She has served in senior advisory roles with USAID Kenya, the Ministry of Health, CHS Kenya, and multiple social-enterprise partners. As Founder of Nurture & Thrive Global and the ThriveNest ECD pilot, she champions early childhood development, caregiver support, and innovation uptake. Connie brings strategic oversight, technical depth, and a deep commitment to equity and community-led solutions to The Leo Project. Learn more about Connie here.
Craig Spencer
Craig Spencer, MD, MPH is an emergency medicine physician and Associate Professor of the Practice of Health Services, Policy, and Practice at Brown University School of Public Health. For nearly two decades, he has worked at the intersection of global health, humanitarian response, and pandemic preparedness.
Dr. Spencer has served across Africa, Southeast Asia, the Caribbean, and Central America, addressing urgent health and human rights challenges. His projects have included investigating maternal mortality in Burundi, child separation in emergencies in Congo and South Sudan, hepatitis E surveillance in Chad, and coordinating Médecins Sans Frontières’ (MSF) epidemiological response during the Ebola outbreak in Guinea. He has also provided medical care aboard MSF’s Mediterranean search-and-rescue vessel.
Elected to the Board of Directors of MSF USA in 2019, he now serves on its Board of Advisors. At Brown, he focuses on the historical determinants of public health and humanitarian response. His writing has appeared in The New England Journal of Medicine, The New York Times, The Atlantic, and other leading outlets. He was elected a life member of the Council on Foreign Relations in 2024. Learn more about Craig here.
Cynthia Kahumbura
Cynthia has 18 years strategic development, implementation and operational experience working in the public and private sector. Working in diverse sectors, she has developed strong strategic planning, analytical and leadership skills, and built business acumen. She now focuses on empowering women & children in seeking quality of care by working closely with the government to improve service provision by strengthening the public health system and ensuring mums have a voice in the changes being effected in SSA.
She started at Jacaranda Health in Nairobi, in 2020 as Director of Operations. She became Country Director in 2022, and is now Co-Executive Director.
Prior to Jacaranda, she was the Director of Kuunda 3D - a 3D printing company - and Kenya Country Lead at Nivi, an AI powered chatbot for healthcare. She holds an MBA from Erasmus University Rotterdam and a Bachelors in Engineering (BEng) from the University of Leeds, UK. Learn more about Cynthia here.
Ellie Wise
Ellie Wise has worked in finance in New York and Boston until retiring to raise her three children. Since leaving finance, she has been involved with several non-profits serving both local and international communities and has a passion for health equity.
Joe Shonkwiler
Dr. Joe Shonkwiler is currently leading the Healthcare and Life Science (HCLS) practice for startups and investors at Google Cloud.
Dr. Shonkwiler joined Google from the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H), a federal agency established by the Biden administration to invest in breakthrough technologies and transform medicine. He served as ARPA-H's founding Chief Operating Officer (COO) and Acting Deputy Director. In those roles he led all the business and administrative operations for the agency, including commercialization, finance, AI and data infrastructure, IT, contracting and acquisitions, and human resources. Since founding in 2023, ARPA-H has deployed over $3B in nondilutive funds to transform health and biomedical R&D.
Prior to ARPA-H, Dr. Shonkwiler was part of the HCLS startup BD team at Amazon Web Services (AWS). In that role, he advised hundreds of healthcare and life science startups, guiding them from conception to exit. He also founded and hosted the AWS Health Innovation Podcast, a weekly show featuring entrepreneurs and investors driving progress in healthcare and life science globally.
Prior to joining Amazon, Dr. Shonkwiler was an early employee and VP at Aledade, a venture-backed startup helping independent primary care practices succeed in value-based care. In that role, he drove national implementation of Aledade's software and services, expanding coverage across 40 states and 500 practices to serve over 500,000 Medicare beneficiaries. Before Aledade, he was the CEO of CollectedMed, a cloud-based health education software startup spun out of Columbia University’s Department of Surgery.
Dr. Shonkwiler served on Capitol Hill as the Senior Health Policy Advisor for former United States Senator Rob Portman, handling all federal health policy matters. He began his career as a general surgery resident at Columbia University Medical Center/New York Presbyterian Hospital.
Dr. Shonkwiler has a BA from the University of Notre Dame, an MD from Columbia University, an MBA from MIT’s Sloan School of Management, and an MPP from Princeton University. Read more about Joe here.
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