WRA Announcement: Welcome to Three New Board Members

Message from Theresa Shaver, President/Executive Director of The White Ribbon Alliance for Safe Motherhood

Dear White Ribbon Alliance Members,

In the summer of 2011 we have addressed an e-mail to all of our members announcing that the WRA Board of Directors is seeking three new members to participate in the strategic leadership and governance of the organization. We received a great number of applications that have been reviewed by an independent committee, and we gave all of our members the opportunity to vote for their preferred candidates.

It is my great honor today to announce the names of the newly elected members of the Board of Directors of the White Ribbon Alliance for Safe Motherhood. We are very excited to welcome Blami Dao, Lennie Kamwendo, and Jamela Saleh Al-Raiby to our global family and we look forward to their leadership, commitment, individual expertise to our strategic plan, and governance as a global secretariat.

Blami Dao is a professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology with an unwavering commitment to safe motherhood. Trained at the University of Dakar in Senegal, he also spent two and a half years at the Population Council in New York as a postdoctoral fellow in reproductive physiology. In his native Burkina Faso, Dr. Dao practiced and taught at various schools and hospitals, and served as Vice-Dean of the Second School of Medicine. In 2010 he joined JHPIEGO as its Director of Maternal and Newborn Health.

Lennie Kamwendo is a registered nurse and midwife. She holds a Bachelor's degree from the University of Ulster at Coleraine, Northern Ireland and a Master's degree from the University of Pennsylvania, United States. As a perinatal nurse specialist, Ms. Kamwendo has vast experience in midwifery education, practice, and research. Currently, Ms. Kamwendo heads a monitoring and evaluation team, which oversees nursing and midwifery education and practice in the southern region of Malawi.

Jamela Al-Raiby Jamela Saleh Al-Raiby is a pediatrician and the Deputy Minister of Public Health and Population in Yemen. Dr. Al-Raiby's experience is in women's rights, prevention of violence against women, children, and the elderly, reproductive health, and safe motherhood. Dr. Al-Raiby is an advocate for legal issues that focus on child marriage, and is a promoter of the Safe Motherhood Law, which focuses on women's health, neonatal and children's health, and the prohibition of female genital mutilation.