BOARD OF DIRECTORS

INTERIM PRESIDENT, Ling-Mei Wong, is a journalist. She is passionate about Asians and Asian Americans, immigrants and uplifting underserved voices. Ling-Mei was the editor of Sampan, the only bilingual Chinese-English newspaper in New England, from 2012 to 2020. She speaks Mandarin and Cantonese, along with English, as an immigrant from Taiwan raised by Hong Kong-bred parents. Her name "靈美" is pronounced "leeeng may" and means "beautiful soul" in Chinese. Read her work here.

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CLERK, Jenny Yuan, is a digital learning professional. Graduated from Harvard Graduate School of Education, Jenny specializes in learning development and technologies. She is a digital delivery analyst at McKinsey and Company. Prior to that, Jenny was a membership and operations manager at Massachusetts Nonprofit Network. She has been involved in the Boston nonprofit community for more than 6 years and witnessed the growth of AWFH since 2019. Jenny believes by increasing health literacy, advocating equity, and creating a warm and collaborative environment, we could foster a systemic change to the health and well-being of Asian Women nationally.

TREASURER, Mahati Mukkamala, is a talented Senior Financial Professional with wide and deep experience in evaluating systems, Financial planning and Analysis and developing clear, cogent models that drive effective business decisions. He combines an obsessive attention to detail with a far-sighted view of the future, develop processes that significantly improve the bottom line. Mahati collaborates closely with Executive Teams to ensure founders’ vision is fully implemented.​

BOARD MEMBER-AT-LARGE, Dr. Namrata Sengupta, is a trained scientist, science communicator, career coach, and advocate for equity in health and STEM. She is the Associate Director for Scientific Public Engagement and Broad Discovery Center at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. She is a member of the Citizens’ Committee on Civic Unity, appointed by the City Manager of the City of Cambridge. Namrata also speaks at a variety of career panels and lectures in the higher education community. She is deeply passionate about science and health equity-related advocacy work and facilitates dialogues around issues that disproportionately affect communities of color. 



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BOARD MEMBER-AT-LARGE, Neha Bhagat, has been a member of AWFH since 2018 when she joined the planning committee for the 10th Annual Asian American Mental Health Forum. She has since been involved with AWFH’s CelebrASIANS event and is chair of Program Committee for the 2020 11th Annual Asian American Mental Health Forum. Neha holds a B.S. in Behavioral Neuroscience from Northeastern University and is a lab manager in the Department of Neurobiology at Harvard Medical School.
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​Her passion for mental health advocacy, particularly in suicide prevention, has led her to serve on the Massachusetts Department of Public Health’s Community Advisory Board for Suicide Prevention in addition to being a volunteer at Samaritans. Neha is proud to serve on the board for AWFH and continue their efforts improving the health and lives of Asian women in the community.

BOARD MEMBER-AT-LARGE, Marilyn Gardner, is a public health nurse consultant and writer who lives in Boston, Massachusetts. She is the Director of Clinical/Community Operations at the Center for Health Impact in Worcester, MA.. Prior to this position, she worked for 10 years as the manager of the Women's Health Network at the Massachusetts Department of Public Health. She has worked in women's health internationally in Pakistan, Egypt, and Northern Iraq as well as in three states - Illinois, Arizona, and Massachusetts. She is a certified cultural competency trainer and the author of two books - Between Worlds: Essays on Culture and Belonging and Worlds Apart - A Third Culture Kid's Journey. Marilyn is passionate about communicating across cultural boundaries and making space for all voices in the health care conversation. You can find her books wherever books are sold and her writing at Communicating Across Boundaries.

BOARD MEMBER-AT-LARGE, Dr. Laurie A. Nsiah Jefferson, is the interim director for the Center for Women in Politics and Public Policy at UMass Boston, and interim graduate program director for the Gender Leadership and Public Policy (GLPP) program in the McCormack Graduate School of Policy and Global Studies. In 2018 she was a Visiting Professor in the same program. For over 10 years she held faculty and senior scientist positions at the Heller School for Social Policy and Management at Brandeis University. Furthermore, she has an extensive background and over 30 years of experience in health and health care program development, policy, research and administration.

BOARD MEMBER-AT-LARGE, Ruijia Niu, is a clinical research and non-profit management professional. She has extensive experience working in social support organizations and hospitals. She lived in China and Canada before moving to Boston in 2016. During her work at Boston hospitals, she observed a disparity in accessing to healthcare information by Asian population and a lack of cultural considerations from healthcare providers when facing an Asian patient. This inspired her to join AWFH and advocate for healthcare equality and appropriateness for Asian women.​

BOARD MEMBER-AT-LARGE, Lily Wound, is a partner at Goodwin Procter in its Technology and Life Sciences groups.  She has extensive experience representing pharmaceutical, biotechnology, and other life sciences companies in a wide range of complex commercial, corporate, and licensing transactions, including those involving gene therapy, gene editing, engineered cell therapy, and genomic testing. With broad knowledge of licensing and collaboration matters, Ms. Wound has worked on some of the most complex life sciences collaborations in the industry and has handled transactions at every stage of the life cycle of a life sciences product, and has represented early stage to big pharma companies in connection with these transactions.

Ms. Wound has also led Young Women in Bio (YWIB), a non-profit organization within Women in Bio focused on helping girls interested in STEM, for over eight years. She founded the Metro-New York Chapter of YWIB and then went on to become the National Chair, running all 14 YWIB chapters across the country and in Montreal with over 150 volunteers. In her role as National Chair, she is responsible for developing the fundamental tenets of YWIB and launching 8 national, STEM-focused programs for girls from elementary school through college, including YWIB Online, YWIB Showcase, YWIB Teachers and YWIB College. She is particularly focused on diversity and inclusion and expanding YWIB’s outreach to girls who would not have otherwise had an opportunity to pursue their interest in STEM.

​Ms. Wound also has a Master in Public Health, and is a firm believer in the power of the community to address public health issues. As a first-generation Asian American, she is passionate about AWFH’s mission to apply community-based and public health measures to improve health outcomes for Asian women.

BOARD MEMBER-AT-LARGE, Adam Thomas, joined the AWFH board in February 2022.  Adam has served as the Chief People Officer and Secretary at Synlogic since July 2017.  In this role he is responsible for all human resource functions leading office operations and serving as Corporate Secretary. Adam has spent more than 20 years in human resources helping leading companies recruit and retain top talent. Prior to joining Synlogic, he served as Vice President and Head of Human Resources for Research and Development at Shire during a period when the company underwent major expansion, doubling the size of its research and development workforce in Massachusetts. Before joining Shire, Adam served as Head of Human Resources for Research, Development, and Engineering for S.C. Johnson and Company. Earlier in his career he served as director in various human resources functions at Pfizer. Adam holds an M.B.A. from Boston University, a Bachelor of Laws degree (LL.B.) from the University of Edinburgh and an M.A. in human resource management from the University of the West of England. Adam also serves on the Board of the Massachusetts Science & Technology Fair, a STEM-education focused non-profit.