MHLIC Team

Tanisa Adimu, MPH, is an assistant project director at the Georgia Health Policy Center and is a co-leader of the Community Health Systems Development team. Adimu has specialized experience in developing, administrating, and evaluating community health interventions designed to improve the quality and access of healthcare services and prevention strategies. At the center, she provides technical assistance to rural networks and consortia.

Leigh Alderman serves as senior advisor to the director of the Georgia Health Policy Center. She focuses on partnering with community stakeholders to address the determinants of health and equity, applying her expertise in strategic planning, health policy, systems thinking, and meeting design and facilitation. Alderman leads the center’s Health in All Policies and Public Health Law Research teams. 

Christie Allen, MSN, RNC-NIC, CPHQ is a senior director of the Alliance for Innovation on Maternal Health and associated projects at the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, focused on leading programming and interventions nationally on patient safety, quality improvement, and improving outcomes for all birthing families. With over 20 year of nursing experience, she has worked as a Board-Certified Lactation Consultant, NICU and high-risk obstetrical nurse, and managed a state-wide program for pregnant individuals with active substance use disorder.

Rakiah Anderson, MPH was previously an Evaluation Coordinator for the Maternal Telehealth Access Project. She received her MPH (2020) in Health Behavior from the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health and trained in Culturally Responsive Evaluation by way of the American Evaluation Association GEDI Scholarship. Rakiah’s career commitment is to utilize culturally responsive and racial equity approaches to understand, and address, inequities in health outcomes.

Lauren Blachowiak, MEd, is the Government Affairs Manager at the Association of Maternal & Child Health Programs (AMCHP). In this role, she executes AMCHP’s policy activities, including advocating for Title V Maternal and Child Health Services Block Grant funding, promoting AMCHP’s federal policy agenda, and supporting the AMCHP policy team. Prior to joining AMCHP, Ms. Blachowiak served as the Disability Policy Fellow with the Association of University Centers on Disabilities (AUCD), where she advocated for federal policies benefiting individuals with disabilities, their families, and the professionals who support them. She holds a Master of Education in Early Childhood Special Education from Vanderbilt University and a Bachelor of Arts degree from Johns Hopkins University.

Katherine Bryant, MA, MSPH, is a Research Associate and Project Manager for the UNC Center for Maternal and Infant Health and a Project Director in the UNC Jordan Institute for Families. Her portfolio includes serving as the project manager for a HRSA MCHB funded program – Improving Women’s Health: Preconception CoIIN. She brings many skills to the team including strategic thinking and program planning/implementation.

Dorothy Cilenti, DrPH, MSW, MPH, has worked in local and state public health agencies in North Carolina for more than 20 years. She is a Clinical Associate Professor in the Dept of Maternal and Child Health at the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health where she directs the Maternal Health Learning and Innovation Center and the National MCH Workforce Development Center, under cooperative agreements with the Health Resources Services Administration, Maternal and Child Health Bureau.

Andria Cornell, MPH, is the associate director for women’s and infant health at the Association of Maternal and Child Health Programs (AMCHP). She coordinates a dynamic team and an extensive portfolio of grant-funded efforts centered in racial equity and bridging public health and clinical care in women’s health, improving birth outcomes, care and support for the mother-baby dyad, and transition to early childhood systems.

Leslie deRosset has been working in maternal and child health for more than two decades. She has spent her career working internationally, in North and South Carolina with state government, non-profit organizations and now at the Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she is an Implementation Specialist. Within the MHLIC, Leslie serves as a Coach for the state of Montana and supports the Innovation and Engagement Core. Leslie is passionate about improving the inequities that cause disparities in maternal and child health. Leslie lives in Raleigh, North Carolina with her husband, two teenagers (16 and 18) and Stella, her yellow lab.

James Dills, MPH, MUP, is a Health Integration Associate at the Georgia Health Policy Center (GHPC), where he works to improve public health by advancing Health in All Policies perspectives of decision-making. His areas of expertise are health impact assessment (HIA), systems thinking, and healthy community design. Jimmy also supports the Systems Integration Core of the National MCH Workforce Development Center.

