Board of Directors

Lacey Alexander, PhD, RN, GERO-BC

Board of Directors Chair

Lacey Alexander, PhD, RN, GERO-BC, is a clinical assistant professor in the School of Nursing at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her research is focused on how bias and discrimination impact the clinician-patient relationship. Most recently, she is exploring how negative interactions between patients and clinicians about weight can create barriers to quality and timely care delivery. She also completed an Advanced Fellowship in Women’s Health at the VA Hospital in Madison, Wisconsin. Lacey continues to moonlight at the VA in hospice, serves as her hospital’s LGBTQ+ Veteran Care Coordinator, and intermittently teaches a large undergraduate course about gender and health at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She is excited to serve on the Board of Directors because she is passionate about creating resources to guide consumers in making safe decision about their health.

Bindiya Patel, MPA

Board Secretary

As Bindiya Patel leads strategy and fundraising for the Global Leadership Forum. She also serves as core faculty to develop globally-minded social purpose leaders.

Ms. Patel has more than 20 years of experience leading projects and initiatives in the global health sector. In her last role at PATH, Ms. Patel served as managing director for PATH’s largest division where she oversaw strategy, operations and integration. She also led the implementation of an innovative approach to equity in programming across the organization. Earlier in her career at PATH, she  advocated for new HIV prevention options for women in the Global Campaign for Microbicides, managed US government funded projects on tuberculosis in Tanzania, served on PATH’s strategy team, and launched the PATH Center for Malaria Control and Elimination. In her roles with PATH’s strategy team and Global Health Programs division, Ms. Patel designed and led organization-wide change initiatives to enable structured collaboration across countries and programs to strengthen PATH’s impact. Prior to PATH, she oversaw child health and nutrition programming in multiple South African townships and managed grants to local organizations in the UK.

Ms. Patel earned a bachelor’s degree in environmental engineering from Cornell University and a master’s degree in public policy from Princeton University. She serves on the board of directors for the National Women’s Health Network and the Civic Council for the Master of Arts in Applied International Studies at the University of Washington Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies.

Carrie Kaya

Board Treasurer

Carrie is a Senior Associate at Susan Matlack Jones & Associates supporting nonprofits with specialized accounting and bookkeeping. She prides herself on providing useful, accurate financials that allow management and Boards to make decisions about their organization’s financial health. After a decade living outside the US, she is excited to bring her enthusiasm to work for women’s healthcare. Carrie’s focus on women’s healthcare was reinforced while dealing with a healthcare challenge in Morocco and Turkey and seeing the differences in care and treatment. She is excited to join the Board of the Network!

Angela Collins

Board of Directors

Angela is an accomplished public relations leader with extensive expertise in brand development, product life-cycle strategy, multicultural engagement, corporate social responsibility, cause marketing, and innovation. As a 29-year veteran of the nonprofit industry, she has helped numerous organizations, ranging from grassroots nonprofits to multi-national organizations, navigate through major revitalization initiatives by building communications strategies to better position them for growth. Currently, as SVP of Diversity and Inclusion at Brodeur Partners, she leads a practice area to help create relevant engagement across diverse audiences.

Carmita Padilla, MBA

Board of Directors

Carmita Padilla is a health equity champion and an accomplished non-profit executive with 30+ years of experience building partnerships that innovate shared mission-oriented solutions.

She is currently the Chief Program & Sites Officer at the nonprofit Health Leads. She has also served as its Vice President of Partnerships and Initiatives, Executive Director for New York Operations, and National Director of Program Expansion, among other roles. Carmita started her career at AT&T and Deloitte Consulting before shifting her relationship, operations and business management expertise to the non-profit sector, as the Executive Director of Women’s Health & Counseling Center.  She has also held Development roles at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund and Hunter College. Carmita holds a BA from Rutgers College and an MBA from Lehigh University. She lives in New York City and is fluent in Spanish.

Christina Clay (LDM, CPM, MPH)

Board of Directors

Christina Clay, LDM, CPM, MPH is a Community Midwife in Portland, Oregon with over 15 years of community health experience and a passion for addressing maternal health disparities. She currently serves as a Population Health Specialist with a Medicaid health plan that serves low-income rural, urban, and suburban Oregonians. Christina has a demonstrated commitment to reproductive health through her continued advocacy for expanded access to Community Birth, teaching childbirth education, developing reproductive health curriculum, and currently practicing as a part-time home-birth midwife, primarily serving families receiving health coverage through the Oregon Health Plan. In her spare time, Christina enjoys exploring the world with her family and is always eager to try new things – from unique cuisine to outdoor adventures in sunshine or rain. She is thrilled to serve on the Board of Directors for NWHN to continue to build partnerships and support health outcomes across the U.S.

Hillary M Stemple Esq.

Board of Directors

Hillary M Stemple grew up in a rural town in West Virginia. She saw firsthand the impact the lack of access to health care resources could have, particularly on girls and women in her community. Through her work as a lawyer specializing in issues related to health care provision, she works with clients to address information gaps and access barriers to reproductive care. This work has also developed her understanding of how social disparities impact health care, particularly women’s health care, and she takes every opportunity she can to counsel the government, providers, and advocacy organizations about the steps they can take to address such disparities. As a new NWHN Board member, she hopes to provide insights into the regulatory and legal issues that create barriers to care that must be addressed to help ensure women in all communities have the access to health care and health information that they need.

