Meet Our Team
Patricia M. Gross, President/Founding Member
Patricia has over 20+ years of experience in International Global Health and Development. She is an independent International Development Consultant supporting nonprofits with their grant and project management, strategic planning, and capacity building needs. Some of her professional interests include Reproductive Health, Maternal, Newborn, and Child Health, HIV/AIDS, Orphans and Vulnerable Children, and Gender Based Violence Advocacy. She is skilled in conducting qualitative analyses to inform program design, strategy development, and policy decision-making, including social network analysis, cost-benefit analysis, and multi-method evaluation (focus groups, key informant interviews, and transcript coding). Patricia works to translate evidence into compelling knowledge products—such as technical briefs, case studies, frameworks, and donor reports—for diverse audiences. She has been recognized for building consensus and strengthening partnerships in multicultural settings, with proven ability to communicate complex concepts clearly and to align stakeholders around shared strategies. Patricia graduated from New Mexico State University with a Master’s degree in public health and social work (MPH, MSW). While there, Patricia founded and served as President of the Returned Peace Corps Volunteer Student Organization (RPCVSO). She also organized the first international dinner to support the Centro De Protección Mujer a Mujer domestic violence shelter in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico. This marked the beginning of the International Safe Shelter Foundation’s annual fundraiser event.
Abdel Ouedraogo, Secretary
Abdel specializes in good governance, public relations, program management, fundraising, and social movements, with a particular focus on access to justice (A2J). He has experience working on rural water and sanitation projects, USAID initiatives aimed at countering violent extremism, and in the mining sector. Currently, he is dedicated to measuring access to justice in West Africa through the People-Centered Justice (PCJ) approach. Additionally, Abdel supports associations in Burkina Faso and advocates for women’s access to justice. He has held positions with the Burkina Chamber of Mines and contributed to UNDP’s justice sector framework. Bilingual in English and French, he is open to remote work and NGO roles that align with his Christian values. Abdel holds a BA in International Affairs and dual Master’s degrees in Political Science and Public Administration from Suffolk University in Boston.
Myra Betron, Social Media Officer
Ms. Myra Betron is a leader in integrating practical, evidence-based approaches to addressing gender inequalities as a determinant of health. She has a 20+ year track record of designing, managing, implementing, and evaluating programs on gender and gender-based violence in the context of sexual and reproductive health in over 20 countries. This experience has given her range and depth in strategic planning, research, knowledge management, strategic communications for advocacy and social change, and capacity-building. As Jhpiego’s Technical Director, Gender, she built a portfolio of 20 projects with 22 gender advisors and over 30 gender focal points. In this role, Ms.Betron led the design and ongoing implementation of minimum standards to ensure quality integration of gender into Jhpiego programs and Jhpiego-supported health services worldwide, including USAID’s flagship $500 million global program for ending preventable maternal, newborn, and child death. Ms. Betron previously held gender advisor roles for the World Bank, EngenderHealth’s CHAMPION project in Tanzania, the International Center for Research on Women, and Futures Group International. She has also led seminal primary and secondary research on gender and gender-based violence, utilizing a range of quantitative and qualitative methods, including participatory learning and action. She was the principal investigator on the first-ever clinical trial to demonstrate the effectiveness, feasibility, and acceptability of a brief clinic-based intervention on the reduction of risk of experiencing GBV in low-resource public health facilities. As co-chair of the Interagency Gender Working Group’s Male Engagement Taskforce from 2016-2024, she has been a thought leader on engaging men in sexual and reproductive health, co-authoring knowledge products such as the Do’s and Don’ts for Engaging Men. She has designed and contributed to gender and GBV training curricula for health providers as well as Jhpiego staff, and over the course of her career, has designed and led dozens of gender training workshops for national governments, World Bank, and USAID staff, as well as global health practitioners and students. Ms. Betron has an Associate Faculty appointment at the JohnsHopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, where she lectures on gender and health systems. She holds an MA in International Development from the Johns Hopkins University and speaks fluent Spanish, conversational Swahili, and Visaya
Deborah Horowitz, Fundraising and Grants Officer
Deborah Horowitz is a multilingual health program manager and strategist with 20+ years designing, implementing, monitoring, and evaluating domestic and global programs focused on health equity and social justice with government, academia, and the private sector. She has a proven track record of driving resilience initiatives and leading multisectoral coalitions to improve access and quality of services. She also has expertise in fundraising and enjoys translating complex data into compelling advocacy documents to secure new funding and alliances. Deb has a masters in public health and lives in Washington, DC, with her husband and two children.
