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Days for Girls International Board
Karen Harris, MD OBGyn - Board President
Dr. Karen Harris is a Florida native. She graduated from Vassar College, attended medical school at the University of Florida and completed her residency training in OB-GYN at the Johns Hopkins Hospital.
Dr. Harris was the first female president of the Florida OB-GYN Society and continues to work with the state legislature to promote women’s health issues. She is also committed to community service as a Days for Girls volunteer and a devoted Girl Scout leader, where she teaches young girls how to become tomorrow’s leaders. On a sunny day, when she is not at her clinic or speaking you can find this avid gardener enjoying working in her yard.
Clarice Chan - Secretary
Clarice is a social impact technologist and “intrapreneur” in the Windows New Experiences and Technology group at Microsoft. With a focus on user-centered design, Clarice identifies opportunities where technology can tackle and serve high impact problems in the world today. She believes that companies have a great responsibility to harness the power of technology to create positive progress and ensure a bright future. Clarice graduated from UCLA with a degree in Design Media Arts. Prior to joining Microsoft, she held internships at Disney, Adobe, NASA and GOOD Inc. Ultimately, her focus is to create social impact at scale through storytelling and building empowering experiences. Clarice is most passionate about raising equity for women around the world through access to education, mentorship, and opportunities to realize their full potential.
Jane Reisman, Ph.D.
Jane Reisman is a social impact advisor to foundations, social
enterprises, investors, and other businesses with intentional goal of seeking solutions
that benefit people and planet. Jane draws from over 30 years as the founder and
leader of ORS Impact to build data-informed dynamic learning systems for managing
and optimizing impact. Jane began working with Days for Girls as an advisor in 2015
and joined its board in 2019. As the committee chair for the Measurement, Learning and
Evaluation committee, she works with committee members, staff and volunteers to
develop a robust system for Days for Girls to measure and manage for impact. Jane’s
passions outside of work include yoga, mosaics, cycling and enjoying time with family and friends.
Ryan Thomas
Ryan is a Washington state native who practices law in the Seattle area as an Associate with Perkins Coie. His experience includes counseling nonprofit organizations, real estate and land use issues, and alternative energy transactions. Ryan assisted with the launch of Krochet Kids International, an apparel nonprofit providing employment and training for women in Uganda and Peru, and has served alongside various nonprofit organizations, including the Innocence Project Northwest, Agros International, and Young Life. Ryan often flees the city to the mountains or ocean to ski, camp, and surf with his wife and daughter.
Diemuth Pemsl
Diemuth is an evaluation and impact assessment specialist with a doctorate degree in economics. She has designed, implemented and managed research and development projects benefiting small-scale farmers and fishers in Asia and Africa. A native of Germany, Diemuth has lived and worked in many countries around the world. She is passionate about putting research findings and evidence into use to improve livelihoods, especially for women. Since moving to Seattle in 2010, she has been a consultant to the CGIAR system and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. To recharge, she explores the beautiful mountains and beaches of the Pacific Northwest together with her husband and their two boys.
Jacquie Scott
Jacquie has been with Days for Girls since almost the beginning, and has seen it grow tremendously since that time. Previously Jacquie oversaw the Distribution team, and now she leads DfGI's Board. Jacquie is the owner of an award-winning kitchen design business, and brings her practical and methodical approach to meet with her passion for Days for Girls and the impact she has seen around the globe. Jacquie, a dual citizen of both the USA and Canada, also serves on the board of DfG Canadian Society.
Janine Keblish Trainor
Janine is a connector, with a passion for women and girls. She has been with Days for Girls since the first distribution, and is a proud and vocal advocate for this cause (case in point: Janine put on 252 pairs of underwear to raise awareness about Days for Girls, winning a Guinness World Record in the process). Janine is a powerful force for spreading the word and mobilizing new partners.
Days for Girls International Advisory Council
Poulomi Basu
Poulomi is an Indian storyteller, artist, and activist.
She was born and raised by her mother in Calcutta. Although she had no exposure to photography growing up, she found early inspiration in the city’s rich cinematic history. After her father’s sudden death when Poulomi was 17, her mother told her to leave home, to follow her dreams and live a life of breadth and choices that was denied to her.
Poulomi is forever in awe of the resilience shown by those in extraordinary circumstance, by those who are bent but not broken. Her work has become known for documenting the role of women in isolated communities and conflict zones and more generally for advocating for the rights of women.
Poulomi was invited in January 2016 to speak at the National Geographic Annual Seminar in D.C. and was featured alongside Hilary Clinton as one of the 'Amazing women from around the world giving their best advice' by Refinery29. She is also the Director of Just Another Photo Festival, a traveling guerrilla visual media festival that democratizes photography by taking it to the people and forging new audiences.
Yap Boum II, Ph.D.
