LAGHC Leadership
Ahmed Elauri
Co-Director
Ahmed Elauri is a first year medical student at UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine. He received his BS in Environmental Science with concentration in Environmental Engineering from the University of California, Los Angeles. His career interests include minimizing global disparities in health access and equity. During his undergraduate career, he led a team of students and career professionals, to work collaboratively over four continents, connecting UCLA’s Institute of the Environment and Sustainability to IBM and The Nature Conservancy, focusing to understand current Water Fund conditions, and create a streamlined system to manage the Upper Tana River Water Fund in Kenya. The Water Fund’s objective is to provide equitable access to clean water for personal and commercial use along the Tana River, which provides the vast majority of Nairobi’s potable water. His additional projects were education based, including building an English teaching curriculum for healthcare providers in Mozambique, via longitudinal partnership programs.
In his free time, Ahmed enjoys running, playing tennis, and eating desserts, especially Palestinian Kanafa.
Stephanie McKay, MPH
Co-Director
Stephanie McKay is a public health professional with over 7 years of experience working on health systems strengthening and infectious disease in both domestic and international contexts. As a Program Officer at Results for Development, Ms. McKay currently supports USAID-funded activities, which include work to improve equity and resiliency in the community health workforce and as well as activities to improve the national blood systems in Rwanda, Liberia, and Malawi. She has also provided sustainable financing technical assistance through the Act to End Neglected Tropical Disease East program, which included the development of the WHO Neglected Tropical Disease Sustainability Framework, as companion piece for the 2020 NTD Roadmap.
Prior to working at R4D, Ms. McKay was an Allan Rosenfield, M.D. HIV/AIDS Public Policy Fellow at amfAR, The Foundation for AIDS Research, where she conducted research on the relationship between HIV, viral hepatitis and the United States opioid epidemic. She was also a research assistant at Georgetown University’s Center for Global Health Science and Security, where she has conducted and published research related to the impact of Covid-19 on NTD programs, pandemic preparedness and response policies, and the global health security agenda. These experiences followed positions at the WHO Regional Office for Europe and Federal Occupational Health, an agency within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
Ms. McKay holds an MPH in global health program design, monitoring and evaluation from George Washington University and a BA in the Program of Liberal Studies from the University of Notre Dame.
Ellis Gao
Speaker Committee Chair
Ellis (she/her/hers) is a first year medical student at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. She graduated from the University of Toronto with a Master of Health Science in Translational Research where she learned strategic approaches to translate knowledge into applicable innovations. She also credit her undergraduate programs of studies - Physiology major, Health and Disease major, and Psychology minor - also at the University of Toronto for building a robust foundation in support of her career goals as a budding physician.
In her free time, Ellis enjoys Chinese painting, figure skating, and exploring new hobbies.
Jordan Peyer
Logistics Committee Chair
Naomi Akhidenor
Public Relations Committee Chair
Naomi (she/her/hers) is a first year medical student at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. She obtained her BS in biology with minors in chemistry and psychology from Texas Woman's University, where she also completed a research certificate in Virology.
During her undergraduate years, She developed a keen interest in researching sexually transmitted infections, particularly Human Cytomegalovirus, from an experimental standpoint. This interest transitioned into a broader focus on public health when she completed a research internship at NYU, where she analyzed data from HIV Preventions Trial Network 061 (HPTN 061), investigating the impact of police harassment on mental health and sexual risk behaviors in Black sexual minority men and transgender women.
After her Internship, Naomi worked with refugee and asylum seeking populations in North Texas. Currently, she is actively involved in the Los Angeles Human Rights Initiative and participates in the Global Health community engagement efforts with the People Concern and Esperanza Immigrant Rights Project at UCLA.
In her free time, Naomi enjoys photography, writing, and exploring art and music.
Institutional Staff & Faculty
Cecily Gallup, MD, MPH
Dr. Gallup is an Assistant Professor of Internal Medicine-Pediatrics at UCLA. In her role as Co-Director of Resident and Fellow Global Health Education, Dr. Gallup supports initiatives related to global health education for postgraduate trainees across UCLA departments.
Dr. Gallup has worked internationally, providing clinical care, training local providers, and conducting research in Niger, South Africa, Rwanda, Malawi, and Haiti. As a volunteer provider for Physicians for Human Rights (PHR), she performed medical evaluations of survivors of torture and persecution in support of their applications for asylum at the Weill Cornell Center for Human Rights (WCCHR) and continues this work at UCLA with the Los Angeles Human Rights Initiative (LAHRI). She is a board member for the Alliance for International Medical Action (ALIMA), a Senegal-based humanitarian medical organization that operates in conflict zones in West and Central Africa. Dr. Gallup maintains her clinical practice as a Hospitalist, as well as an outpatient urgent care provider for children and adults.
