Officers

Maj-Lis Voss, Executive Director
Public health, child and adolescent health and development
mvoss@northsouthgroup.org

Maj-Lis Voss - a Swedish national and an economist and health specialist. Ms. Voss has worked for more than fifteen years on global public health issues, focusing on poverty reduction. She has extensive experience in the South Asia region and has taken part in the development of numerous human development projects at the World Bank. She has carried out research on poverty issues and contributed to major studies on child and adolescent health and well-being. Ms. Voss is affiliated with ECPAT, an international organization working to end human trafficking, and the Naomi Project, a local NGO providing guidance to high-risk pregnant women. She is currently carrying out research on pre-adolescent health and development towards a doctoral degree in public health and epidemiology. 

Meenu Bhambhani, PhD
Disability and development
mbhambhani@northsouthgroup.org

Meenu Bhambhani - an Indian national, is an expert on disability and social policy. Dr. Bhambhani is currently the Manager for Corporate Social Responsibility at MphasiS, an award-winning company supporting the improvement of global business processes, located in Bangalore, India. She has worked on disability and development at the World Bank, held a high-level government position as Commissioner for Disability, and served as a Program Officer for the National Centre for Promotion of Employment for Persons with Disabilities (NCPEDP) in India. Her work has been published, resulted in policy changes vis-à-vis disability, and brought recognition for disability in different socio-political and academic platforms. Dr. Bhambhani received her M.S. in Disability and Human Development from the University of Illinois at Chicago in July 2004, supported by a Fellowship from the International Ford Foundation, and a PhD in English Literature from the University of Rajasthan in 1998.

Jindra Cekan, PhD
Nutrition, food security, and livelihoods
jcekan@northsouthgroup.org

Jindra Cekan - a U.S.- Czech national, has worked for two decades in international development with private voluntary organizations, consulting companies, and academia. Dr. Cekan's work, and her publications, are in the areas of disaster relief, food security and livelihoods, and HIV/AIDS prevention and care. Her expertise lies in the areas of project design; grant writing and management; monitoring, evaluation, and qualitative assessments and tools; training and facilitation; and strategic planning. She has been a lecturer at Tufts University and Harvard University. Dr. Cekan received a PhD in Economics and Political Science from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University, in 1994.

Leena Lahti, PhD
Change management, gender/diversity, leadership coaching/mentoring
llahti@northsouthgroup.org

Leena Lahti - a Finnish national, is an expert on gender and diversity, human resources management and development, leadership coaching and mentoring, and change management - areas in which she has worked and published extensively. Her work experience in public and private sector organizations ranges from child welfare to international development. Dr. Lahti served for ten years as the Senior Advisor on Diversity to the International Monetary Fund, and since 2007, with the Europen Investment Bank. She is also an independent consultant in her own company Axianet Oy, working with major international institutions on operational and strategic surveys, assessments, and policy development. She received a PhD in Management Development from Tampere University in 1993.

Shreelata Rao Seshadri, PhD
Public health, HIV/AIDS prevention, and social development
sraoseshadri@northsouthgroup.org  

Shreelata Rao Seshadri - a U.S. national, is a Social Development Specialist based in India
who has worked for two decades on public health issues. She has contributed to the development of a wide range of public health, disease control, and social development projects in India. She was instrumental in preparing several projects in South Asia on poverty and health issues, particularly among vulnerable women and children. Dr. Rao-Seshadri has more recently returned to a more hands-on engagement with public health programs in India, and their implementation and evaluation. Her focus is on the design of strategies to ensure wider participation of vulnerable and marginalized groups in provision and utilization of health services. Her work has been published in numerous professional journals - she is also an award-winning writer of fiction. Dr. Rao-Seshadri received a PhD in Sociology from the Pennsylvania State University in 1993.  

Miho Tanaka, MPH
Public health, community health, program evaluation
mtanaka@jhsph.edu

Miho Tanaka – a Japanese national, is a public health specialist with over ten years of experience in health sector development in Latin America, Asia and the Middle East. Her areas of technical expertise include participatory planning of community health projects, social impact assessment, health inequality analysis, and monitoring and evaluation of health interventions. The focus of her work has been design, implementation, and monitoring and evaluation of community health projects in the Middle East and North Africa. Current areas of research interest include: community level interventions on non-communicable diseases and risk factors, community-based participatory research, and program evaluation methods. She received her Masters of  Public Health from Oregon State University in 1996, with a concentration in maternal and child health and international health. She is currently enrolled in a PhD program at Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, Department of Health, Behavior and Society. 

Carina Torfalk
Education, teacher training
ctorfalk@northsouthgroup.org

Carina Torfalk - a Swedish national, is a teacher and educator who has worked with children and adolescents for more than two decades. She has devised methods of curriculum development, instituted innovative teaching methods, and promoted access to expanded curricula such as biotechnology for the younger student population. As part of her research, she has studied different perspectives on school development; globalization of the education sector; and curriculum development for students with different abilities. Ms. Torfalk has extensive experience in teacher training, mentoring, and student- teacher monitoring and evaluation.