As founder and director of Public Health Law & Policy (PHLP), Marice Ashe manages long-term strategic planning for all of its projects and guides their day-to-day activities. She has been with the Public Health Institute for nearly 15 years, establishing and directing pioneering efforts that leverage legal and policy tools to promote public health. She teaches public health law at the University of California at Berkeley School of Public Health, and serves on the board of the California Center for Public Health Advocacy. She has also worked with the UC Office of the President and the Contra Costa County Health Services Department, and as a consultant with numerous private philanthropies and state and federal health agencies. She is a graduate of the University of Notre Dame, the UC Berkeley School of Public Health, and the UC Berkeley School of Law.

As an administrative assistant at PHLP, Yolanda Cazessus supports the National Policy & Legal Analysis Network to Prevent Childhood Obesity (NPLAN). She has worked as an assistant in the civil, criminal, family, and environmental law arena throughout her career, including serving as senior program assistant at the California regional office of the Environmental Defense Fund.

 

 

 

As the legal technical assistance director for the National Policy & Legal Analysis Network to Prevent Childhood Obesity (NPLAN), Quang Dang oversees the development and dissemination of legal and policy tools aimed at addressing the environmental causes of childhood obesity. Prior to joining PHLP, he worked as a senior litigation attorney at a law firm in San Francisco, and as a director for an international consulting firm, where he led teams to optimize the use of technology in litigation. He has also worked extensively with organizations serving at-risk youth in a range of areas, including health education, HIV/AIDS prevention, homelessness, elimination of discrimination and bias, leadership training, and mentoring. He is a graduate of Brown University (Phi Beta Kappa and magna cum laude) and the UC Berkeley School of Law.

As PHLP’s contracts manager, Maysa oversees the negotiation and preparation of all grants and contracts with the organization's funders and consultants. Prior to joining PHLP, Maysa worked as a corporate and intellectual property associate at McDermott Will & Emery, an international law firm; she also served extensively on the firm’s pro bono committee, representing asylum applicants and nonprofit organizations. She has also worked at Pepperdine University School of Law, serving as the associate director of career development for public interest and government organizations. Maysa graduated with honors from UCLA and received her law degree from UC Berkeley School of Law.

 

Christine Fry is the policy and program associate for PHLP's National Policy & Legal Analysis Network to Prevent Childhood Obesity (NPLAN). Prior to joining PHLP, she was a research analyst at the SPHERE Institute, a public policy consulting firm, where she worked with California child welfare agencies to develop and implement a standardized risk assessment tool for social workers. She also analyzed child welfare data to identify the reasons for overrepresentation of children of color in the child welfare system. She is a graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Goldman School of Public Policy at UC Berkeley.

Samantha Graff is Director of Legal Research for the National Policy & Legal Analysis Network to Prevent Childhood Obesity (NPLAN). Prior to joining PHLP, she worked as a fellow with the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation; an associate at Wilson, Sonsini, Goodrich & Rosati; a federal law clerk for Chief Judge Marilyn Hall Patel of the Northern District of California; and a case writer for Harvard Business School. She is a graduate of Harvard University (magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa) and Yale Law School.

Genie Gratto leads PHLP's communications team, which is responsible for ensuring the organization's products and services reach their target audiences. She also directs the communications effort for the National Policy & Legal Analysis Network to Prevent Childhood Obesity (NPLAN). In the 14 years leading up to her joining PHLP, she worked as a journalist before moving on to the advocacy, non-profit, labor union, corporate and web software development arenas. She is a cum laude graduate of Mary Baldwin College and received her master's in writing from Johns Hopkins University.

Karla Hampton is a staff attorney working on the National Policy & Legal Analysis Network to Prevent Childhood Obesity (NPLAN). Prior to joining PHLP she worked as an Equal Justice Works fellow at the Legal Aid Society of the District of Columbia, specializing in access to health care for low-income and ethnically diverse communities. She also worked at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office of Counsel to the Inspector General, representing HHS in administrative and civil fraud enforcement actions. She is a graduate of California State University, Long Beach (magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa) and the UC Berkeley School of Law. 

Julie Jones has more than 20 years of administrative and nonprofit experience and joined PHLP in 2008. Prior to joining PHLP, she served as the director of external affairs for a nonprofit rehabilitation organization, and has worked with other Bay Area nonprofit organizations in an administrative capacity. Her areas of expertise include customer and community service, accounting, and event planning. She graduated from Healds Business College.