Kimberly Ashburn Shelter Liason (Mujer a Mujer Centro de Protección)
Kimberly Ashburn is a social and behavioral scientist and public health researcher with more than 20 years of experience advancing gender equity, HIV prevention and care, and sexual and reproductive health globally. She specializes in the design and implementation of social and behavioral research, qualitative and mixed-methods, and the integration of gender analysis into health programs. Dr. Ashburn has held leadership roles with Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation, NORC at the University of Chicago, and Georgetown University’s Institute for Reproductive Health, among others. Her work spans Latin America, the Caribbean, sub-Saharan Africa, and Southeast Asia, with a focus on gender-based violence prevention, HIV-related stigma, and innovative models for improving health outcomes. She currently serves as Senior Research Program Manager at Johns Hopkins University, leading HIV surveillance and research initiatives in Baltimore, and as a board member of the International Safe Shelter Foundation.
Sandra Fletcher Shelter Liason (Jamaica Baptist Women’s Federation)
Sandra Fletcher is an experienced Monitoring, Evaluation, Accountability, and Learning (MEAL) specialist with over two decades of leadership in international development and humanitarian programming. As a consultant and advisor, she has worked extensively with organizations such as ADRA International, World Vision USA, IREX, and the Nazareth Project, providing technical expertise in program design, strategic planning, evaluation frameworks, and knowledge management. Sandra’s career has spanned global contexts, including Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the South Pacific, where she has supported emergency response, health, nutrition, food security, and livelihoods programs. She has led multi-million-dollar monitoring, evaluation, and learning (MEL) portfolios, designed monitoring systems for complex donor-funded initiatives, and contributed to securing significant resources from agencies such as USAID, the Department of State, and the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office. Beyond her technical contributions, Sandra is committed to strengthening organizational learning and adaptive management. She has trained and mentored program teams across continents, equipping them to deliver measurable impact for vulnerable communities. Sandra brings her deep expertise in accountability and data-driven decision-making to help ensure that programs for survivors of violence are effective, sustainable, and centred on human dignity.
Stephanie Perlson, Shelter Liason (Compassion for the Family)
Stephanie Perlson is a gender equality and social inclusion (GESI) and gender-based violence (GBV) prevention specialist with nearly 15 years of experience advancing community-based, gender-transformative approaches to strengthen GESI, GBV, and prevention and response (especially child marriage), sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR), health system strengthening (HSS), men’s and boys’ engagement, and workforce development to improve programming and policies protecting the rights, health, and education outcomes for marginalized groups, especially women and girls. She began her career as a Peace Corps Volunteer working under PEPFAR in Botswana with community-based women’s and youth groups to boost community health education and services. Herwork experience spans Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, Central and Latin America, and the Middle East, where she has collaborated with local organizations, INGOs, donors, and stakeholders to collect and synthesize global research, develop and implement evidence-based programs, policy advocacy, and exchange learning through globally-attended events and knowledge product creation to advance gender equality, prevent GBV and violence against children (VAC), and improve women’s and girls’health. She has since held senior technical advisor roles at Banyan Global and Population Reference Bureau (PRB), where she managed global projects integrating GESI and GBV prevention and response into health and youth programming, for example, managing the IGWG and co-chairing the GBV Task Force. She provided global technical support for child protection policy advocacy efforts as a policy advisor at ChildFund International. Stephanie holds a master’s in political science from George Mason University and a BA in political Science and Journalism from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She lives in the Washington, DC area. Stephanie is also supporting ISSF with Donor and Community Development activities.
Katharine Perez-Lockett, Associate/Founding Member
Katharine Perez-Lockett, MPH, has worked as a public health practitioner since 2008 after graduating with a Master’s in Public Health from New Mexico State University. Katharine was a Peace Corps fellow at NMSU and served in Nicaragua. She feels strongly that domestic violence is a pressing public health issue that knows no borders. Other interests include Binational Health on the US-Mexico Border, epidemiology, health advocacy, disaster preparedness, trail running, and eating New Mexico Green Chiles. Katharine is currently a Senior Epidemiologist with the San Antonio Metropolitan Health District’s Epidemiology program.
Nevin Kohler, Associate Member
Nevin Kohler has worked in the field of library science since 2006 and graduated from the University of Arizona’s Library and Information Science master’s program in 2015. He also studied climate change science and mitigation strategies while a graduate student with Northern Arizona University’s Climate Science and Solutions program. Currently residing in Monterey, California, Nevin is working with the ISSF board to help move the organization forward while facing the challenges of the future.
International Safe Shelter Foundation 