Who We Are (about)

Joel is the Executive Vice-President and Chief Information Officer of WorldCare International Inc. and the President of Global Health Services Ltd. He is responsible for managing the Global Telemedicine infrastructure in the 42 countries that WorldCare operates in. He is a published author and has served on multiple advisory boards for various health care companies. Dr. Kahn’s previous professional experience includes serving as Executive Vice-President, Chief Medical Officer and a founder of InteliHealth. He also served as a Medical Director at U.S. Healthcare and was a partner at Healthcare Executive Partners LLC. Prior to his career in health, Dr. Kahn was a recording engineer/producer for radio, TV, movies and live concerts. Dr. Kahn graduated from Wesleyan University, received his medical degree at Jefferson Medical College and did a fellowship in Medical Informatics at Massachusetts General Hospital/Harvard University.

Veronica Serrato joined the Board of the Alliance in 2007. She is an attorney with experience working for legal aid agencies in Massachusetts in family law cases. She is currently a Staff Attorney at Volunteer Lawyers Project in Boston. Veronica previously worked for Casa Myrna Vazquez (New England’s largest battered women’s and legal advocacy program), the Legal Services Center in Jamaica Plain, and as an Assistant District Attorney at Middlesex Child Abuse Prosecution Unit. She graduated from Harvard University in 1984 and Boston University School of Law in 1988. She lives in Brookline with her husband and two teenage children.

Lucia Berman-Rossi joined the Board of the Alliance in 2008. Lucia is a LICSW Social Worker and currently runs a private practice, consulting to various social service agencies in the Boston area around clinical and management issues. Lucia’s previous employment has included the Planned Parenthood League of Massachusetts, Casa Mynra Vazquez, where she started SafeLink, the first statewide domestic violence hotline in Massachusetts, hospital based social work, school based social work and early intervention where she worked with children under age three. She graduated from Temple University in 1992 with her BSW and Boston University in 1994 with her MSW.

Kelley Curry joined the Alliance board in 2007. She owns the web design and strategy studio BrightBold, providing innovative websites and open source content management for small businesses and non-profit organizations. Previously, she was an analyst at The Telluride Group, an information technology consulting group. Prior to her career in technology, Kelley spent seven years at Planned Parenthood League of Massachusetts, where she first worked in the Public Affairs & Information department and later coordinated the annual fund. She received her AB in Biological Anthropology from Brown University. Kelley lives in the South End with her husband and two daughters.

Maisha Douyon Cover is the Manager of Family and Community Health in the Center for Community Health and Health Equity at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. A Baltimore native, she began her career in public health as a sexuality educator in Cambridge and has worked on HIV prevention education and adolescent health promotion programs throughout Greater Boston. Her current work focuses on developing community-based and hospital wide initiatives to improve the health of women, children and families through programs aimed at eliminating health disparities and improving health.

Maisha received her Bachelors Degree in Arts from St. Mary’s College of Maryland in Biology and Anthropology and her Masters in Public Health in Maternal and Child Health from Boston University. Maisha lives in West Roxbury with her husband, and two children.

Stephanie was born and raised in Boston, Massachusetts. At age 19, Stephanie became a teen mother, given birth to her first daughter. Pregnant with her second daughter at age 21, Stephanie was determined to make her responsibilities the reason she would succeed in life and not let it hinder her life. In 2002, Stephanie received her Bachelor of Science in Criminal Justice from Northeastern University. Completing her educational goals, Stephanie earned her Juris Doctorate from Suffolk University Law School in 2008 and was admitted to practice law in Massachusetts the same year. Stephanie is currently the District Director for a Massachusetts State Senator. In January 2009 Stephanie was appointed by the Caucus of Women Legislators to serve as a Commissioner on the Massachusetts Commission on the Status of Women. Stephanie also mentors and coordinates attorney-led activities for proven at-risk young girls participating in Roxbury Youth Work Female Focus Initiative in conjunction with the Women Bar Association. Stephanie presently resides in Mattapan with her husband and children. 

Dr. Vanessa Johnson, PhD is Associate Professor and Director of the College Student Development and Counseling Program at Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts. Her primary research and practice interests are in teen mother’s access to higher education. Vanessa’s research interests also include designing and implementing curricula and programs that prepare and retain minority college students, cultural diversity issues and training on college and university campuses and the recruitment and retention of minorities in higher education.

Vanessa’s scholastic activities include examining the impact of welfare reform on single mothers’ access to higher education, the college and career aspirations of pregnant and parenting teen mothers, and exploring single mother’s experiences in higher education. She has presented at national and regional conferences on such titles as “Baby Mama Trauma in Academia: Factors that Contribute to African American Single Mothers’ Persistence in Higher Education”, “Welfare Reform, Race and African American Single Mothers’ College Access”, “Teen Mothers’ College and Career Aspirations. At the invitation of Clarion University, Dr. Johnson addressed their campus on the topic “Baby Mamas and Baby Daddies: The Juggle and Struggle to Raise Kids While in College” in 2009.

