Staff
Teri Bordenave
Our Interim Executive Director
Teri Bordenave
Interim Executive Director
Teri Bordenave is a co-founder of the Thalia Group LLC and the newly appointed Interim Executive Director at the National Women’s Health Network. She is a member of the Interim Executive Network and is a Board Source Certified Nonprofit Consultant with extensive experience advising health-focused organizations, including Family Planning Advocates for New York State, the Mohawk Valley Physicians Health Plan, and the North Country Home Health and Hospice Agency.
Prior to her successful career as a consulting interim executive, Teri served as the President and CEO for Girls Incorporated of the Greater Capital Region from 1988 to 2009. Teri holds a Masters of Human Services Administration from Antioch University New England, where she honed her skills in organizational development, consulting, and training. Learn more about her role at the Network here.
Denys Symonette Mitchell
Director of Policy & Partnerships
Denys Symonette Mitchell
Director of Policy & Partnerships
Denys Symonette Mitchell is the newly appointed Director of Policy & Partnerships at the National Women’s Health Network. In this role, she will lead the Network by advancing its mission on Capitol Hill and across Federal agencies while strategically positioning the organization as a trusted voice for all women. She will identify and cultivate new alliances, and will lead the Network in developing effective, intersectional, and equitable policy campaigns.
A preeminent thought-leader and strategist, Denys has a successful record translating asks into action for national nonprofits. Most recently, she served as the Senior Policy Analyst for the National Birth Equity Collaborative. Prior to that role, Denys led a health policy consultancy where she developed innovative strategies utilizing an anti-racist approach. As a former Congressional staffer and registered lobbyist at the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network, she brings over a decade of combined experience in government and nonprofit operations, in addition to a strong working knowledge of Washington and deeply cultivated relationships with key players in the Beltway. Most recently, Denys was spotlighted as an Emerging Leader by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation for her transformative work as a member of The Black Maternal Health Federal Policy Collective – a group of Black women policy leaders working to develop strategy and policy solutions to address America’s Black maternal health crisis.
Denys completed her undergraduate and graduate studies at Howard University. She resides in Prince George’s County, Maryland with her husband and their infant and toddler sons.
Adele Costa
Director of Communications
Adele Costa
Director of Communications
Adele Costa graduated from the State University of New York at Geneseo in 2011 with degrees in English and History, and when she realized that wasn't going to feed her in the middle of a recession, she joined the U.S. Peace Corps. There she spent 2 years as a youth development coordinator in a small mountain village in Morocco, where she worked with young women on life skills and self-expression. She came back to the US in 2015, got her Masters in Public Administration, and spent five years working in NYS government in various policy and program positions in the human services sector. In 2020, she decided to stop dating writing and to marry it, which she did by starting her own copywriting business. She started consulting for the National Women's Health Network in September of 2020, and accepted the offer of Director of Communications in October 2021. Adele is honored to be able to get reliable, compelling health information into the hands of the people who need it most.
Carter Ringo
Multimedia Communications Lead
Carter Ringo
Multimedia Communications Lead
cringo@nwhn.org
Carter Ringo graduated from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 2022 with their Bachelor’s of Fine Arts in Interactive, Game, and Sound Arts. Their expertise ranges in the multimedia field and have additional interests in Disability rights and accessibility advocacy. Prior to working for the Network, they completed two years of experience as a NASA 3D design intern at the Goddard Space Flight Center.
They currently serve as the Network’s Multimedia Communications Lead, and their work includes digital design, web and social media support, and audio-visual editing.
Erin Evans
Director of Operations
Erin Evans
Director of Operations
Erin is the Director of Operations, responsible for managing the office’s daily functions and ensuring that everything runs smoothly. She is the main point of contact for vendors and also reaches out to them if anything goes wrong. She joins the NWHN after spending the last 10 years working in residential property management and commercial real estate, where she managed research teams and coordinated large projects. Erin attending the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), where she focused on History and Art History.
Carli De La Cruz
Social Media Manager
Carli De La Cruz
Social Media Manager
cdelacruz@nwhn.org
Carli is a copywriter and social media maven in Denver, CO. She earned her Bachelor’s Degree in Sociology and Legal Studies from the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC) in 2011. She is passionate about women’s health and social justice issues. Through her work for the Network, she leverages various social media platforms to educate women of all ages on important health issues so they feel empowered to advocate for their health in medical settings.
Rachel Branaman
Interim Director of Development
Rachel Branaman
Interim Director of Development
rbranaman@nwhn.org
Rachel is the founder and principal consultant of Talem Consulting, a national, full-service diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice (DEIJ), woman-owned firm which provides nonprofits the tools they need to build capacity, fundraise, and dismantle systems of inequity. Our team provides an intersectional and equity-based framework to ensure the communities being served are centered in the work we do. Rachel is currently expanding Talem’s 12-month leadership program for BIPOC women to ensure they have a supportive space to build their nonprofit management toolkit and leadership skills for long-term transformation.
