Tanushree Sarkar

Tanushree Sarkar (US-Canada 2021)

Tanushree Sarkar (27) is a Ph.D. candidate in the Community Research and Action program at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. She has an MSc. in Social and Cultural Psychology from the London School of Economics and Political Science and a bachelor’s degree in Psychology from Delhi University.

Growing up with mobility issues, Tanushree struggled to embrace her disability identity and wrestled with how her experiences as a disabled woman interacted with her academic, caste, and class privileges. Now, she works to strengthen disability inclusion in schools and classrooms through the development of inclusive policies and pedagogies in India.

After her MSc., Tanushree developed workshops to strengthen teachers’ ability to create inclusive classrooms and redefine achievement in the classroom. At a legal nonprofit, she researched the implementation of disability-related legislation for inclusive education in India. And as a research manager at an education nonprofit, she examined teacher motivation and practices to enhance teacher participation within educational systems. She has also volunteered as a hands-on teacher at schools for children with disabilities and as an advisor to schools and NGOs on teacher professional development and program evaluation.

Through ethnographic and participatory research methods, Tanushree’s Ph.D. research looks at how to imagine and implement disability inclusion through increased partnerships between teachers, researchers, and non-state actors in India. Ultimately, the goal of this work is to improve outcomes for those most often overlooked: children with disabilities and children from historically marginalized backgrounds.

 She says, “Through my career, I seek to create an education system where disability is viewed not as a deficit but as a form of diversity and where teachers have the voice and agency to ensure that all children have opportunities to feel successful, to belong, and to achieve.”

Isabel Potani

Isabel Potani (US-Canada 2021)

Isabel Potani (29) is currently pursuing a PhD in Nutritional Sciences with Global Health specialization at the University of Toronto and aims to graduate in 2023. Her research is aimed at improving treatment of severe malnutrition by understanding the challenges, limitations of ready-to-use therapeutic feeds and developing an optimized version of the therapeutic feed. She was recently awarded the 2021 SickKids Global Child Health Catalyst Grant to lead a research project to develop and test an optimized ready-to-use therapeutic feed in Malawi.

Isabel was born and raised in Malawi. She earned a hard-won spot at the University of Malawi where she completed a BSc in Nursing. Isabel also obtained an MSc in human nutrition at the University of Glasgow under the Commonwealth Full Scholarship.

 Isabel has over 10 years’ experience in child nursing and nutrition research and is also the Lead Scientific Coordinator for Malawi’s malnutrition network. She has co-authored over 12 publications to date, one of which was presented at the WHO and informed use therapeutic feeds for severe malnutrition. In 2020, Isabel was also listed as one of 100 outstanding nurse leaders globally by Women in Global Health. Her goal is to continue fighting malnutrition in low-income countries while based that a University, the WHO, or UNICEF.

 At age 19, Isabel became Nurse-in-charge of the largest referral malnutrition unit at Malawi’s Queen Elizabeth Central Hospital, where she helped reduce the mortality rate from 20% to less than 5%. Isabel also co-lead two malnutrition studies in rural Sierra Leone while working for Tufts University.  While working in Sierra Leone, she also started to raise her then-6-week-old daughter for 19 months until both studies were successfully completed.

Back in Malawi during the coronavirus pandemic, Isabel has been working one day a week at a referral malnutrition unit to keep her finger on the pulse of nursing. Isabel was also awarded the University of Toronto COVID-19 Student Engagement Award to write an opinion paper on clinical nutrition care challenges in low-resource settings during the COVID-19 pandemic. “While research is important,” she says, “its translation to policy is the ultimate goal.”

In 2022 she was awarded the Schlumberger Faculty for the Future award.  The Schlumberger Foundation supports outstanding women from low- and middle-income countries who are pursuing higher education in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM).

Adwoa Gyamfi

Adwoa Gyamfi (US-Canada 2021)

Adwoa Gyamfi (39) is pursuing a doctorate in nursing at the University of Connecticut and plans to graduate in May 2022. Her husband and two children (6 and 8) are living in Ghana while she studies in Connecticut, and she longs for the day she can return, degree in hand.

Adwoa was born and raised in Ghana. Her parents taught in village schools and Adwoa and her sisters supplemented the family income by selling ice water and cream at the local market.

A lifelong learner, Adwoa earned a BSc. in nursing and a Master’s in Public Health, both from the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, as well as diplomas in education and in nursing. Concurrent with her PhD, she is also studying postgraduate certificate in clinical genetics and genomics (she will graduate on May 8, 2021).

As the principal health tutor at a rural Ghanaian midwifery training school, Adwoa was instrumental in the successful graduation of 259 midwives in 4 years. Before that she worked for a decade as nurse manager in a rural pediatric outpatient department and volunteered to meet the home nursing needs of convalescent nursing mothers and geriatric in the community of residence. Her observation of the need for evidence-based research to improve maternal and child health conditions in sub-Saharan Africa drove her to pursue her doctorate degree.

Adwoa’s thesis investigates church-based social support for breastfeeding among African-American women, a model that can also be applied in sub-Saharan Africa, where exclusive breastfeeding can lower infant mortality and morbidity rates, improve maternal emotional wellbeing and health, and offer economic benefits to family and nations alike. An excellent student and “born leader,” upon her return to Ghana, Adwoa plans to become a university professor in nursing and midwifery, and start a nonprofit organization focusing on women’s health, breastfeeding, and infant malnutrition. 

 “The insatiable desire to make a significant impact on the lives of women and children in Ghana remains my commitment,” says Adwoa.

Zeenith Ebrahim

Zeenith Ebrahim (US-Canada 2021)

Zeenith Ebrahim (38) is in a PhD program at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, which she expects to complete in May 2023. 

Zeenith grew up in a coloured community in Cape Town, South Africa, with high levels of crime and unemployment.

Inspired by the professional sacrifices her family made to care for her grandmother who was bedridden for 16 years, Zeenith founded the social enterprise “Jamii Life”  (jamii is Swahili for “community”) to deliver affordable home-based care in communities of South Africa.  While alleviating the care burden on the primarily female family caregivers, enabling them to pursue productive careers.  

In addition to working to improve care for seniors, boost training, pay, and working conditions for health care providers, and free up family caregivers, Zeenith chairs the board of Molo Songololo, a 40-year-old organization that protects children from sexual abuse, trafficking, and exploitation, and where she first volunteered at the age of 14. 

A referee says of Zeenith, “She has faced challenges that most would consider insurmountable, yet [she] has found ways to navigate and overcome them in the most gentle, kind and thoughtful manner.