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BOARD OF DIRECTORS

NORTH AMERICA

Millicent Mucheru, DNP RN

Millicent, founder of MMK, was born in Kenya and has a compelling passion to create social change by addressing cultural and structural obstacles to health care systems in Kenya. A doctorally trained Registered Nurse, she formerly worked for the UCLA health system and currently work at Kaiser Permanente in West Los Angeles, California. Millicent is the recipient of the 2012 UCLA Community service award for her work with MMK.

Email: millimucheru@yahoo.com  Tel: 323-530-9938

Seth Blumberg, MD, PhD

Dr. Blumberg completed the Medical Scientist Training Program at the University of Michigan and finished his medical internship in Des Moines, Iowa.  He has a longstanding passion for global health, due in large part to his childhood travels to visit his family in South Africa.  He is currently a postdoctoral scholar at UCLA where he studies the transmission dynamics of emerging infectious diseases such as monkeypox in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Mr David Melnick 

David joined our MMK trip in summer 2018 and immediately wanted to be involved in future trips. David is a vice President of Web Isolation at Proofpoint and previous founder and CEO of WebLife, brings almost 25 years experience in technology and security. David has worked extensively with both US and Global companies advising them on setting strategy, developing risk based priorities, and operationalizing effective governance of highly sensitive and regulated data.

 Dr Cara Gardenswartz PHD, 

Dr. Cara Gardenswartz is a  Licensed Clinical Psychologist who has her own private practice in Los Angeles. She completed a MA and PHD in Psychology at UCLA and also serves as a professor at the Department of UCLA psychology. Cara joined our team during the summer 2018 MMK trip to Kenya where she provided therapy to vulnerable patients especially women for the very first time. 

Alexis Davidge, MSN, RN, AGACNP - BC

 Ms. Davidge was born and raised in Southern California. She went to Arizona State for nursing school, graduating from the Mayo Clinic accelerated nursing program and accepted her first job working as a Surgical/Transplant ICU RN at UCLA Medical Center. One of the main reasons she wanted to get into nursing was to get involved in medical work abroad. Over the years, her passion for social justice/medical missions has taken her to Nepal, India, Australia and the Dominican Republic, but no place has stolen her heart like Kenya. She recalls reading about MMK in the early hours of a night shift at UCLA. She was inspired by Milli’s story and her desire to bring medical help to her home country. She was ecstatic to be selected for the 2013 MMK as it would be her first official medical trip as a RN. On her first trip, she worked as an RN seeing patients alongside the many other wonderful volunteers. She loved traveling to Eldoret to help remove chiggers from the children’s feet and the hot air balloon ride over the Maasai Mara reserve.  Despite being exhausted, she recalls feeling so alive, determined to see as many patients as possible before it got dark each night. Her favorite part was being out of her ICU element and having to think on her feet given the limited resources.

 

As the team leader on her second mission in 2014, Lexy prepared the new members who had a myriad of questions on what to expect or pack for the trip. As soon as we landed in Nairobi, Lexy was thrilled and said that it felt like she was coming back home. She worked in the pharmacy preparing multiple doses of prescription medications that MMK provides to the patients. This time, she extended her trip and worked in Eldoret alongside a family nurse practitioner, to learn the nurse practitioner’s role abroad. There she helped teach a First Aid and CPR class to young professionals, visited patients in the slums and experienced life in a village!    Lexy is so grateful for having these two opportunities to learn from the Kenyan people. Her work with MMK inspired her to apply for NP school in hopes that one day she would return back to the beautiful people of Kenya with the new knowledge she would gain. She then attended UCLA’s acute care nurse practitioner program from 2014-2016.  Before she knew it, she was moving to Dallas, Texas after accepting a nurse practitioner job at Baylor University Medical Center. There she works specifically with mechanical assist devices, cardiogenic shock, transplant and advanced heart failure patients. Now that Lexy is settled in Dallas and confident in her new role as a nurse practitioner, she is thrilled to be returning to Kenya for her third medical mission with MMK in the summer of 2018. As a committee member, she is dedicated to increasing knowledge about the medical needs in places such as rural Kenya and encouraging others to volunteer their time!

KENYA

Hilda Waithira Njomo

Mailing Address: P.O Box 8659-00300 Nairobi, Kenya   Tel: 011254-721699213

Hilda graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science and Sociology from Moi University, Kenya in 1992. She has an extensive background in the Kenyan health system. She previously worked for AMREF (African Medical And Research Foundation) as a research officer in the family health unit with a focus in reproductive health.

Caroline Nyambura Muthee

Mailing Address: P.O Box 1567-00606 Nairobi   Tel: 254-734500226 or 254-721285220

Caroline graduated from University of Nairobi Kenya where she obtained a degree in Masters in Business Administration in Strategic Management. She is currently pursuing her Doctorate in Global Business. She previously served the Kenyan government on the Non-government Organization (NGO) Coordination Board as a validation supervisor in 2008. Currently works for Ericsson Kenya Ltd. as Commercial Director in Nairobi, Kenya

 

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