Rachel has 20 years of nonprofit expertise as an executive director of Alley's House and in fundraising/development roles at Dallas Black Dance Theatre, Dallas Symphony Orchestra, Jewish Community Center of Dallas, Dallas Heritage Village, and Dallas Children's Museum. She graduated from Austin College with a BA in French and from Regis University with a Master's in Nonprofit Management with a capstone project in Cape Town, South Africa. She is an alumnus of Leadership Texas, a returned U.S. Peace Corps volunteer to Namibia (2009-2011), and serves as an executive board member of Association of Philanthropic Counsel (APC). Her community work includes advocacy around Peace Corps reform, healthcare, and national/ international civil rights policies.
Rachel lives in Richmond, Virginia. This land was originally home to the Algonquian-speaking tribes, Youghtanund, Powhatan, and Chickahominy which were part of the Powhatan Confederacy. They are also known as Algonquian because of their language and common culture.
Hannah Hall
Development Associate
Hannah Hall
Development Associate
hhall@nwhn.org
Hannah Graduated from George Mason University in Fairfax, VA in 2019 with a Bachelors of Arts Degree in History, duel minoring in Communications and Nonprofit Studies. She was able to partake in a Nonprofit Studies Fellowship program through the school of integrative studies at GMU, sparking her passion for the industry and a career focused on making an impact. Since then, she has cultivated experiences and foundational knowledge through several opportunities within the nonprofit industry in order to best understand what it means to be a development/ nonprofit professional.
Hannah is a passionate team member for the National Women’s Health Network. Having started with the Network in the spring of 2022, she is invested in supporting its development efforts to promote the work of the NWHN, while also promoting the right of every individual to accessible health services and educational resources across the nation.
Board of Directors
Abigail Arons, MPH
Board Chair
Abigail Arons
Abigail Arons, MPH, is a project director at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). Since 2001, she has led research and evaluation projects at UCSF focusing on reproductive and sexual health, including long-acting contraception, sexual health education, adolescent pregnancy prevention, cancer prevention and HIV. Currently, she leads an NIH-funded randomized controlled trial on the impact of guaranteed income for low-income Black youth.
In addition to her professional expertise in reproductive health, Abigail took a crash course in breast cancer when she was diagnosed at age 31. After completing active treatment, she joined the Board of Breast Cancer Action, a national watchdog organization for the breast cancer movement, to advocate for more effective, less toxic treatments, and for a greater focus on the root causes of cancer, including environmental factors. Abigail is thrilled to serve as the Chair of the Board of the National Women’s Health Network.
Carrie Kaya
Treasurer
Carrie Kaya
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!
Yamini Oseguera-Bhatnagar, MPH
Yamini Oseguera-Bhatnagar
Yamini is a convener, strategist, and facilitator who has been working in HIV for over a decade. Yamini’s background ranges from youth development to women’s health, reproductive justice advocacy, health equity, racial & gender justice. She is passionate about supporting the resiliency of communities locally and worldwide. She is a UC Berkeley alum with an undergraduate degree in Ethnic Studies and is currently pursuing a Masters in Public Health at San Francisco State University with an emphasis in Health Education. She’s a first-generation immigrant and is raising her children in San Francisco, California
Carmita Padilla, MBA
Carmita Padilla
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.
Kimberly Robinson
Board Vice Chair
Kimberly Robinson
Kimberly Robinson is an independent consultant on reproductive justice issues, including the health of Black women. Kimberly has worked in direct services at a variety of settings, including for many years as the Director of Health Services at Women’s Health Specialists, an independent feminist health center. While at Women’s Health Specialists, she oversaw the operations for multiple clinics and satellite services and was responsible for the training and recruitment of all clinical staff including residents and medical students, helping to train the next generation of abortion providers. As a women’s health activist, Kimberly works with colleagues, communities and allies to build constituencies that demand reproductive justice for all women. She is the northern California liaison for Black Women for Wellness.
Meredith Field, MSEd, PhD
Secretary
Meredith Field
Meredith P. Field, MSEd, PhD, is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Alfred University. Meredith’s research interests focus on bodies, reproduction, health, medicine, and development as they intersect with social movements, science, technology, and society. Her recent research projects explored topics related to reusable menstrual products and access to maternal health care in rural areas of Pennsylvania. She previously worked with the Ohio Policy Evaluation Network and studied how policy changes regarding access to contraceptives and abortion in rural parts of Ohio, Kentucky, and West Virginia affect people’s lives. Meredith has been an activist since she was a child, beginning with local environmental issues and expanding to issues of women’s health, prisoners’ civil rights, and other human rights and social justice topics. She has worked in higher education for more than fourteen years. She earned her dual title PhD in Rural Sociology and Women’s Studies from The Pennsylvania State University.
Lacey Alexander, PhD, RN, GERO-BC
Lacey Alexander
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.
Marci Harris, PhD(c), MCP, MPH
Marci Harris
Marci Harris, MPP, MPH, is currently working on her PHD in Public Health at the University of Utah. Her research is focused on hereditary genetic syndromes and the comorbidities that occur after cancer diagnosis. She previously worked with Planned Parenthood Action Council of Utah working towards better reproductive rights policy in Utah. She has helped advocate for policies that protect the quality of women’s health. She is passionate about public health and the value of complete and accurate health information for women.