Lonnie McAdoo was born and raised in Boston’s South End and Roxbury. For 15 years he worked at the AIDS Action Committee with his final position being Director of Community Programs. In his position as Director, he oversaw the Peer Action program, a one-on-one Prevention Counseling program, The Generations Project, a collaboration between Women Connecting and Effecting Change, the Be Safe program (a collaborative with PPLM, BARCC, Dimock and a few other local agencies) and the HIV/AIDS/HCV Hotline. Prior to working with these programs, Lonnie was the HIV Youth Prevention Programs Coordinator for 4 years. His role was coordinating the day to day operation of the Youth Only AIDS Line, a state-wide, anonymous hotline staffed by teens for teens; and the training and coordinating of the Teen Speakers Bureau, a program which hired and trained teens to facilitate interactive workshops on HIV and related topics for various high schools, middle schools and youth groups.

Prior to working at AIDS Action, Lonnie was the Peer Education /Adolescent Health Services, Coordinator and HIV Educator at Dimock Community Health Center in Roxbury where he ran their Peer Education program and did HIV Counseling and Testing with local youth.

Lonnie has been in the HIV Prevention field for about 20 years. He is currently doing consulting with several local public health agencies while he seeks his next full time position.

James O’Day has a history of working for non profits; in the past he ran a summer camp for a women and children’s shelter in Rhode Island with another current board member, Marie Doehler. It was this link that brought him to the Alliance Board in the fall of 2010. Currently James is an institutional equity salesman for JMP Securities, LLC in Boston and prior to that he was a syndicated loan trader. A native Rhode Islander, James has lived in Boston since college his days when he earned his Finance degree from Northeastern University in 2005. James lives in South Boston with his fiancé, a labor and delivery nurse at Beth Israel Hospital.

Peggy Tonelli, RNC,MS, is a Massachusetts native. She worked for 28 years as a nurse practitioner at Brigham and Women’s Hospital’s Adolescent Reproductive Health Service caring for pregnant and parenting teens. She provided prenatal and gynecological care and supported the service’s multidisciplinary mission to meet the many needs of pregnant and parenting teens. She has served as an Advanced Practice Clinical Preceptor for Boston College School of Nursing and MGH Institute of Health Professions Graduate Program in Nursing. She is a community advisory board member of Children’s Hospital Project Connect. She has published and lectured on providing healthcare to this special population. Prior to working as a nurse practitioner, she worked as a labor and delivery nurse. She is a graduate of the University of Massachusetts – Amherst with a bachelor’s degree in Nursing and Masters of Nursing Degree from Boston College. She lives with her husband, Steve, a dentist, and they have three adult sons.

Erica oversees the Alliance’s prevention work. From 2005-2010, Erica managed the Partners in Prevention program, which provided community-based organizations, schools, and family planning agencies across Massachusetts with training and technical assistance on science-based approaches to teen pregnancy prevention. She has over 15 years’ experience in the youth development and prevention fields, with an interest in how gender, race, and class shape adolescents’ experiences of sexuality, pregnancy, and parenthood. Prior to working for the Alliance, she directed an after-school program in the Mission Hill neighborhood of Boston and spent 5 years developing research-based programs for girls at the national headquarters of Girls Incorporated. She is a graduate of Oberlin College and holds a Master of Education from Harvard University.

Liz is a graduate of Johns Hopkins University’s Masters in Public Policy Program. She has been with the Alliance since 2008 and had previously interned in our public policy department. Liz launched the TPPAB (Teen Parent Policy Advisory Board, now YPPF or Young Parent Policy Fellows) in November 2008 and has had great success in recruiting and maintaining members as well as executing the policy efforts with the TPPAB. Liz’s background is in working on issues of Sexual Health and Women’s equality issues with the Alliance and with Advocates for Youth. She is responsible for managing the campaigns and initiatives to promote teen pregnancy prevention and support for pregnant & parenting teens. She organizes youth and community partners; advocates for teen pregnancy prevention, and drafts testimony to support comprehensive health education.

Stephanie Campbell, Community Training and Technical Assistance Coordinator, recently joined the Alliance. Stephanie has experience in the field of youth development, serving as Adolescent Services Coordinator at a community based organization in Western Massachusetts. She has also trained and supervised peer health educators at the UMass Amherst Center for Health Promotion. She holds a Master of Public Health degree with a concentration in Community Health Education from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. At the Alliance, Stephanie provides training and technical assistance to youth- serving agencies and community based-organizations for the Youth First project.

Johnette is a community builder at heart. She naturally was drawn to mission driven work and began to lay a foundation for her career in the nonprofit sector in Boston about 10 years ago, in the field of youth development. Leaving Boston to pursue her graduate studies in New York, she had the opportunity to grow the scope of her knowledge and experience by working for nonprofits in Brooklyn, the Bronx and Manhattan. In addition to building community and combating matters of inequity through programming and policy, she is very interested in using art and social media to bring communities together and foster progressive transformations of the mind and heart. Johnette has a Bachelor of Arts in Afro-American Studies and Political Science from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and a Master of Science in Urban Affairs from Hunter College. She is very excited to use her skills to highlight the brilliance and dedication of the Young Parent Policy Fellows.