Alumni

Dr Andrea Bulungu is a public health nutrition researcher based in Uganda and was a recipient of the Brown School Emerging Leader Award in 2015. Her research focuses on methods and interventions for measuring and addressing the drivers of maternal and child nutrition in resource-poor settings. She’s especially passionate about the intersection of nutrition with maternal mental health, early childhood development, women’s work, and the food environment. She has a broad background in human nutrition, with specific expertise in diet, time use, and food price assessment, and innovative methods such as automated wearable cameras and crowdsourcing. She is a long-time nutrition consultant for the World Bank and, in addition to Uganda, has experience working on nutrition programming, policy and research in Cambodia, Ecuador, Ethiopia, Guatemala, Haiti, India, Indonesia, Lao PDR, Madagascar, Myanmar, Nigeria, Papua New Guinea, Senegal, and Sierra Leone.

• Email: andrealspray@gmail.com

• LinkedIn

Grace Cao spent seven years in St. Louis, where she finished her Bachelor and Master’s degrees in Social Work and Public Health at WashU. After college, Grace spent 1.5 years working as an Associate Consultant for Bain & Company in their Dallas & Austin offices. During her time at Bain, she was in charge of the Dallas office’s pro-bono projects where she worked with local nonprofits to address their operational challenges and assist with strategy development. She is now working at the Gates Foundation as a Bain secondee in their Gender Equality Digital Connectivity team until the end of October 2024.

• Email: gracecao1997@gmail.com

• LinkedIn

Kate Clitheroe works with One World Surgery, an organization that provides high-quality primary care, specialty, and surgical services to underserved communities in Honduras and the Dominican Republic. Kate oversees One World Surgery’s monitoring and evaluation plan to ensure that programs are functioning as designed and achieving defined goals. Specifically, One World Surgery looks at surgical outcomes for more complex surgeries, as well as basic outcomes in terms of infection and complication rates. One World Surgery also looks at patient satisfaction and long-term impact of surgeries, among other variables.

• Email: kate.c@oneworldsurgery.org

• LinkedIn

Mingguo Deng is the Director of Charity Promotion and Social Work for the Civil Affairs Bureau of Chongqing Province, China. He was awarded the Brown School Distinguished Alumni Award in 2023 and currently oversees the development of the social work profession and services in the area. Under his leadership, the number of social work service organizations in Chongqing has grown to 260 organizations. Chongqing has now established a social worker training system to train 10,000 social work professionals annually. Over 3,000 social work studios have been set up in rural communities, and 5,000 social workers have been recruited in this process.

• LinkedIn

Melanie Goldring, MSW/MSP ’19, is the Manager of Organizational Capacity and Strategy at The DREAM Project in the Dominican Republic, where she first began her journey as a practicum student and Dream Project Fellow. Since her time at the Brown School, she has built a career focused on the development, implementation, monitoring, and evaluation of culturally responsive educational programs. A dedicated social worker and policy practitioner, Melanie is passionate about educational equity and committed to being an empathetic, compassionate, and innovative agent of change. In her current role, Melanie supports the execution of 18 educational programs that reach more than 6,500 children and youth. Her strategic leadership spans institutional collaboration, grant writing, and impact evaluation. She also serves as Director of Programs at American Youth Understanding Diabetes Abroad (AYUDA), where she has led initiatives for the past eight years following five years as a volunteer. At AYUDA, she oversees diabetes education outreach projects in the Dominican Republic, manages volunteer training programs, and directs fundraising efforts. In recognition of her leadership and impact, Melanie received the Emerging Leader Award in 2024 as part of the Brown School Awards of Distinction.

• LinkedIn

Noriko is a passionate disability rights activist, inspired by her aunt, an artist with severe cerebral palsy, and her grandmother, a social welfare activist and co-founder of the Tanpopo-No-Ye Foundation in Japan. Her work focuses on advancing disability rights, promoting disability art. She is particularly focused on driving social and economic inclusion, especially for vulnerable populations, and is conducting research on how technology can help realize economic inclusion, particularly for persons with disabilities. As a United Nations Volunteer (UNV) Online Personnel, Noriko supports The 34 Gallery, a mental health-focused initiative, as a Graphics Coordinator. She also collaborates with Action for Children Development Trust (ACDT) in Kenya, helping with strategic planning, stakeholder engagement, and grant writing for environmental education projects. In her professional role, she serves as Senior Manager at Activarch Consulting, Inc. in Japan, specializing in IT and finance strategy. Noriko integrates her expertise across sectors, conducting research on technology-driven economic inclusion for persons with disabilities, collaborating with the UN, NGOs, and businesses to develop inclusive solutions.