Deitre Epps, founder and CEO for RACE for Equity, has over 25 years of experience in providing education, training, and technical assistance to health, human services, and education leaders to support evidence-informed strategies towards improving individual and community wellbeing. Her work has included capacity building and direct support for leaders to implement data driven decision making with Results Based Accountability™ (RBA). As a global consultant, she works with international agencies to advance culturally and linguistically appropriate strategies that achieve results.

Allison George, MPH, MCHES, UNC-CH, has over 15 years of public health experience. She has created, delivered and evaluated trainings and courses on a wide variety of topics. Allison is committed to elevating the rich contributions that diverse backgrounds, faces, and experiences bring to any learning experience. She splits her time with the MCH Workforce Development Center.

Alison serves as the MHLIC Learning Experience Manager.

Tamala M. Grissett is Center Administrator and has worked in higher education for more than 20 years. Tamala has experience in relationship building, strategic planning, and knowledge management. Her previous role was as the business operations manager at Launch Chapel Hill and the Entrepreneurship Center at UNC Kenan-Flagler.

Piia Hanson, MSPH, MBA, PH Solutions, LLC, truly embodies Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s famous quote “Life’s most persistent and urgent question is: What are you doing for others?”  Through her national work with academic institutions, government agencies and non-profits to improve quality and access to care, her local work purchasing and renovating investment properties to provide safe, affordable housing for families, and her international volunteer work providing medications and program support in rural communities, she is committed to using her knowledge, skills and abilities to ensure that all families have access to the tools and resources they need to thrive.

Kimberly D. Harper, MSN, RN, MHA, is a registered nurse with 17 years of experience in Maternal and Child Health. Her breadth of experience ranges from leadership and nursing roles in labor and delivery units, postpartum care, public health home visiting programs, and hospital administration. She holds several roles at the UNC Center for Maternal and Infant Health where she provides training and technical assistance to state and national maternal health initiatives.

Joan Healy received her MPH from the Gillings School and has extensive background in U.S. and global health systems strengthening and capacity building, including development, testing, implementation and scale-up of interventions to increase access to and quality of health services in Latin America, Africa and Asia. She has managed the WHO Collaborating Center’s contributions toward the National Family Planning Training Center’s technical assistance and leadership capacity building for Title X grantee organizations and their networks.  She also recently managed the pilot phase of an NIH/NHLBI funded Maternal Health Community Implementation Project on use of implementation research for putting evidence-based recommendations into practice to reduce maternal health disparities that led to five-year Phase II funding. 

Lynda Krisowaty, MHS, is the Senior Program Manager for Evidence-Based Practice at the Association of Maternal & Child Health Programs (AMCHP) and leads AMCHP’s Evidence & Implementation Team.  In this role, she manages activities which enhance the MCH workforce’s capacity to identify/develop, implement, improve, and sustain evidence-based/-informed practices as well as apply evidence-based decision making tools and processes. Lynda also supports the Evidence-Based Decision Making Core of the National MCH Workforce Development Center.

Erin McClain, MPH, MA, is Assistant Director and Research Associate with the UNC Center for Maternal & Infant Health, where she brings over 15 years of experience facilitating and implementing perinatal systems change and quality improvement initiatives. She focuses broadly on the health of women of reproductive age, engaging in qualitative research with postpartum mothers and serving as a state coach for the HRSA-funded Preconception CoIIN and the MHLIC.

Dr. M. Kathryn Menard, MD, MPH, is a Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology and a Maternal Fetal Medicine specialist on faculty at UNC, serving for fourteen years as Vice Chair of the department, Director of the division of Maternal Fetal Medicine, and Director of the Center for Maternal and Infant Health. She serves as Medical Director of the NC Pregnancy Medical Home program. She is an executive team member for AIM and an expert in the implementation of Levels of Maternal Care.

Amy Mullenix currently serves as the Deputy Director for the National Maternal and Child Health Workforce Development Center and the Maternal Health Learning & Innovation Center, two national training and technical assistance centers housed in the MCH Department at the Gillings School of Global Public Health at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

In this role, she coordinates and supports partnerships among the multiple academic and practice partners engaged in each Center to build the capacity of MCH practitioners across the country. For the National MCH Workforce Development Center, Ms. Mullenix also serves as the primary liaison with states and other jurisdictions as they seek technical assistance opportunities, and serves as a team coach for their health transformation work. In the Maternal Health Learning & Innovation Center, she also serves as a Maternal Health Innovation state team coach.

