Kira Wortmann
Evaluation Team
Evaluation Manager
Center for Healthcare Value and Equity, LSU School of Medicine
Kira has almost 15 years of experience working in the non-profit and public heath sectors in New Orleans, Louisiana. She received her Master of Public Administration, with a concentration in Community Development, from the University of New Orleans.
Her work has supported programming and evaluation in the areas of disaster case management, primary care behavioral health integration, healthcare access and in Early Head Start schools.
Julie Smithwick, CHW, LMSW
Leadership & TA Teams
CCHA Executive Director
University of South Carolina—Center for Community Health Alignment (CCHA)
CCHA Executive DirectorUniversity of South Carolina—Center for Community Health Alignment (CCHA)Julie Smithwick, CHW, LMSW, has more than 25 years of experience working alongside communities to address inequities. Julie is the founder and director of the Center for Community Health Alignment at the University of South Carolina, which also houses the Community Health Worker Institute. Prior to developing the Center, Julie founded and led PASOs, a community-based CHW organization. She also helped found the South Carolina CHW Association and is on the Boards of various organizations including the National Association of Community Health Workers.
Areas of expertise: Developing CHW teams and CHW organizations, CHW coaching, CHW association and network development, CHW sustainability and policy, CHW leadership, advocacy, reaching marginalized populations, health and racial equity.
Lesley Wolf
Leadership & Training Teams
Envision Director of Programs
University of Wisconsin—Mobilizing Action Toward Community Health (MATCH)
Lesley is the Envision Community Health Worker (CHW) Training and Technical Assistance Center Co-Director. Lesley is based at the University of Wisconsin Madison Population Health Institute MATCH group. Lesley has over 15 years of experience working with communities and coalitions, building leadership capacity to advance health equity through policy and structural changes. Lesley has been providing program leadership, coaching, training and technical assistance through the Population Health Institute since 2008. Her background and practice focus on the social determinants of health and health equity, community organizing, coalition building and deep community engagement. A longtime CHW ally, Lesley is committed to supporting the national CHW movement to achieve workforce equity.
Areas of expertise: SDOH, grassroots community organizing; strategic planning and implementation of public health policy
Lisa Renee Holderby-Fox
Leadership & TA Teams
Envision Executive Director, CHW
University of South Carolina—Center for Community Health Alignment (CCHA)
Lisa Renee has been a proud member of the CHW workforce for over 30 years. She is passionate about policy development to support the workforce and has drafted legislation to support CHWs. She has spent recent years supporting professional development of her peers through mentoring emerging leaders, developing curriculum, and providing training.
Lisa Renee has co-founded several organizations including the Massachusetts Association of Community Health Workers and the National Association of Community Health Workers where she serves as a founding board member. She has co-authored publications including the foreword for the textbook, Promoting the Health of the Community: Community Health Workers Describing Their Roles, Competencies and Practice and the initial Smiles for Life Frontline Health Worker module. Her unique background stimulates innovation when providing technical assistance to established and developing CHW programs and associations.
Areas of expertise: network & association development, interdisciplinary partnerships, curriculum development, training, mentoring
Maria Martin, CHW, MSW
TA Team
Executive Director PASOs
University of South Carolina—Center for Community Health Alignment (CCHA)
Maria has more than 20 years of experience in community health and social service work and administration of non-profit and public programs. As Executive Director of PASOs, she and her team strive to provide culturally responsive education on family health, early childhood, and positive parenting skills; individual guidance for participants in need of resources; and partnership with health care and social service providers to help them provide more effective services. Founded in 2005, PASOs helps the Latino community and service providers work together for strong and healthy families.
Silvia Ortega, CHW
TA Team
CHW Program Consultant
University of South Carolina—Center for Community Health Alignment (CCHA)
Silvia is one of seven children born to immigrant parents who rose from a humble upbringing to become the first in her family to attend college and earn a degree in Business Administration, with a minor in Hospitality Management, from California State Polytechnic University in Pomona.
