Our Team

Darren Blankenship is glad join Fistula Foundation as Database Administrator. Darren brings over twenty years of experience working with various Bay Area non-profits and educational institutions. His passion is for systems integration and data integrity, and he is excited to bring this to Fistula Foundation. He holds a bachelor’s degree from San Francisco State University. When he’s not working, he enjoys spending time with his family, reading science fiction, and catching up on recent developments in science and technology.

Katherine Weller joined Fistula Foundation as Marketing Communications Writer in 2017. She brings a background in nonprofit program support and journalistic writing, as well as a B.A. in cross-cultural sociology. Katherine formerly served as co-chair of the Young Professionals Council at the St. Anthony Foundation, an organization serving homeless and low-income San Franciscans.  She is honored to be a part of Team Fistula’s mission to create a world where no woman is ostracized for trying to bring a child into the world.

Kimberly joined Fistula Foundation in 2016, and is focused on growing the Love a Sister and monthly giving programs. She is an experienced nonprofit fundraising professional with over 10 years’ experience working for some of the top nonprofits in the Bay Area, including Hope Services, EMQ Children & Family Service, Family Giving Tree and most recently, Second Harvest Food Bank of Santa Clara and San Mateo Counties. She continues to grow professionally through involvement with the Silicon Valley Chapter of the Association of Fundraising Professionals (AFP), serving as a part of the Mentorship Program Committee and as a Mentor in the program. Kimberly is active in the local community and spent several years volunteering with the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society’s Team in Training Program, helping participants become successful fundraisers and train for half marathons while fundraising and completing the events herself. She holds a bachelor’s degree in Biochemistry from California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo.

Morgan Walter joined as the Video Production Specialist for Fistula Foundation in 2018. She holds a Bachelors of Arts in Cinema from San Francisco State University, with an emphasis in Documentary. In 2012, her first film “I Agree With Jennifer”, won an award at SiDocFest. This sparked her commitment to documentary filmmaking as a way to provoke change and advocate for a cause.  Since 2016, Morgan has worked as video editor and cinematographer for documentaries, wedding and branded content in the Bay Area. She is honored to bring Fistula Foundation’s stories to life in videos, and tie our supporters closer to the life-transforming work on the ground.

Sajira Mae The is excited to be part of Fistula Foundation as Senior Development Associate. Sajira is a graduate of Azusa Pacific University (MA, Transformational Urban Leadership) and the University of California, Santa Cruz (BA, Community Studies). She first learned about obstetric fistula in a global health class for her masters, when she was assigned Half the Sky by Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn. In joining Fistula Foundation, Sajira continues a career path in the nonprofit sector, supplemented by an impressive personal tradition of volunteer service.

Dr. Andrew Browning AM is an Australian trained obstetrician and gynecologist who has worked in Ethiopia and Tanzania for more than 17 years as a senior fistula surgeon.

Dr. Browning’s life mission has been to help women suffering with obstetric fistula in Africa.

As a young doctor, he was inspired to become a fistula surgeon after visiting his aunt, Valerie Browning, in rural Ethiopia as she assisted women with terrible childbirth injuries. Deeply moved, Andrew decided to train under the legendary Dr. Catherine Hamlin at the Addis Ababa Fistula Hospital. In the 17 years that have passed, Dr. Browning has provided life-changing surgery to women across Africa and Asia.

With the help of his obstetrician father, Dr. David Browning, he founded the Barbara May Foundation in Australia in 2009, providing volunteer midwives and obstetricians for emergency maternity services in district hospitals, and training for local staff.

Dr. Browning has led a team that have gone on to transform several rundown health centers into safe and functional maternal health centers for poor women, and those living in remote regions.

In an effort to help the more than one million women estimated to be suffering with existing obstetric fistula injuries throughout Africa, Dr. Browning continues to provide fistula camps in Malawi, Sierra Leone, Kenya, Chad, Uganda, Congo, South Sudan and Togo.