• LinkedIn

Yueh-Ya is a Research Associate for Innovations for Poverty Action, a research and policy non-profit that evaluates and promotes effective solutions to global poverty problems. Yueh-Ya’s team is currently collaborating with BRAC in Dhaka, Bangladesh to evaluate their Ultra-Poor Graduation Program. While at the Brown School, Yueh-Ya worked with the Social Policy Institute and Assistant Dean Dan Ferris and got hands-on experience with research in supporting mission-driven organizations. Learning how to balance objectives and working cultures across academic, government, and industry sectors has proven important. Lee Koelliker’s leadership class sharpened Yueh-Ya’s understanding of stakeholders, organizational dynamics, and the idea of leading without a title. Professor Lindsay Stark helped Yueh-Ya clarify my professional interests and find suitable organizations in support of those goals. Yueh-Ya’s talented classmates’ diverse backgrounds developed his ability to work on cross-disciplinary and cross-cultural teams.

• LinkedIn

Dr. Mingchao Jin’s research area currently focuses on global social development, with a particular focus on financial capability. In his research, Dr. Jin assessed the status of poverty in China via asset-based approaches and made relevant policy suggestions. Dr. Jin has also conducted research on how families in Africa can use livestock to improve child nutrition. His current work tries to answer what financial capability means and impacts, and how to improve financial capability for populations in developing countries.

• LinkedIn

Before joining the Chinese Academy of Financial Inclusion at the Renmin University of China, Xixi Kang served as the Program Officer for the Social Policy Team in UNICEF’s China Country Office for three years. Her work supported the development and implementation of national social assistance reform projects and research on social protection. In Xixi’s new role, she will manage academic research programs and coordinate policy advisory and advocacy, facilitating the construction of China’s financial inclusion system and contributing to the implementation of a rural revitalization strategy.

• LinkedIn

Throughout Megan Keenan’s time at the Brown School, she developed new skills in systems thinking and research for the promotion of health equity. Megan used these skills in her practicum experience with Fast-Track Cities-St. Louis, where she worked with community stakeholders and healthcare leaders to improve HIV care in the region. Megan’s international practicum with the Centre for Infectious Disease Research in Zambia (CIDRZ) provided her with the opportunity to engage the skills she had cultivated locally and apply them to a global context. Continuing her work in the field of HIV care, Megan collaborated with community researchers in Zambia to analyze the implementation of patient-centered care services with local healthcare providers across the country.

Lindsey Wise’s work in the field of public health nutrition began at the Brown School working with Dr. Lora Iannotti, where she was given the Emerging Leader Award as part of the Awards of Distinction 2019 programme. Lindsey built on her practicum experience with Meds and Food for Kids in St. Louis, and she was awarded the Mickey Leland International Hunger Fellowship at the UN World Food Programme in Cambodia in 2011. She has worked with the UN World Food Programme (WFP) at sub-national, national, regional, and global levels over the past 10 years serving in different capacities to tackle malnutrition in all its forms. Lindsey is joining the Nutrition Division in 2022 to take on a new role as the Deputy of the Nutrition Integration team within the Nutrition Division. Her work will focus on enhancing the nutrition sensitivity of WFP’s food security programmes, such as school meals and social protection, as well as supporting efforts to tackle the double burden of malnutrition and address equity gaps in delivery of services to vulnerable groups.

• Email: lindsey.wise@wfp.org

• LinkedIn

Jianrong Zhang participated in the first cohort of Clark-Fox Policy Scholars at the Brown School. Jianrong has conducted global health research as a collaborator in the Global Burden of Disease Study led by the University of Washington, and he has published a total of 15 articles. In 2008-2016, Jianrong received his M.D. from the Guangzhou Medical University in China with clinical and research training in thoracic surgery and oncology.

• LinkedIn

Zhen Zhang was awarded the Brown School Emerging Leader Award in 2023, and is currently the General Secretary for the RICI Foundation, which has launched the Xinyi Project and the Flourishing Magic School program in Chinga. The RICI Foundation has engaged 3,000 undergraduates and local teachers in delivering 1,400,000 mental health prevention lessons to over 145,000 rural children around China. RICI has also built collaborative relationships with over 150 university student associations and more than 40 nonprofit organizations and local governments. In 2020, Zhen was named in the Forbes China 30 Under 30 List – Social Enterprise Category.

• LinkedIn