Mullenix, a Nebraska native, previously worked as the state coordinator of the North Carolina Preconception Health Campaign at the March of Dimes and as a bilingual social worker for pregnant women and families in public health departments and community health centers in North Carolina and Nebraska.

Rachel Peragallo Urrutia, MD, MSCR, is an obstetrician gynecologist who is also trained in preventive medicine. She is the Medical Consultant for the Women’s Health Branch of the NC Department of Public Health. She has expertise in providing preventive care to women of reproductive age, including postpartum and preconception care. She has experience with qualitative research, systematic reviews, and preventive services guideline development. Her greatest desire is that all her patients would have an equitable chance of achieving their own health and reproductive goals.

Janet has over 30 years of experience in public health practice and workforce development globally, nationally, regionally, and at the local level. Her most recent position was as a senior instructor and the Director of Practice and Workforce Development at the University of South Carolina Arnold School of Public Health where she worked closely with the state health department, and conducted workforce research, such as training impact studies. She is an architect of the Council on Linkages Core Public Health Competencies and continues to Co-Chair the competency committee. Prior to joining the Arnold School, she spent 17 years at the NC Institute of Public Health as a Practice and Workforce Specialist. Among her many projects, she was the Director/Co-PI of the Southeast Public Health Training Center and she was Co-PI of the Women’s Integrated Systems for Health (WISH). She received her MPH from the UC-Berkeley in health behavior with a concentration in MCH.​

Laura Powis, MPH, is the Program Manager for Evidence-Based Policy & Practice on AMCHP’s Evidence and Implementation team. In this role, she manages AMCHP’s Innovation Hub, an online platform that houses the MCH Innovations Database, a searchable repository of “what’s working” in the field of MCH that includes effective policies and practices from the field that are positively impacting MCH populations. She also serves as the Core Manager for the Evidence-Based Decision Making Core at the National MCH Workforce Development Center. Laura received a Master of Public Health in Maternal and Child Health from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Gillings School of Global Public Health and a Bachelor of Science in Human Development from Cornell University. Laura supports the MHLIC’s Policy Core.

Bill Rencher, JD, MPH, is an attorney and senior research associate at the Georgia Health Policy Center (GHPC). His expertise includes federal and state Medicaid regulations, compliance reviews, legal analysis, and report writing. He has experience with hospital financial assistance programs, federal and state health care laws and regulations and the ACA. He serves on the Center of Excellence for Children’s Behavioral Health and leads GHPC’s COVID Legislation Learning Group.

Sherie Lou Santos, MPH, MCHES is the current Director of Policy and Government Affairs at the Association of Maternal & Child Health Programs (AMCHP). In this role, she serves as a core member of the Public Policy & Government Affairs team in which she executes AMCHP’s legislative agenda, leads on appropriations advocacy – including advocating for the Title V Maternal and Child Health Services Block Grant, represents AMCHP in various policy coalitions, and influences the alignment of resources at the federal and state levels to improve support for maternal and child health.  

Prior to joining AMCHP (and the Maternal Health Learning & Innovation Center), she was the Legislative Director & Health Policy Director for Congresswoman Diana DeGette (D-CO), the Chairwoman of the Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee and a Member of the Energy and Commerce Committee. She was also previously the American Public Health Association Congressional Policy Fellow for Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA), then Ranking Member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee. 

Ms. Santos is a Master Certified Health Education Specialist (MCHES) and earned her dual MPH at the Loma Linda University with concentrations in maternal and child health and health promotion and education. She received her bachelor’s degree in psychology from The George Washington University with minors in biology and sociocultural anthropology.

Kelli joined the MHLIC team in September 2020. She is proud to contribute to the overall improvement of maternal health in some way, shape, or form so that other women and people who give birth do not have go through the same ordeals that other before them had. She has 20 years of marketing and communications experience working with nonprofits and small businesses. She has worked with internationally and nationally-recognized organizations and garnered credits as a photographer, journalist, cinematographer, producer, editor, and director. Kelli earned a BSBA in Marketing and a BS in Communications from Western Carolina University.