Dr. Browning also consults on global maternal healthcare issues to United Nations Fund for Population Activities and the International Federation of Gynaecology and Obstetrics (FIGO).  Andrew recently was appointed chair of the Fistula Expert Advisory Group at FIGO.  Recently, he was named as a Member (AM) of the Order of Australia in recognition of his “outstanding contributions” to improving maternal healthcare for women in poverty.

Fistula Foundation is thrilled to have Dr. Andrew Browning on our team!

Habiba C. Mohamed is the Country Director in Fistula Foundation’s Kenya office and has worked with the Foundation since 2014. In that time, she has been instrumental to designing the outreach and reintegration components of Fistula Foundation’s countrywide network—the first fistula treatment model of its kind.

Before joining Fistula Foundation, Ms. Mohamed had nearly a decade of experience working on fistula programming. She began her career as a veterinarian, assisting livestock farmers in western Kenya. Through her close contact with these rural communities, she became familiar with the socioeconomic challenges they experience and became passionate about working with marginalized women. In 2006, she founded Women and Development Against Distress in Africa (WADADIA), a Kenyan nonprofit that advocates for women’s rights and reproductive health. While serving as lead director of WADADIA, Ms. Mohamed also supported a UNFPA-funded community program for six years, and served as a consultant program specialist for One By One, a US-based nonprofit focused on fistula treatment.

Ms. Mohamed is currently working towards her Ph.D. in Counseling Psychology at Kenyatta University. She holds undergraduate and master’s degrees in the same subject from Mt. Kenya University, and has a higher diploma in Social Work and Community Development. Her research on the psychological effects of obstetric fistula has been published in the International Journal of Sciences, and the verbal screening tool she developed has improved identification of fistula cases. Under her leadership, Fistula Foundation’s treatment network has provided care to over six thousand women and counting.

Nelson Musa is Monitoring & Evaluation Officer of Fistula Foundation’s nationwide treatment network in Kenya. He brings fourteen years of experience in organizing and community health. Prior to joining Fistula Foundation, Nelson worked as an organizer for Jhpiego, and currently partners with WADADIA (Women and Development Against Distress in Africa), a key Fistula Foundation partner in Western Kenya.

Nelson holds a Higher Diploma in Psychological Counseling from the Kenya Institute of Professional Counseling, as well as a Certificate in Management from the Kenya Institute of Management.

Bwalya Magawa Chomba is the Program Director for the Fistula Foundation Zambia office. Bwalya is responsible for supporting referrals for fistula patients to partner hospitals, serves as key liaison between the hospitals and the community, and strengthens partnerships with government ministries and community and faith-based organizations.

Bwalya has been working as a Social Worker and Community Development Officer for 13 years, most recently based with the Ministry of Community Development and Social Welfare in Nakonde District. Bwalya has also worked with Caritas / Catholic Relief Services (CRS) Mpika Diocese, where she worked as a Monitoring and Evaluation Officer, coordinating revisions of project strategies with key stakeholders and ensuring a shared understanding of strategic and informational needs. During her tenure as District Development Facilitator with the NGO Africare Zambia, she learned about obstetric fistula and took up an active role in mobilizing suffering women, successfully referring 200 women for life-transforming surgery.

She has always believed that local community participation is an important way to achieve sustainable development, particularly in the fight against obstetric fistula. Bwalya holds a bachelor’s degree in social work from Mulungushi University in Kabwe, Zambia.

Kalumba Kaputa is a Program Officer at Fistula Foundation’s Zambia office. He collaborates with the Ministry of Health and local grassroots organizations, screening potential fistula patients and referring them to treatment centers for care in Zambia’s Luapula Province.

Prior to joining Fistula Foundation, Kalumba worked for 8 years as a Clinical Officer for the Zambian Ministry of Health, serving as a frontline health provider at Chilonga Mission General Hospital. He has also served in roles at the Mpepo Rural Health Centre and the Mpika District Health Office. Kalumba holds a diploma in Basic Clinical Medical Sciences in Mental Health and Psychiatry from the University of Zambia School of Medicine in Association with Chainama College of Health Sciences.