Professor Yap Boum II is the regional representative for Epicenter Africa, the research arm of Médecins sans Frontières (MSF), known also as Doctors Without Borders. He is currently based in Yaoundé, Cameroon. From 2009 to 2014, Boum headed the Epicenter’s research base in Mbarara, Uganda, leading research projects on tuberculosis and malaria among others. Most recently, in Guinea, he was in charge of laboratory Coordination for the MSF/Epicenter phase three trial for the vaccine against Ebola, VSV-EBOV. Boum is currently involved in setting up a Center for Diarrheal Disease research in collaboration with Mbarara University of Sciences and Technology where he has a professorship in microbiology. In addition, he teaches public health and microbiology at the Universities of Yaoundé I, Douala in Cameroon and Virginia in the US. Boum is also co-founder of Kmerpad, a nonprofit that developed washable sanitary pads to empower women and allow for them to fully participate in their education. Kmerpad also aims to have a critical impact on the huge amount of waste generated by the use of non-reusable sanitary pads. In all his work, Boum is inspired by the vision of a healthy and wealthy Africa. He aims to advance research and innovative solutions and to promote the creation of a critical mass of young Africans to address the social and public health challenges Africa's faces.
Zoë Dean-Smith
Zoë is the Vice President, Economic Empowerment and Entrepreneurship at Vital Voices Global Partnership. With 36 years of experience in the for-profit, non-profit, corporate and social enterprise sectors, she is responsible for driving the organization’s global approach to Economic Empowerment and Entrepreneurship to advance Vital Voices’ mission. She provides vision and leadership for the organization's economic empowerment and entrepreneurship-focused programs, including the Global Ambassadors Program, VVGROW fellowship, Fortune-U.S. Department of State Global Women's Mentoring Partnership and WEEmpower UN SDG Challenge.
Zoë has decades of experience working with women artisans and social enterprises in Africa and SE Asia. Prior to 2007, she was Managing Director of Gone Rural, working with 700+ women artisans in Swaziland and launched Gone Rural BoMake—a community development non-profit organization serving the Gone Rural communities. In 2011/2012 she served as the Senior Director of Vital Voices’ Global Entrepreneurs in Handcrafts Program, during which time she also worked with TechnoServe, developing Swaziland’s handcraft sector and with the International Finance Corporation’s Grassroots Business Initiatives across Africa and SE Asia.
Zoë is the recipient of the 2011 World of Difference Award from The International Alliance of Women as well as the 2005 Pan African Business-Woman Award for Capacity Building. She has been a featured speaker internationally in her role as a social entrepreneur, as well as addressing issues concerning HIV/AIDS, women’s rights, and basic community needs in Swaziland.
Zoë serves on the Boards of the Good Shepherd International Foundation (Italy) and the Grassroots Business Fund (USA) and has served on the Jury of the Cartier Women’s Initiative Awards. In 2008, Zoë initiated a Young Women’s Mentorship Program in Swaziland. She currently serves as a mentor in the Cherie Blair Mentoring Women in Business program and the Mandela Washington Fellowship Program for Young African Leaders.
Amy Low
Amy is Managing Director, Portfolio Communications at Emerson Collective.
Through her work at Emerson Collective, Amy works across all of Emerson’s communication platforms, shaping high impact messages and collaborating with partners and grantees to change the conversation—to make a persuasive case, on issues from education reform to immigration and conservation, that progress is possible.
She's seen it happen before — how the power of a great idea, backed by a movement of motivated people, can bring down barriers and lift up lives. Before joining Emerson, Amy served as chief advocacy and engagement officer at Landesa, a non-governmental organization committed to reducing rural poverty by helping the poor to secure land rights. Before that, she spent nearly a decade with the political and communications consulting firm, GMMB, where she advised the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation on building support for education reform, early learning, and addressing family homelessness.
Amy began her career in issues-based advocacy working with Porter Novelli in Washington and New York City, where she served as the firm’s first international project manager.
And when not at work, she's proudly raising her son and daughter, teaching them to be resilient, grateful, and unafraid, whether at school, at home, or on the court or baseball diamond.
Magdalene Wambua
Magdalene is an expert in advocacy for human rights. She has been in public service for more than 30 years. Her efforts have brought her to serve as East Africa High Commissioner/Ambassador of Kenya to Uganda when a regional common market was revived, as acting Minister of Education of Kenya, and as Director of Ministry of Lands and Resettlement of Kenya. Now retired from governmental service, she is currently a Director to several school management boards spearheading reform and relevance to global realities in Education.
Magdalene holds a Bachelor's Degree in Education, and an M.A Public Administration from the University of Nairobi. She is a member of the African Association of Public Policy Administration & Management (APPAM). Her successful entrepreneurship in agribusiness resulted in a demonstrative Farm to Small Scale Farmers model in a Rural Community in Rift Valley, Kenya. Her support of gender-based motivational projects in promotion of self-reliance through income generating projects includes agriculture and Days for Girls. She has won Kenyan national honors in youth mentorship and educational reform management.
