Biographical Information of Presenters

Roger Cram
Roger Cram is the director of special projects and community relations and is an adjunct faculty member at Hiram College. Cram’s courses address diversity issues, overcoming obstacles in business, and successful grassroots endeavors. His studies have taken him to the impoverished areas of Nicaragua and South Africa where he researched cultural and logistic obstacles impeding the success of outside entrepreneurial projects.

Ruth DeGolia
As Mercado Global’s Co-Founder and Executive Director, Ruth DeGolia has established Mercado Global’s production structure and partnerships with cooperatives and local NGOs in Latin America. She works with Mercado Global’s regional staff to oversee production and provide member cooperatives with technical support in the areas of financial, business, and program management and growth. Ruth also builds partnerships with other organizations and corporations in the U.S. and abroad. In May 2004, she was named among the “World’s Best Emerging Social Entrepreneurs” by the Echoing Green Foundation. She also received the “Award for Social Innovation” from the Social Enterprise Alliance in April 2005. In July 2006 she was selected as one of the “15 People Who Make America Great” by Newsweek Magazine and was featured on the magazine’s cover along with Brad Pitt and Soledad O’Brian of CNN. Ruth graduated with distinction from Yale University with degrees in Ethics, Politics, and Economics and in International Studies.

Gilbert Doho, Ph.D., is an associate professor in the Department of Modern Languages and Literature and Director of Ethnic Studies Program at Case Western Reserve University. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Sorbonne Nouvelle, Paris III. Much of his work focuses on theatre as a powerful tool of minority empowerment in the United States and Africa, where theatre is used to help convey important information about health care and poverty. In 2006, his book People Theater and Grassroots Empowerment in Cameroon was published by Africa World Press, Inc.

Roy Jacobstein, M.D., MPH, MFA , is Clinical Director of the ACQUIRE Project (Access, Quality, and Use in Reproductive Health), a five-year global cooperative agreement supported by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) for which EngenderHealth serves as managing partner. Prior to joining EngenderHealth, he worked for more than 15 years with USAID on project and country program design, management and evaluation, strategy review, impact assessment, and expert technical review. A Board-certified pediatrician, he worked in the United States providing family planning and reproductive health services to inner-city adolescents, and served as Clinical Instructor in Georgetown University’s Department of Community Medicine and International Health and Department of Pediatrics. Among his many co-authored publications is the seminal paper "Medical Barriers to Access in Family Planning." In addition, Dr. Jacobstein has published over 100 poems and his most recent collection, A FORM OF OPTIMISM ( Northeastern University Press/University Press of New England , 2006) was selected as Winner, 2006 Samuel French Morse Poetry Prize and received a Pulitzer Prize nomination in October 2006. He is an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Maternal and Child Health at the University of North Carolina's School of Public Health.

James Kazura,M.D., is the director of the Center for Global Health and Diseases and professor of international health and medicine at Case Western Reserve University. His research focuses on developing culturally appropriate strategies to prevent malaria and chronic worm infections that are endemic to tropical areas of the world. Kazura has contributed to numerous committees within the National Institutes of Health and the World Health Organization as an advocate for promoting tropical medicine as a scholarly and scientific discipline.

Elizabeth Kucinich, M.A., has traveled the globe extensively for humanitarian purposes, and volunteered for three months with Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity working with orphans, the elderly and the sick. She later went on to work in a nearby village teaching children of the outcast Untouchables, and created a project whereby village children of all castes and religious backgrounds could come together in friendship. A strong advocate of sustainability, she spent 16 months in a village in rural Tanzania , teaching and working on projects of water and energy accessibility in the form of rainwater harvesting and small-scale biogas plants. She graduated from the University of Kent at Canterbury with a BA in Religious Studies and Theology and an MA in Internationa l Conflict Analysis. As well as supporting her husband’s efforts locally and globally, Elizabeth is now participating in the Human Rights Caucus in Congress and working to advance the property rights of women in eastern Africa, an issue that has great implications and reach into environmental sustainability, food security and HIV/AIDS. She expects to soon begin work on her PhD in Human Security at Coventry University in the UK , focusing on monetary systems and their effect on human flourishing and environmental sustainability

