Executive Team & Directors
Executive Team
Brooke Wurst
Founder and Executive Director
Brooke is a longtime HIV/AIDS advocate and educator. She first began teaching adolescents to use the arts as a vehicle to learn life skills while she was an undergraduate at the University of Pennsylvania. From 1997 until 2009, Brooke was the program director of a private education group. She earned her master’s degree from Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism. She studied Literature as a graduate student at Harvard University and Literature and Photography at Oxford, and earned her BA with honors in Comparative Literature from the University of Pennsylvania. She also has certification in the Protection of Human Research Subjects from the National Institutes of Health. Brooke was behind the startup of several publications, including Jazz Club magazine, Basketball Coach magazine, and FlippedOnline.com. She has written for the editors of numerous publications including the Chicago Tribune, Rolling Stone, Collier’s Encyclopaedia and several technology magazines here and abroad. Brooke has been involved with performing arts as a writer and musician since she was a little girl. You may have missed her first performances-doing magic shows for her parents’ guests at dinner parties-back in 1978. Since then, she’s played to audiences as a musician and comedienne in New York, LA, Philadelphia, Boston, London, and Chicago. She has worked as an HIV/AIDS advocate for the GMHC in New York and with Fenway Community Health in Boston. Brooke also invented RemoteID, the patent-pending biometric technology protocol TRIAD uses in the field. Her lifelong dedication to empowering children in creative ways and belief that education is the only way to fight HIV/AIDS led her to found the TRIAD Trust in 2007.
To enquire about press or speaking engagements, please contact info@triadtrust.org
Lea MacKinnon
Director of Health Education Programming
Lea is a graduate of Stanford University where she majored in Human Biology with a concentration in Epidemiology. In addition, Lea was a starting forward for the Stanford Women’s Soccer Team. Lea is continuing her studies in a joint MD-MPH Program at the University of Arizona. As TRIAD’s Director of Medical Education, Lea trains and certifies local health experts in TRIAD’s Health Education Curriculum. She also oversees TRIAD Trust’s monitoring and evaluation strategy, including assisting in development of the RemoteID participant monitoring and evaluation system.
Jack Judson
Program Director
Jack is an actor and arts educator. He is a graduate of New York University’s prestigious Tisch School of the Arts and Phillips Academy Andover. Jack has performed around the world, but most importantly, he spent five months developing drama programs with children in post-Katrina New Orleans. Jack has trained drama program leaders and countless vulnerable children. He works closely with TRIAD’s Medical Education team and arts staff. In TRIAD’s partner communities, Jack helps local leaders create their own HIV-centered performance pieces through ImprovED, TRIAD’s innovative, dynamic method of engaging youth in the discussion about healthy decision-making. The troupes perform nationally in festivals, for tourists as income generating activities, but mostly as educational facilitators in schools and with TRIAD’s youth sports program participants. Jack also facilitates leadership and mentoring education programs for athletes in TRIAD’s sports programs, and works with our health educators to create new ways to engage children through performance.
Kelly Jarvis, PhD
Director of Research & Evaluation
As an evaluation researcher, Kelly has studied the impact and implementation of behavioral health prevention and intervention programs across a variety of domains and populations. She earned her doctorate from the University of California, Irvine, where her research on domestic violence, specifically the psychopathological correlates of exposure for children and their mothers and indicators of resilience, earned her a Harry F. Guggenheim Fellowship. After earning her BA from the University of Pennsylvania, she worked as a researcher at the National Institutes of Health and as a case manager for homeless adolescents and children orphaned by AIDS in Washington, DC. Kelly directs TRIAD’s monitoring and evaluation activities, which aim to document the effects of TRIAD’s programs and inform program adjustments that could maximize those effects.
Directors
TRIAD’s Board of Directors is comprised of internationally-recognized leaders in health care, public health policy, education, human rights, finance, athletics, performing arts, and the media. Directors are committed to TRIAD’s values and goals, and helping our partner communities establish sustainable activity-based HIV and life skills education programs.
Edward “Ted” Berk, MBA; Ted received an MBA from Harvard Business School, where he was a Baker Scholar. He was a Jean Monnet Fellow at Ecole Polytechnique (Paris), and he graduated magna cum laude from Harvard College with a BA in government and economics. Mr. Berk joined Bain Capital in 1997, and is a Managing Director of the firm based in London. Previously, he was a consultant with Bain & Company and also worked in the European mergers and acquisitions group at Banque Paribas. Ted is keenly aware of social, economic and development challenges facing southern African organization; he is a Director of Edcon, one of the largest retail groups on the continent.
