About the Directors

Dr. Grace W. Wanjiku, MD, MPH

Co-founder

Grace W. Wanjiku, MD, MPH is an Assistant Professor of Emergency Medicine at Rhode Island Hospital/ Brown University. She completed medical school at Yale School of Medicine, and Emergency Medicine residency training at the Brown University Emergency Medicine Residency Program. She undertook a two-year fellowship in Emergency Ultrasound at Yale University, including an MPH in global health at the Yale School of Public Health.

Grace’s interests include the creation and evaluation of point of care ultrasound training programs in low resource countries. She has participated in a novel program that trains health care providers in rural Kenya on the use of point of care ultrasound. She has also been involved in training providers at the ICU, Emergency and Anesthesia Departments at Aga Khan University Hospital Nairobi, Kenyatta National Hospital and Nairobi Hospital. She is involved in PoCUS curriculum development, training and evaluation projects across East Africa. Grace’s other interests include injury/ trauma training in low-income countries. She has collaborated with teams teaching trauma courses in Nicaragua and Rwanda. In 2015, she started a trauma course for graduating medical students at Moi College of Health Sciences in Eldoret, Kenya.

Dr. R. Muyoka Maina, MD, MHS

Co-founder

Dr. R. Muyoka Maina, MD, MHS, is a first-year general surgery resident in the Department of Surgery at Yale University. She grew up in Nairobi, Kenya, and immigrated to the USA for college. She completed her undergraduate education at Columbia University and graduated with a BA in biochemistry. She received both her medical degree and Masters in Health Science from Yale School of Medicine. While in medical school, she was awarded the prestigious Yale Endowment Research Fellowship to conduct translational surgery research in tissue engineering. Her research interests have been focused on the development of suitable bioprints that can serve as in vivo conduits for intestinal repairs and transplant grafts and the use of regenerative nanoparticles to abate ischemic intestinal injuries. She is passionate about global surgery and surgical education, and intends to specialize in surgical oncology upon completion of her residency. Dr. Maina is interested in academic surgery and intends to incorporate her love for science, mentorship, and clinical practice into her career as a surgeon-scientist.

Dr. Stephen, MD Kimani

Co-founder

Dr. Stephen, MD Kimani is a board-certified internal medicine physician and a current fellow in Hematology/Oncology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He completed medical school at the University of Nairobi, Kenya and he is an alumnus of the Bachelor of Science in Human Anatomy program – an intercalated honors program reserved for distinguished preclinical medical students. He completed a medical officer internship and served as a medical officer in the Ministry of Health prior to relocating to the USA. He matriculated with a Master of Science in Global Health degree from Duke University (Durham, NC, USA) in 2014 where he was awarded the Outstanding Student Award for excellence in academics and community building. He completed internal medicine residency at Duke University Medical Center. Dr. Kimani has spent a great part of the past decade training and practicing in global health settings including Kenya, Tanzania, South Africa and USA. He has also authored several peer-reviewed publications. He is interested in health services research including, but not limited to, cancer care delivery and implementation science with focus on patient-reported outcomes (PROs), treatment outcomes, and digital technologies. He is a recipient of several professional awards and grants.

Dr. Chemtai Mungo, MD, MPH

Co-founder

Dr. Chemtai Mungo, MD, MPH is an Ob/Gyn and clinical researcher who was born and raised in Kenya. She received a bachelor’s degree with Honors from the University of California in Berkeley and completed her medical school at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF).

At UCSF, she was a Doris Duke International Clinical Research Fellow and spent a year in Kisumu, Kenya working on cervical cancer prevention among HIV-infected women. She also completed a Master’s in Public Health from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and did a residency in Obstetrics and Gynecology in San Francisco. Dr. Mungo is passionate about using research, advocacy, and capacity-building to pursue equity in global women’s health. She is also passionate about advancing opportunities for leadership among African investigators in Global Health, particularly women. Her primary research is focused on increasing access to effective, evidence-based cervical cancer prevention in low-income countries, with the goal of elimination of this preventable cancer. She is currently a fellow at the University of California San Francisco where she continues to work on cervical cancer prevention in Western Kenya. Her work is supported by the National Institute of Health Fogarty Fellowship and the UCSF Cancer Center Global Cancer Research Award.