Patricia Marshall, Ph.D., is Associate Professor of Bioethics in the Department of Bioethics at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine. She received her Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of Kentucky in 1983. Her research interest and publications have focused on multi-culturalism and the application of bioethics practices, international research ethics and informed consent, HIV prevention among injection drug users, procurement practices for organ transplantation in India , and clinical ethics consultations. In 1999 she co-edited a volume on Integrating Cultural, Observational, and Epidemiological Approaches in the Prevention of Drug Abuse and HIV/AIDS. She is now working on a book that explores the relationship between anthropology and bioethics. She is also preparing a monograph for the World Health Organization that addresses ethical challenges related to biomedical and behavioral research in resource-poor settings

Catherine Monnin is the director of Worldview International, a Christian non-profit organization based in Olmsted Falls, Ohio. The non-profit began in 1998 over a cup of coffee with friends when Worldview International President and founder Patt Wadenpfuhl asked who had the courage to dream we could make a difference in Africa. The dream now includes Hope Village, Lilongwe, Malawi; work in the Mikea Forest of Madagascar; and Hope Kids in Tana, Madagascar. Work includes education,medical care, adult literacy, and micro-enterprise opportunities.

Isaac M.T. Mwase, M.Div. Ph.D., is Associate Professor of Philosophy and Bioethics at Tuskegee University with Project EXPORT and the National Center for Bioethics in Research and Health Care. He has an MDiv and a PhD in philosophy of Religion from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, Forth Worth, Texas; and an MBA from Dallas Baptist University, Dallas, Texas. His BS in management information systems is from Gardner-Webb University , Boiling Springs , North Carolina and his BTh is from Baptist Theological Seminary of Zimbabwe . Mwase is Director of the Public Health and Bioethics Inquiry Group at Tuskegee University . His research interests are in epistemology, research ethics, genetics, business ethics, and global health care justice.

Stephen J. Petras, Jr. is an international business lawyer with extensive experience counseling clients on domestic, as well as foreign, legal issues related to international business transactions. He is the head of Baker Hostetler’s International Industry Team. Petras represents the Clinton Foundation in its efforts to make
treatment for HIV/AIDS more affordable and to provide largescale integrated care, treatment, and prevention programs. Last year, he successfully negotiated lower prices for 19 pediatric antiretroviral formulations by 45 percent for the participating 62 developing countries.

Dennis Raphael, Ph.D, is Professor of Health Policy and Management at York University in Toronto, Canada . The most recent of his over 130 publications have focused on the health effects of income inequality and poverty, the quality of life of communities and individuals, and the impact of government decisions on North Americans' health and well-being. Dr. Raphael is editor of "Social Determinants of Health: Canadian Perspectives", co-editor of "Staying Alive: Critical Perspectives on Health, Illness, and Health Care" and author of "Poverty and Policy in Canada : Implications for Health and Quality of Life", all published by Canadian Scholars' Press. He serves as a consultant to the Canadian Public Health Agency and is an advisor to "Unnatural Causes: Is Inequality Making Us Sick?" an upcoming four hour California Newreel series on social inequalities and health in the USA which will be broadcast on PBS. Dr. Raphael' s website is http://www.atkinson.yorku.ca/draphael

Linda Rea, Ph.D., Professor of Communication, Hiram College, has just been named Teacher of the Year in Portage County. She received her B.A. from Otterbein College; her M.A. and Ph.D. from Kent State University. Linda has extensive international experience in countries from China to Cuba, but her leadership taking students to meet and understand the marginalized people in Chiapas, Mexico; Honduras; and Guatemala are of special interest to her. Linda has been a participant in the Educational travel in Mexico, Nicaragua, and El Salvador. She has been a member of the U.S. Elections Observer Mission in El Salvador, Guatemala and Mexico. She was a language student, Projecto Linguistico Guatemalteco in Quezaltenango, Guatemala. She has taken her students to the Protests against the School of the Americas at Fort Benning, Georgia, for a number of years as well as traveling with a peace group to Palestine and Israel as part of a peace conference.

