The Burmese Refugee Project

Board of Advisors.

Our Board of Advisors helps the BRP staff to make major decisions regarding collaborations with other NGOs, new program initiatives, and fundraising. Members of our Board share with us their expertise in a wide range of issues, especially those concerning participatory development, Burmese and Shan culture, public health and education, and refugees.

Alex Green

Alexander Green

Alexander R. Green, MD, MPH, is a staff physician at Boston's Massachusetts General Hospital and Senior Scientist at the Disparities Solutions Center within the Institute for Health Policy. He was a National Health Service Corps fellow, Assistant Professor of Medicine, and served as Associate Director of the Primary Care Internal Medicine Residency at The New York Presbyterian Hospital, Cornell Medical Center. He currently teaches at Harvard Medical School and has been deeply involved in education, research, and policy in the field of cultural competence in health care since 1997.

Kyi May Kaung

Kyi May Kaung was born in Rangoon, Burma where she was an Associate Professor of Economics from 1978 to 1988. Her Ph.D. dissertation, from the University of Pennsylvania, is on the erosion of human rights and the devastating effects of central control in Burma. She is based in Washington DC and is now an independent scholar, writer, and artist. Since 1997, she has worked in international radio, and with The Burma Fund as a Senior Researcher.

Rufina Lee

Rufina Lee received her doctorate in social work from Columbia University and works as a researcher who focuses on severe mental illness, homelessness, and psychiatric epidemiology. Before starting her studies, she worked for 10 years as a psychiatric social worker in community, inpatient and emergency settings. She recently completed a study of Joint Crisis Plans, a type of psychiatric advanced directive, for people with severe mental illness in New York City; and she also sits on the Board of the New York Asian Women's Center, a social service agency for survivors of domestic violence and human trafficking.

Zorm Namkok

Zorm Namkok is a Shan Burmese refugee living in New York City. She is a leader of the National Solidarity pro-democracy movement, has participated in the writing of the Shan State Constitution, and is a member of the Strategic Coordinating Committee of the Second Conference of the Road Map for Democracy in Burma. After fleeing Burma and before moving to the United States in 2003, she worked as a community organizer with Burmese refugees in northern Thailand.

Felise Nguyen

Felise Nguyen received her law degree from the University of Chicago Law School in 2002. In 2002, she received a Fulbright to Vietnam to learn and write about the lives of women in Vietnam. She has long been interested in human rights and human capabilities and is working in the area of transgender law in cooperation with the Sylvia Rivera Law Project and the Lambda Legal Defense Fund. She is also an organizational member of the Phung Su Foundation ("Together We Serve"), an effort started by her parents to provide educational scholarships to disadvantaged youth in Vietnam who would otherwise have to work. She is currently enrolled in the M.F.A. program at Brooklyn College and is working on novel.

Daniel Pallin

Danny Pallin is a physician who specialized in two fields: Emergency Medicine and Preventive Medicine/General Public Health. He is the Director of Research for the Department of Emergency Medicine of Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston MA, an attending physician in the Division of Emergency Medicine at Children's Hospital Boston, and is an Assistant Professor of Medicine and an Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School. He is an experienced researcher in the fields of epidemiology, emergency medicine, international medicine, and health disparities. He brings to the BRP Board expertise in financial management of grants & contracts. His current research is in community-associated methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, and health information technology in emergency medicine. He teaches Clinical Epidemiology and Population Health at Harvard Medical School.

David Rosenthal

David Rosenthal, Ph.D., is the Director of Behavioral Medicine in the Family Medicine Residency program at Columbia University and also teaches in the Department of Health Policy and Management in the Mailman School of Public Health. Previously, he was the Executive Director of the Lower East Side Harm Reduction Center. He is a Family Therapist who also has done research on a wide variety of issues including drug use, family issues and public health. He has also served on a number of community boards ,including the Iowa City Hospice and the Institute for Social and Economic Development.

Colin A. Stewart

Colin Stewart is an MBA Candidate at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College. He has an AB degree from Princeton University and an MPH degree from Columbia University. He has experience working in finance and operations for a variety of players within the healthcare industry including the NYC Department of Health. Colin was born in South America and is passionate about improving health and social welfare in the developing world. He currently serves as president of a non-governmental organization whose mission is to improve access to healthcare for African children.