Kalumba strongly feels that unity and team work are essential for any organization to achieve its key objectives, especially in the fight against obstetric fistula.

Jordan Chileshe Chomba works for the Fistula Foundation Zambia Office as a motor vehicle driver based in the Eastern Province. He provides transportation and travel logistics to the Zambia team and other relevant officials and helps deliver equipment and materials for the program.

Jordan holds a valid SADC driver’s license Class C and has over 10 years of driving experience, mainly working with security firms and educational institutions. Jordan is touched and motivated by the tremendous work Fistula Foundation does reaching out to suffering women who lack the resources to access treatment.

Precious Banda joined Fistula Foundation in 2020 as an Administrative Officer based in the Mansa office in Luapula Province. She manages calls from the fistula hotline, screens potential patients, and refers women to their nearest treatment center. She also handles administrative work, including tracking expenses and preparing patient logistics before surgery.

Precious holds a Peer Education certificate from Copperbelt Health Education Project (CHEP) after working with CHEP for one year, a certificate in public relations from Zambia Institute of Business Studies and Industrial Practice (ZIPSIP), and an Art Teacher’s Diploma from Evelyn Hone College in Lusaka, Zambia. Before joining Fistula Foundation, she worked as a volunteer at a secondary school for six months.

Precious has deep empathy for the women she supports because she personally suffered from fistula for a year. She is very grateful that she received treatment and was able to start a new life. She has therefore dedicated herself to helping other women experiencing the same situation.

Kelly Brennan is a Managing Director at Citadel Securities. She runs the global ETF business and specializes in helping clients to execute large trades in US and global exchange traded funds and equities. Prior to joining Citadel, Kelly managed several teams within Goldman Sach’s Securities Division in New York for nearly thirteen years. She joined Goldman Sachs in 2005 as an associate and was named managing director in 2010. Kelly started her career at Susquehanna International Group as an equity and equity derivatives trader. Kelly is an active member of Women in ETFs and served on Goldman Sachs’ Women’s Network. She was on the advisory council for Goldman Sachs Hispanic/Latino Network. She has served as member of Two Together, a mentoring program for disadvantaged youth in Manhattan and volunteer for Puppies Behind Bars.Kelly earned a BA in Political Economies with a concentration in Molecular Cell Biology from the University of California, Berkeley, in 2000.

Charlotte is an obstetrician/gynecologist and internationally accredited fistula surgeon through the International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics (FIGO). She is also a public health specialist, with an MPH from Johns Hopkins University focusing on women and reproductive health. She is currently faculty at the School of Medicine Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Kenyatta University in Kenya, as well as the School of Public Health Department of Population and Reproductive Health.

Prior to her position at Kenyatta University, Charlotte was a program manager for the maternal and neonatal health program at the Reproductive and Maternal Health Services Unit, Ministry of Health in Kenya. She has over 16 years of clinical experience and has practiced as an obstetrician/gynecologist and public health specialist for various organizations in and out of Kenya.

Since 2016, Charlotte has served as the lead surgeon for Fistula Foundation’s outreach at Bomu Hospital in Mombasa, Kenya.

Vanessa Taylor is a screenwriter who has worked in both television, (most recently on “Game of Thrones”), and film. Her feature work includes “Hope Springs,” “Divergent,” “Hillbilly Elegy,” and “The Shape of Water,” for which she received an Oscar nomination. Vanessa has also served as a Court Appointed Special Advocate for the California dependency court.

He has been a consistent major fundraiser for Democratic Senatorial Candidates and worked on fundraising committees for the Kerry and Obama Presidential campaigns. He started out doing pro-bono legal representation of draft resisters during the Vietnam War. From 2003-2014 Rob was a valued member of Fistula Foundation’s board of directors, helping guide the Foundation through profound change. He served for many years on the Executive Committee of the board, when the board was larger than it is today. He is currently volunteering as a mentor to fourth and fifth grade students at a public school in Manhattan.