For over a decade now, Silvia has worked in the nonprofit sector, earning certificates in Professional Life Coaching, Community Health Work and Doula. Through her work in maternal health, she became an integral part of the accreditation process for Home Visitation Expectant Mothers Programs. Also, Silvia became the first CHW instructor in the Promotores Academy (where she was once a student).
Silvia has devoted her personal and professional life to her dual passions for health and education. She has learned that the root issues of our society all steam from systems that influence communities to make poor lifestyle choices that result in a poor health and lack of education. Silvia finds joy in working side by side with community members to create strong and healthy foundations in order to thrive in wellness.
Soledad Bolden, CHW
TA Team
CHW Program Consultant
University of South Carolina—Center for Community Health Alignment (CCHA)
Soledad Bolden is Community Health Worker and Program Manager with over eight years of experience and now an envision CHW Program Consultant. Prior to joining the envision team, Soledad was a Middle School Science Teacher. She graduated with her Bachelor’s degree from the University of Maryland Eastern Shore and received her Masters in Secondary Education from Brooklyn College. She was also an Educational Specialist, leading various sessions in providing best practices in the classroom to teachers across the district.
Mary Pesik
Leadership & Support Teams
Chronic Disease Prevention Unit Supervisor Wisconsin DHS
Chronic Disease Prevention Unit
As a registered dietitian nutritionist and program administrator, Mary provides overall coordination and management of the Chronic Disease Prevention Unit (CDPU), including the direction, supervision, development, implementation, coordination, and evaluation of chronic disease prevention programs and several CDC funded grants and cooperative agreements.
Areas of expertise: nutrition, physical activity, and obesity; heart disease and stroke prevention; and diabetes prevention and control
Monique Y. Allen
Training Team
Envision Community Health Worker Community of Practice Lead
University of Wisconsin—Mobilizing Action Toward Community Health (MATCH)
Monique is a community health worker with 20 years of experience working with the Deaf and Hard of Hearing community and 10 years of experience teaching American Sign Language at the local Community College. She also has a background working with children with special needs, including being a supervised visitation monitor. Monique has had major involvement with local chambers, Rotary clubs, community coalition meetings, and foster youth programs.
She is an active supporter in the community and an advocate for equity and inclusion, standing up for those who feel they don’t have a voice.
Learning the needs of the Deaf and Hard of Hearing community, Monique opened a gym and created a nonprofit for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing community and underserved populations.
Monique completed her CCHW training at Loma Linda University and was hired there as a community health worker and peer support specialist. She plans to continue in the community health worker profession and assist in furthering this career path for others.
Morgan Krhin
Support Team
CHW Coordinator
Wisconsin DHS Chronic Disease Prevention Unit
Morgan is a Community Health Worker Coordinator for the Department of Health Services in Wisconsin. In her role, she works to coordinate CHW initiatives including training, sustainability, partnerships, and workforce development across Wisconsin. She has also worked with UW-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health through the Population Health Institute, focusing on the local government and community health organization sectors of health care.
Areas of expertise: Community Health Workers, care coordination services, environmental health/injustice, health equity, community sustainability
Sara Elise 'Essie' Bristol
Training Team
Envision CHW Sustainability Lead
University of Wisconsin—Mobilizing Action Toward Community Health (MATCH)
Sara Elise (Essie) is the Community Health Worker (CHW) Sustainability Lead on the ENVISION team at the University of Wisconsin Madison Population Health Institute MATCH group. As the CHW Sustainability Lead, Essie provides technical assistance and capacity building training to CHWs to center health equity within their communities and create sustainability for the CHW profession both locally and nationally.
Essie graduated in 2015 from Flagler College in St. Augustine, Florida, with a BA in criminology and a minor in psychology, focusing on social determinants of health and restorative justice.