Sonia Shah was born in 1969 in New York City to Indian immigrants. Growing up, she shuttled between the northeastern United States where her parents practiced medicine and Mumbai and Bangalore, India, where her extended working-class family lived, developing a life-long interest in inequality between and within societies. After receiving her B.A. from Oberlin College in Ohio, where she studied journalism, feminist philosophy, and neuroscience, Shah took a position as managing editor of the anti-nuclear magazine Nuclear Times, publishing articles in the local Boston press on race, feminist politics, and multiculturalism. In 1993, she joined South End Press, an independent, collectively run publisher of political books, as an editor/publisher. During her seven years at South End Press, she helped acquire and publish books by writer/activists such as Vandana Shiva, Winona LaDuke, and Meena Alexander, among others. She also wrote for feminist magazines such as Ms. Magazine, Sojourner, and others, organized several Asian women's groups, and, in 1997, released her edited collection Dragon Ladies: Asian American Feminists Breathe Fire, which Amazon.com called "raw and powerful." In 2000, after her second child was born (to molecular ecologist Mark Bulmer), Shah turned to writing full-time, publishing articles on corporate power and developing countries for The Nation, The Progressive, Knight-Ridder and elsewhere. In 2002, she and her family moved to north Queensland , Australia , where she wrote about aboriginal women and corporate exploitation of natural resources down under. Shah wrote Crude: The Story of Oil, which The Guardian hailed as "brilliant," between 2002 and 2004. The book tells the story of science, politics, and impact of Western society's dependence on the world's most lucrative natural resource. Reviewers said the book "couldn't be more relevant," (USA Today), others dubbing it "required reading" (The Nation). The book was later published in Australia , Japan , Greece , Italy , and elsewhere. To investigate her next book, The Body Hunters, on drug industry experimentation on patients in poor countries, Shah conducted original reportage from South Africa , India , and the US . The book stems from a widely read article Shah published in The Nation, which was subsequently reprinted in other outlets, including leading health policy journals. It will be published by The New Press in July 2006. Awarded an investigative journalism fellowship from the Nation Institute and the Puffin Foundation in 2005, Shah is currently at work on a book about the history and politics of malaria. She lives in Boston . Her website is www.soniashah.com.

Special Guests

Warren Byrd and David Chevan, two jazz artists from Connecticut, have created a distinctive musical program that merges their different cultures and heritages. Through theirgroup, Afro-Semitic Experience, African-American jazz pianist (Byrd), and Jewish-American jazz bassist (Chevan), combine their talents to fuse centuries-old traditions that have served as time honored sources of comfort and strength. Their performance is co-sponsored by the Cleveland Clinic Foundation’s
Department of Bioethics.

Gary Harwood is a photographer and David Hassler is a writer, both of whom have received awards from the Ohio Arts Council.Harwood and Hassler worked together to produce the photo-journal, Growing Season: The Life of a Migrant Community. Working with Mexican-American and Mexican migrant families over several growing seasons, Harwood and Hassler created an informative and beautiful portrait of the migrant family experience.

Chloe Hopson is the director of Passport Project, a multicultural arts education company from Cleveland. She will work with the graduate students on dance and a readers’ theatre of Gilbert Doho’s play, “The Visionary of the Sacred Wood,” a story of indigenous people defending their home environments and sacred spaces against outside developers. [Passport project encourages respect for diversity and rejection of racism and bias through educational programming and performances
of dance, music, poetry, and drama of various cultures.]