Manel Kappagoda is the deputy director of PHLP's work on obesity prevention. Prior to joining PHLP, she worked at the East Bay Community Law Center (EBCLC), where she served first as a staff attorney in the health law practice and later as director of administration and policy. While at EBCLC she provided legal services to low-income clients living HIV/AIDS in the areas of housing, access to health insurance, disability benefits and estate planning, and she founded AIDS Lanka, a multidisciplinary project that effectively advocated for increased access to HIV medications in Sri Lanka. She also conducted program planning for EBCLC's successful medical-legal partnership with Children's Hospital Oakland. From 2000 to 2003, Manel served on the Oakland Eligible Metropolitan Area HIV Services Planning Council. In addition, she has worked with the UC Office of the President and the San Francisco Department of Public Health. She graduated with high honors from UC Davis, and received her law degree from the UC Hastings College of the Law and her master's in public health from the UC Berkeley School of Public Health.

Scholastica Kinuthia is the senior accountant for PHLP. Before joining PHLP she administered a $20 million federal grant from the Department of Energy for a solar power technology start-up. Prior to that, she was an accountant at the Global Fund for Women. Originally from Kenya, she worked as a researcher for the University of Nairobi's Center for Development Studies and Urban Housing before moving to the United States in 1998 to pursue her MBA at California State University-East Bay.

Carrie Spector has been with PHLP since 2003, managing a range of communications efforts with a focus on editorial development and production. She has more than 15 years' experience in journalism and nonprofit communications. Prior to joining PHLP, she managed the communications department at a cancer advocacy organization. She has also worked on the editorial staff at a variety of national and regional magazines, including Health, California Lawyer, and Mother Jones. She graduated magna cum laude from Boston University's College of Communication.

Stephanie Stevens is a staff attorney focusing on legal research and writing for the National Policy & Legal Analysis Network to Prevent Childhood Obesity (NPLAN). Before joining PHLP she was an attorney with the Fair Housing Law Project, where she represented victims of predatory mortgage lending. She has also clerked in the Family Division of New Jersey's Superior Court. Stephanie is a graduate of UC Berkeley and Howard University School of Law.

Tashena Ward joined PHLP in September 2007. She previously served as operations director for Horizons Unlimited of San Francisco, a nonprofit youth development organization. Her areas of expertise are accounting, human resource operations, and office management.

As Director of Finance and Operations, Sandra Whisler oversees financial management, human relations, and information technology. Whisler comes to PHLP from PolicyLink, where she served as the Director of Finance and Operations, and before that from CompuMentor, where she was first the launch director for www.techsoup.org and then vice president and managing director responsible for finance and operations. Previously, Whisler had a long career in academic publishing, including serving as director of electronic publishing and associate director for the Journals Division at the University of California Press, and assistant director and director of Journals Marketing at the University of Chicago Press. She holds a degree in anthropology from the University of Chicago.

Kim Williamson is a communications associate at PHLP, where her work is focused on publications production and project management. In addition, Kim serves as the project coordinator for PHLP's database development. Prior to this role, she managed the High Value Medications Project for Medicine for People in Need (Medpin), a program supporting pharmaceutical access and management for health care organizations serving uninsured and underinsured patients. She has also worked in free and community clinics. She graduated with honors from UC Santa Cruz.

Heather Wooten is a Senior Planning and Policy Associate with Planning for Healthy Places at Public Health Law & Policy, where she researches best practices, develops tools, and works with communities to connect land use, economic development, and health. She is a co-author of one of the premier publications on developing and implementing health policy language in land use plans, How to Create and Implement Healthy General Plans. Prior to joining the Planning for Healthy Places team, she co-authored the Oakland Food System Assessment: Towards a Sustainable Food Plan through the Oakland Mayor's Office of Sustainability; she also currently serves on the Oakland Food Policy Council. Ms. Wooten is a graduate of the University of Minnesota and earned a Masters of City Planning from the University of California, Berkeley.  

Sara Zimmerman is a senior staff attorney working on the National Policy & Legal Analysis Network to Prevent Childhood Obesity (NPLAN). Prior to joining PHLP she worked at several nonprofit organizations, including Disability Rights Advocates and the Community Benefits Law Center at Partnership for Working Families. She also clerked for Judge Richard Paez of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. She is a graduate of Swarthmore College (Phi Beta Kappa) and the UC Berkeley School of Law (Order of the Coif).