Sofia Gruskin, JD, MIA
Sofia Gruskin directs the USC Institute on Inequalities in Global Health (IIGH). She is Professor of Preventive Medicine and Chief of the Disease Prevention, Policy and Global Health Division at the Keck School of Medicine, Professor of Law and Preventive Medicine at the Gould School of Law, and an affiliate faculty member with the Spatial Sciences Institute at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences. Within USC, she is highly engaged in university service including as co-chair of the USC Senate Sustainability Committee, a member of the Joint Academic Senate and Provost Task Force on Interdisciplinary Communities, and primary convener of the USC Law & Global Health Concentration.
Traci Wells, PhD
Dr. Wells is the Director of Education for the Global Health Program, and also serves as an Adjunct Assistant Professor at UCLA’s David Geffen School of Medicine. Her interests in medical education range from developing comprehensive and innovative pre-departure ethics and cultural humility training, to pairing students with mentors in their area of interest(s), and finding creative ways to evaluate and strengthen our global health programs. She speaks French fluently, and her global health fieldwork has included serving as a research consultant in Mali and Niger, with World Vision as a local partner.
This formative research examined various aspects of the curriculum for an after-school club that incorporates games, books, and videos that teach about water, sanitation, and hygiene and neglected tropical diseases, with a focus on inclusion of children with disabilities.
Shubha Kumar, PhD, MPH
Shubha Kumar is director of education & training at the USC Institute on Inequalities in Global Health. She is also an associate professor of clinical preventive medicine and director of the Master of Public Health online program at the University of Southern California. Her professional and research interests include management and leadership in global health and development, program planning and evaluation, health systems strengthening, and capacity building.
She has successfully led the design and oversight of several programs in healthcare, disaster relief and education, as well as launched an international humanitarian non-governmental organization for which she was the chief operating officer. Her recent projects include monitoring & evaluation of health programs and capacity-building and training of health workforce. She is most well-known for her expertise in impact evaluation, particularly social return on investment analysis.
She has lectured and consulted nationally and internationally, as well as developed the first distance education module on this subject. Kumar teaches in the USC MPH program including courses on global health leadership, global health ethics, and sustainable development and health. She earned her bachelor’s degree in biology, an MPH, and a doctorate in healthcare management and policy from UCLA.
Vijeta Vaswani, MPH
As Administrative Specialist, Vijeta provides overarching support to the Global Health Program (GHP), with a particular focus on supporting medical student programs. Given her experience and passion for using social media to engage users in health activities, Vijeta also leads the program’s social media efforts. Prior to joining GHP, Vijeta spent more than six years working in UCLA’s Department of Gastroenterology as a liaison between patients and their physicians. After working on the patient side of medicine for several years, she is excited to be working on medical student programs in her role with GHP.
Vijeta earned a Master of Public Health with an emphasis in Global Health from the University of Southern California in 2017. She has a particular interest in gastrointestinal illnesses, completing her Master’s practicum at UCLA’s Celiac Disease Program, where she researched the effects of Celiac Disease and quality of life barriers for those living with the disease.
Caroline Diamond
Caroline Diamond is a Project Specialist with the USC Institute on Inequalities in Global Health. In this role, she supports the Institute’s leadership in all operational aspects, including event organizing and strategic planning. Caroline graduated from Occidental College in May 2022 with a bachelor’s degree in diplomacy and world affairs and economics. While at Occidental, she worked in the Mckinnon Center for Global Affairs & John Parke Young Initiative as a Program Assistant. Through the Occidental Kahane UN Program, Caroline interned for the Permanent Mission of the United Kingdom to the United Nations in their Humanitarian, Peacebuilding, and Development team. Additionally, Caroline worked for several years with the Los Angeles Mayor’s Office of International Affairs and the Office of Economic Opportunity serving first as a researcher, then intern and advisor to their efforts to localize the UN Sustainable Development Goals most recently receiving a nine-month research fellowship on truth-telling and racial justice in Los Angeles. Most recently, Caroline worked for the Wrangell Mountains Center, the only non-profit in the Wrangell-St. Elias National Park in Eastern Alaska. There, she coordinated an international glaciology summer school for PhD glaciologists and started a camp for local children focused on art and science. Caroline is passionate about the ways in which restorative justice can support efforts to address government and institutional harms at the local, national and international level.