Andrea "Andy" Leebron-Clay
Andy holds an MA in Sustainable Community Development with a focus on nonprofit governance and is known for her nonprofit expertise. She has nearly four decades of professional healthcare experience, with both a hands-on clinician approach and as an active founder/partner and Clinical Nurse Liaison for Nightingale Healthcare, after decades of experience in direct care and managerial experience. She is an advocate for better healthcare delivery. Her team looks to her for big-picture vision, cross-cultural strategies, and organizational culture and values. She holds a plethora of certifications and degrees, including a BSN, University of Arizona; MSN in Nursing Leadership, University of Arizona; Clinical Nurse Specialist, Geriatrics; Certified Rehabilitation Nurse (CRRN); Licensed Nursing Home Administrator; Certified Trauma Treatment Therapist; Emergency Medical Technologist.
Just as dynamic in her free-time, Andy volunteers as a firefighter/EMT with her local fire department (Bow, WA), is a support officer (Skagit County), a Critical Incident Stress Management specialist for first responders (Skagit County), in addition to being a dog lover, hiker, avid reader, writer, and adventure seeker.
She resides with her husband, Jim, and has seven grown children, 10 grandchildren, and five great-grandchildren.
Betsy Hale
After spending many years immersed in work related to building community college training programs that responded to needs in the labor market, offering career development coaching, and building youth employment programs, Besty shifted her focus to the international arena.
Betsy was a founding Board Member of iLeap for six years, hosting many fellows from around the world. She then joined Pangea and became the President for three years, organizing several site visits to Guatemala and Oaxaca. She continues to be involved in their grant-making process.
In the last year, Besty has become increasingly involved in immigration issues locally supporting the sanctuary movement and accompanying and hosting individuals recently released from the Detention Center in Tacoma, WA.
She works closely with the Mount Baker Business Alliance to organize the under-served neighborhood around the Mt. Baker light rail station to steer the development to reflect their values of sustainability and equity. She is also part of an ALIA (Authentic Leadership in Action) Community of Practice that is dedicated to deepening our understanding and practice of authentic leadership so that we may create a good human society.
Days for Girls International Ambassadors
Stephanie Shepherd
Steph was catapulted to the pinnacle of fame when she began working alongside arguably one of the most famous women in the world, Kim Kardashian West. Taking 5 years of insider knowledge and experience with her, Stephanie left her role as COO of Kardashian West Brands and stepped out on her own. As an authority on style to her millions of fans, Steph has partnered with various tastemaker brands – from American Express to Google. In her 2018 collaboration with J Brand Jeans, Stephanie’s debut design #LittleBlackJean sold out in less than a day, leading to further iterations of the design that sold just as quickly. Most recently, Shepherd has taken her beauty and fashion expertise to Elle magazine as a monthly contributor.
Shepherd pairs her social influence with an enthusiasm for social activism. As an ambassador to “The Climate Reality Project”, spearheaded by Al Gore, she advocates for climate change education. Additionally, Stephanie joined “Khana” as their Strategic Advisor after learning menstruation is a barrier to education and opportunity in developing countries. As a non-profit, Khana provides girls in the developing world with the tools they need to manage menstruation and stay in school.
Chrissie Fit
Chrissie is best known for her role as Flo in Pitch Perfect 2 and Pitch Perfect 3, and as CheeChee in Disney Channel's Original Movie franchise Teen Beach Movie. She also voices the character of Amanda Lopez on Disney XD's animated show Milo Murphy's Law and lends her voice to Princess Valentina in Disney Channel's hit series, Elena Of Avalor.
Most recently, Chrissie has been busy working behind the camera in a effort to tell more stories about women, specifically Latinas. As a first-generation Cuban-American, she knows the importance of representation and of having a viable support system. When she was introduced to Days for Girls, she immediately knew she wanted to be a part of what she believes is a extraordinary and proactive way of helping girls all around the world. Combining so many of the things that she is passionate about — education, girls rights, women's economic mobility, and environmentally sound solutions — Chrissie is beyond thrilled to be working with Days for Girls International. You can watch her Days for Girls music video, "All About Them Days" here.
Manita Devkota
Manita first discovered Days for Girls in college when a guest speaker from the local DfG chapter came to speak at her girls' education student organization, She's the First. Having lived in Nepal, a developing country with menstrual taboos and stigmas, she knew the struggles and barriers Nepalese women faced when it came to menstrual health management. After discovering DfG, she knew immediately that she wanted to be involved in the organization's mission, and began volunteering at the local Greenville DfG Chapter from 2015-2016.
Manita is a first-generation Nepalese-American and college graduate with a Bachelor's degree in Public Health from East Carolina University. She is a strong advocate for education, women’s rights, health promotion, and environmental protection. As the winner of Miss Nepal 2018, Manita uses her position as a public figure as a platform for change, working with multiple organizations to raise awareness about kidney health and disease, cleft defects, and menstrual hygiene.
Manita is proud to be part of an organization like Days for Girls, working to counter the effect that period poverty and menstrual taboos have on Nepalese women through health education, income-generating opportunities, and sustainable menstrual solutions. She can often be seen distributing DfG Kits all across Nepal and administering our Ambassador of Women's Health curriculum. Manita is thrilled to serve as a DfG Ambassador, empowering women, shattering stigmas, and seeing communities prosper.