Kelley Dennings (PMP, MPH, CPH, FPHW)

Board of Directors

Kelley Dennings is a senior campaigner with the nonprofit Center for Biological Diversity where she develops and executes advocacy and outreach initiatives that address the connections between reproductive health, gender equity, endless growth and the climate and extinction crises. Her campaigns focus on solutions from voluntary family planning to alternative economies to address how the effects of patriarchy, capitalism, and other systems of oppression affect people and the environment. Prior to the Center, she worked in waste management and forest conservation. She holds a bachelor’s degree in natural resources from N.C. State and a master’s degree in public health from the University of South Florida. She is certified in public health and as a family planning health worker and is a member of the American Public Health Association, the National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Association, Nurses for Sexual and Reproductive Health and SisterSong. She is the founding president of the nonprofit Social Marketing Association of North America. She has been published in EcoWatch, Environmental Health News, Journal of Environmental Health, Journal of Extension, Journal of Population and Sustainability, Journal of Social Issues, Ms. Magazine, Nonprofit Quarterly, Resource Recycling, Rewire, Social Marketing Quarterly, Sustainability Times and The Hill.

Kendel Paulsen (MA , ACC, CDCS)

Board of Directors

Kendel Paulsen is a Certified Life and Career coach and speaker. She helps women at all stages of life and careers to define success on their terms, discover their life’s purpose, and lead a life with vision and strategy. With more than 30 years of experience in corporate and non-profit, Kendel brings a wealth of practical knowledge to his/her coaching work. Kendel received her BA degree from the University of Mary Washington and her MA from the University of Phoenix. Kendel earned her Board-Certified Coach (BCC) certification from the Center for Credentialing and Education (CCE) and her Associate Coaching Certification (ACC) from the International Coaching Federation (ICF). She also holds a Career Development Coaching Services (CDCS) certification from the Institute for Life Coach Training. Kendel lives in Northern Virginia with her husband of 30 years and is the mother of 3 adult children. When Kendel is not working, you can find her hiking or planning for a visit to her children. Kendel can be reached at [email protected] or www.kendelpaulsen.com.

Nichele Hoskins

Board of Directors

Nichele Hoskins lives in Savannah, Georgia and serves as Healthy Savannah’s Communication Manager for Covid/Flu. Under a CDC grant, her key duties are to build community health knowledge, and to increase access and understanding of Covid-18, the seasonal flu, and the vaccines that can help reduce the disproportionate burden they place on Black and Latiné communities in Chatham County.

A longtime health journalist, Hoskins earned an MA in Journalism from The University of Michigan and has worked as a senior editor at such national publications as Health and Heart & Soul magazines. Her journalism experience began at such daily newspapers as The Sacramento Bee, The Savannah Morning News, the Shreveport (La.) Journal and the Fort Worth (Texas) Star-Telegram.

Hoskins, who has long championed women’s health and racial health equity, is also a national spokeswoman for WomenHeart: The National Coalition for Women with Heart Disease. She also serves on the board of the Forsyth Farmer’s Market and is a member of the Links Inc., Savannah (Ga.) Chapter.

“I look forward to joining the board of NWHN in its important work informing, supporting, and advocating for women and women’s health,” says Hoskins.

Tyra Gravesande

Board of Directors

Tyra Gravesande (Grayv-Sanne-Dee) is an Associate at Nonprofit Professionals Advisory Group or “NPAG”. She works closely with her team to manage outreach to network contacts in order to develop deep, diverse, highly qualified candidate pools; manages high volume of contact points with authenticity and aplomb, captures and tracks critical data; and develop compelling narratives to engage leaders meaningfully around the challenges our clients face with the sexual and reproductive health organizational spaces. To no avail, she is particularly passionate and experienced in sexual and reproductive health, particularly health disparities and maternal health that pertains to black women, as well as being motivated by a vision of creating more equitable and inclusive communities.

Her career journey includes working as a Health Equity Intern at Impact Health in Washington, DC, where she conducted research and analysis of federal health policy developments. She prepared advocacy materials for clients and summarized congressional hearings and administration meetings related to Medicare, Medicaid, and commercial insurance markets. Tyra also worked as a Diversity and Health Equity Intern at the PAN Foundation in Washington, DC. In this role, she conducted research and analysis, particularly in organizations focused on minority populations, nonprofits focused on therapeutic areas, physician organizations, and patient advocacy organizations. She collaborated cross-functionally to develop metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs) for the DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) and Health Equity scorecards. Additionally, she tracked and improved key D/HE metrics and communicated process improvement opportunities across the organization. She has also served as a Bioethics and Health Policy Intern at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, TX. Tyra has also completed and published a manuscript on Black maternal health and health policy. She shadowed clinical ethics consultants and participated in research and writing that supported the clinical ethics mission. She also presented her work at the annual Center Research Showcase. Additionally, her role as a Research Assistant at the Maya Angelou Center for Health Equity underscores her capacity to analyze and synthesize data to investigate racial disparities in the experiences of caregivers during the pandemic.

Tyra received her BA in Comparative Women’s Studies from Spelman College with a concentration in Women’s Health and is currently a Masters Candidate at Clarkson University and the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. Studying Bioethics with a concentration in Health Policy.

Outside of work, Tyra is a New Jersey native, however she enjoys traveling to New York City, Atlanta and Tulsa to visit friends and family and enjoy the different sceneries. She also enjoys traveling to the Carribbean Islands to bask in the sun, shopping, reading, and all things beauty and food.