Jun 10 2023 76 mins 1
Carrie Hessler-Radelet is the President & CEO of Global Communities, an international non-profit organization dedicated to catalyzing local ingenuity and global insights to save lives, advance equity and secure strong futures. Prior to that, Carrie served as the President & CEO of Project Concern International (PCI), which merged into Global Communities in 2020.
Under the Obama Administration, Carrie led the US Peace Corps, first as Deputy Director (2010-2012), Acting and then Senate-Confirmed Director (2012-2017), leading America’s iconic international volunteer service organization with programs in over 65 countries. At Peace Corps, she and her team led historic reforms to modernize and strengthen the agency to meet the challenges and opportunities of the 21st century.
Prior to her Peace Corps appointment, Carrie worked as the Vice President and Director of the Washington D.C. office of John Snow, Inc. (JSI), overseeing the management of public health programs in 85 countries around the world. Her decades of global health work also included serving as the lead consultant on the first Five-Year Global HIV/AIDS Strategy for the US Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), working with USAID in Indonesia on maternal and child health and HIV programming, founding the Special Olympics in The Gambia, and serving as a Peace Corps Volunteer with her husband, Steve Radelet, in Western Samoa.
Carrie is passionate about accompanying communities on their pathway to developing their own sustainable, innovative solutions to reducing poverty and building resilience. She holds a Master of Science in Health Policy and Management from Harvard University and a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from Boston University.
Rose Kamyab is a medical student at McGill University. She has devoted much of her time to science communications and to research in the field of Cognitive Impairment and Alzheimer’s disease. The majority of Rose's work outside of science and medicine is comprised of policy analysis, political campaigning and to bringing equal access to STEM education to youth from underprivileged backgrounds.
Meimei Weston, from Vancouver, Canada, is a senior at Harvard University, pursuing a degree in History of Science, with a Secondary in Government. Passionate about educating, inspiring and empowering youth, she has experience working in Senegal on a women empowerment project, in rural Vietnam teaching in an area with low education and graduation rates, and mentoring underprivileged children in rural Boston through the Harvard Education Portal. Meimei is a founding advisor of the Canadian Health and Fitness Institute, worked at Harvard’s Institute of Politics, served as the Prime Minister of the Harvard Canadian Club, and rows on Harvard’s Women’s Varsity Lightweight team. She speaks French and studied Mandarin in Greater China, and is eager to learn more about international affairs through a career of foreign service and politics post graduation.
