John Abdulla
John Abdulla, graduated valedictorian from Curry College in 2009 with a Bachelor of Arts in Communication, a Film Concentration and an English Minor. He is the founder and former president of ONE Curry, a college chapter of the national ONE Campaign to Make Poverty History. Under John’s leadership, ONE Curry fundraised over $10,000 to build a well in Bor, Sudan, raised awareness towards fighting global poverty through various events on campus, and was selected as one of the top 10 ONE Campuses in the United States. John was the recipient of the Curry College 2007 Human Rights Award, the 2007 Emerging Leader Award, and the 2009 New Era Award. In 2008-2009 he also served on the Millennium Campus Network board of directors as the Director of Programming and Events. Most recently, John attended and filmed the 2010 Intergenerational Leadership Forum in Rwanda hosted by the UNESCO Chair & Institute of Comparative Human Rights in the U.S. John current works with Oxfam Boston.
Patty Kean, Ed.D
Patty Kean is an Associate Professor at Curry College in the Program for the Advancement of Learning, which supports students with identified learning disabilities in their college studies. Patty is also the founding member of the Curry College Committee for Human Rights Education and Activism, the winner of the Curry College Human Rights Award in 2002, and a recipient of the Social Justice Scholarship at Walden University. Patty is a past educational consultant for the UNESCO Chair of Comparative Human Rights in the United States and is currently researching the effects of global social justice programming on the learning and identity formation of undergraduate college students.
Sunny Ahn
Sunny is a Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Context Connect, a wireless software company, focused on private communication services. Mr. Ahn was a founder of Takeaclass, a database company focused on providing marketing services for over 800 educational institutions, which was sold to Mindedge in 2001. Sunny has held senior consulting and marketing positions at GeoPartners Research and the SAS Institute and was a database analyst within the Internal Medicine Department at the Massachusetts General Hospital. Sunny holds patents in the areas of directory/connectivity services and serves on the Boards of several technology and non-profit organizations. As an industry thought-leader, he has testified in front of the US House of Representatives on the topic of privacy and communication services. Sunny was an academic researcher at the MIT Sloan School of Management and received his Bachelor’s degree (cum laude) from Harvard University.
Jamila Hussein Eriksen, M.D.
Jamila is a 39 year old woman born of Danish and Indian parents in Kenya, who presently lives north of Copenhagen, Denmark with her husband and daughter. She received her primary education in Kenya, college education at Wellesley College in Massachussetts, USA and medical degree at the University of Copenhagen. Jamila completed her medical degree in 2000 and is presently working towards her specialty in orthopaedic surgery. She has a contract with the Danish army and has, on two occasions, traveled with them to Kosovo in her capacity as a doctor. In addition to that, she occasionally flies with the Danish Airforce Rescue Helicopter on search and rescue missions.
“With my international and medical background, my belief in education, my interest in different cultures coupled with my interest in helping those less fortunate than me, it would be a great honour for me to be able to support an organization like Help Women Heal.”
Jan Malekzade
Jan studied International Law at Oxford University and is now the head of the United Nations Assistance Mission Western Regional Office in Heart. Prior to this post, Jan was a senior policy advisor to the United Nations and stationed in Kabul.
Meena Nanji
Meena is a South-Asian Kenyan American filmmaker who has produced, written and directed award-winning independent documentaries and experimental videos. Titles include Voices of the Morning, a 15 minute piece about the effects of orthodox Muslim law on young women, Living in Colour about 2nd generation South Asian youth living in Los Angeles, and View from a Grain of Sand, three decades of Afghanistan’s recent history told through the perspectives of three Afghan women, a teacher, a doctor, and an activist.
Christyne J. Vachon
Christyne J. Vachon is the founder of AHeadStand.org and a consultant to, on the board and community volunteer in many nonprofit organizations and business enterprises. Ms. Vachon is adjunct faculty at Northeastern, teaching international business and law classes. She is a former Fulbright Grant recipient, teaching and researching law in Mongolia. Ms. Vachon has experience in venture capital and entrepreneurial law and business. Prior to that, Ms. Vachon served as an attorney for the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Ms. Vachon has her BA from Wellesley College and her J.D. from the University of Denver where she was a Chancellor Scholar and received the Sutton award for research and publishing in international law. Further, she completed the international law program at the Hague Academy of International Law in the Netherlands.