Sally Fassler, MBA, CPA; Sally has been the Chief Financial Officer of Bain Capital’s Sankaty Fund since 2006, overseeing the fund’s $20 billion in assets. Prior to joining Bain Capital, Sally worked at PriceWaterhouseCoopers for more than 10 years. She has been instrumental in helping TRIAD comply with IRS non-profit governance regulations since 2007. Sally is a graduate of Brandeis University and earned her MBA from Northeastern University. She serves as the Treasurer of TRIAD’s Board of Directors and on the compensation committee.
Lisa Haddad, MD, MA, MPH; Physician, researcher; After graduating from Cornell University and earning a master’s in neurobiology at New York University, Lisa earned her medical degree at the State University of New York, Stony Brook. She did her residency in OB/GYN at Massachusetts General Hospital and Brigham & Women’s Hospital in Boston, and concentrated on reproductive planning and sexual health in developing regions. She has worked extensively on the ground in Zambia, Malawi, Guatemala, and South Africa helping communities develop reproductive health programs and tending to individuals’ health needs in the process. Lisa helps TRIAD create community-appropriate health and HIV components to its programs, and helps on the ground by training local leaders to manage women’s health and ante-natal care. She is currently doing a post-doctoral fellowship and earning her Master’s in Public Health at Emory University and at the Centers for Disease Control.
Ilana Hurwitz, JD, LLM, LLB; Born and raised in South Africa before immigrating to the United States, Ilana is an attorney and has served on the faculty at Boston College Law School and Boston University School of Law for more than 12 years. She has served as director of the Political Asylum/Immigration Representation Project, commissioner of the Newton (Massachusetts) Human Rights Commission and chair of the Schools/Education Subcommittee and Newton Explores Diversity initiative. Ilana also volunteered in the Legal Clinic division of the Common Ground Collective Relief Organization in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. While an associate at Boston-based law firm Hill & Barlow, Ilana assisted in drafting a proposal for ratification of the U.N. Convention Against Torture, and represented victims of domestic violence. She was formerly a fellow at the Legal Resources Centre in Johannesburg, the only independent public interest law facility in South Africa at the time. She trained paralegals to provide legal advice to people living in Soweto and other black townships in the Johannesburg area and handled legal cases regarding black housing matters, labor, consumer and resettlement issues. She earned her BA and LLB at University of the Witwatersrand, and her US legal degrees at Suffolk University and Harvard University Law School, with a concentration in Human Rights and International Law. Her commitment to social justice has helped guide TRIAD’s human rights and legal initiatives.
Dwayne Killings; Basketball Coach and League Development Executive; Dwayne attended Hampton University before transferring to UMass and earning a roster spot as a walk-on for the men’s basketball team. Too young to remember the Rage in the Cage days- but still a Minuteman is a Minuteman. After graudating, Dwayne was a part of the NBA Charlotte Bobcats’ coaching staff. He also for the NBA Development League, as Assistant Coach for the America East champion Boston University Terriers, before returning to Temple University as an Assistant Coach under NCAA coaching legend Fran Dunphy at Temple University, where he began his collegiate coaching experience. Dwayne has led coaching and player development clinics in TRIAD’s partner communities.
David Leepson, Emmy-winning director, producer, writer of documentary films and television Programming; David’s groundbreaking sports and popular culture documentaries earned him a commission from the Global Fund to produce two films about the HIV pandemic in Africa in conjunction with the 2005 G-8 meetings and the Live-8 concerts. Tracking the Monster, featuring Ashley Judd and India.Arie was shot on location over several months in Madagascar and Kenya. It was simulcasted globally during the Live-8 concerts and on Viacom’s networks to more than 2 billion viewers. His experience and frustration with the failure of international NGOs to create locally-sustainable programs was the impetus behind the formation of TRIAD. David worked for many years as a producer for HBO Sports, Fox Sports, and is the creator of Emmy-winning SportsScience. He is a graduate of the Newhouse School of Communications at Syracuse University.
Rebecca Lichtenfeld is a human rights advocate and musician. She is currently the Manager of Creative Advocacy at WITNESS, Peter Gabriel’s human rights organization that uses video to open the eyes of the world to human rights violations. Over the past decade, she has worked on projects in both activism and the arts in the United States, Latin America, Africa and Asia, since graduating from Wesleyan University. Prior to joining WITNESS, she worked at the International Center for Transitional Justice where she assisted countries pursuing accountability for past mass atrocities. She put together (and performs on) the CD “For The Lady”, which includes artists such as Paul McCartney, Coldplay and Ani DiFranco, and is raising awareness for imprisoned Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi of Burma. Rebecca has created, produced and executed advocacy projects with luminaries such as President José Ramos-Horta of East Timor, Paul Simon, Angelina Jolie, Youssou N’Dour,and President Evo Morales of Bolivia. Rebecca speaks Spanish and is proficient in French and Portuguese.