Angela Snyder, Ph.D. M.P.H. is a Research Associate Professor at Georgia State University and is the Director of Health Policy and Financing at the Georgia Health Policy Center.  Her work includes research, policy evaluation, and technical assistance in program implementation for state– and community–level health projects.  Her research uses both qualitative and quantitative data (including administrative databases) to study the health outcomes that result from the organization and financing of public health systems.  Much of her previous research has been in child health and wellbeing focusing on evaluating policy options for increasing health insurance coverage for children and the quality of care received by children enrolled in public benefit programs.  She has accomplished this work through a fifteen-year partnership with the Georgia Department of Community Health.  Most recently, through a partnership with the University of North Carolina—Chapel Hill, she has applied her knowledge of Medicaid to co-lead the policy core of the Maternal Health Learning and Innovation Center and has also partnered on the Maternal Telehealth Access Project.  Dr. Snyder received her Ph.D. in health policy from Yale University and her M.P.H. in health systems management from Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine.  Prior to pursuing her Ph.D., Dr. Snyder worked for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for nine years.   

Venus Standard, MSN, CNM, is a midwife, that believes in educating women and their families to live a healthy lifestyle by supporting family planning; promoting healthy, natural childbirth and encouraging breastfeeding. She enjoys partnering with her patients to ensure that their physical, mental, emotional, spiritual and cultural needs are met.

Alison Stuebe, MD, MSc, is a Professor and Board-Certified Maternal-Fetal Medicine subspecialist at the UNC School of Medicine and Distinguished Professor of Infant and Young Child Feeding at the Gillings School of Global Public Health. She is the interim MFM Division Director and Medical Director of Lactation Services at UNC Health Care.

Born and raised in Uganda, Lydia has lived in the USA and Denmark. She has a Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery from Makerere University in Uganda where she practiced as a medical doctor before moving to the US. She also received a Master’s in Public Health Leadership from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Lydia is an energetic family and career-oriented woman who enjoys using the skills she has acquired in evaluation and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion to support organizations in cultural development and measuring success of their programs for the communities they serve using the Results-Based Accountability framework. She is experienced in evaluation, intercultural development, and public health.

An English native with meticulous event planning and project management professional with over twenty years of medical event planning experience. Until recently she was working as VP of Conference Services with Well Assembled Meetings which managed over 40 conferences a year, overseeing all aspects of event planning from venue selection to speakers, vendors, and running both in-person and hybrid conferences.

She has developed proficiency in many computer applications including: Microsoft Office, G-suite, QuickBooks, Zoom, WordPress, Regfox, Your Membership, Constant Contact, Cvent, CrowdCompass (certified), Whova, Vimeo, Omnipress (Catalyst), Formidable, Formsite, & DropBox.

She will be overseeing all the internal and external meetings hosted by MHLIC, particularly on the National Maternal Health Innovation Symposium which is held annually. She is zealously detailed-oriented and the member of the team who will make sure every aspect of your meeting is covered and is really excited to be a part of UNC’s Maternal Health Learning and Innovation Center.

Christine Tucker, PhD, MPH, is an assistant professor and researcher with two decades of quantitative and qualitative research and practice experience in MCH and Latinx health. Currently she conducts research on postpartum care and evaluating MCH evidence-based strategies in North Carolina. She is passionate about sharing data in a way that is actionable and serves as the lead for the evaluation team.

Kristin Tully, PhD, is a medical anthropologist engaged in a program of research that centers around safety in patient transitions through maternity care, patient-provider communication, breastfeeding experiences, parent-infant nighttime interactions, and health care innovation. Broadly, she is interested in engaging new families, clinicians, and other key stakeholders to identify unmet patient needs and co-develop effective, sustainable, and scalable solutions.

Sarah Verbiest, DrPH, MSW, MPH is the Director of the Jordan Institute for Families at the UNC School of Social Work and the Executive Director of the Center for Maternal and Infant Health at the School of Medicine. She feels totally honored to also be a Co-PI for this project.

Suzanne Woodward, BS, is the communications director at UNC Center for Maternal and Infant Health and specializes in health communications and digital media. She serves as the website/digital manager for numerous program and project websites, including ShowYourLoveToday.com, BeforeandBeyond.org and NewMomHealth.com. Suzanne leads MHLIC’s communication team.