Prior to joining the Envision team, Essie worked as a CHW, care coordinator, and a community organizer in rural Colorado. Essie connected, educated, and mobilized the local community to address specific community-identified issues via coalition building, leadership development, and policy change. A highlight of Essie’s experience is living and working in rural Alaska Native Yup’ik communities and working with the local Tribal councils to facilitate daily programming on wellness, cold water safety, emotional intelligence, and outdoor education.
Essie is passionate about building bridges across racial and cultural differences in communities. She emphasizes trust building and finding common ground through relationship building and fostering a space to work toward meaningful change together.
Sherri Ohly
Leadership Team
envision Director of Operations and Development
University of Wisconsin—Mobilizing Action Toward Community Health (MATCH)
Sherri brings professional and personal lived experience to advancing an equitable public health approach. Having worked on the streets, in communities, health and wellness centers, a health care technology company, and state health departments, Sherri brings a comprehensive view of public health and the essential community components that make it possible for everyone to have what they need to live their most fulfilled lives.
Sherri started her career working with teen moms as a teen mom. She partnered with community health workers (CHWs) to define what health means to them and implemented those solutions. She has a long history of managing and supervising CHW programs, as well as providing training and technical assistance to health departments, CHW organizations, and CHWs. Partnering with CHWs and CHW Allies in government, health care, business, and community-based organizations, she co-directs and sustains the Envision CHW Training and Technical Center, providing structural support, systems change, and advancing policies that create an environment for CHWs and CHW programs to thrive.
Areas of expertise: CHW reimbursement and sustainability, partnership development, policy and systems work, documentation and data collection technology, CHW training and support
Yasamin Aftahi
Training Team
Envision Outreach Coordinator
University of Wisconsin—Mobilizing Action Toward Community Health (MATCH)
Throughout her career, Yasamin has combined her love of language and her passion for equity to bring a human lens to her work in public health. She has worked with a range of organizations on initiatives connected to health equity. As the child of Iranian immigrants, she has a passion for making the world a better place for people from all walks of life, while learning about how different communities experience the social determinants of health in markedly different ways in the United States.
Yasamin holds an undergraduate degree in English and earned a Master’s in International Affairs from the School of Global Policy and Strategy at the UC San Diego. Currently she is the outreach coordinator for the Envision project, to provide technical assistance for CHWs connected to the COVID-19 pandemic response.
Sheri Johnson, Ph.D
Director, Population Health Institute; Co-Director, County Health Rankings and Roadmaps; Associate Professor (CHS), Department of Population Health Sciences; University of Wisconsin Madison School of Medicine and Public Health
Dr. Johnson is a member of the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine’s Roundtable on Population Health Improvement and a board member of Frameworks Institute. Her career has been dedicated to partnering with children, families, community organizations and systems to advance health and well-being. Dr. Johnson provided training for Milwaukee Area Health Education Center CHW program participants and has written about the value of CHW’s in primary healthcare. She was previously Director of Behavioral Health at Milwaukee Health Services, Inc., a federally qualified health center and served as the Administrator and State Health Officer for the Wisconsin Division of Public Health. She is a volunteer for Big Brothers Big Sisters of Metro Milwaukee.
Areas of expertise: community engagement, health equity, children’s health, SDOH
Kellie Gordon
Content Director
KineticHealth
With storytelling beginnings in broadcast journalism, Kellie has an ear for the sound of language, and how words bring meaning to life. Her writing and editorial expertise has crisscrossed traditional and new media, crafting engaging and accessible messages for audiences as diverse as first-time moms, motor oil buyers, and fast food fish aficionados. With attention to intention, she helps client organizations target their messaging to produce results.
Toby Lucich
Principal and Herder-in-Chief
KineticHealth
Recombining data and expert insights to improved patient (or employee, or stakeholder) experiences has long been a part of Toby’s work in organizations. Early work at Southwest Washington Medical Center focused on understanding the value of improved patient experiences, from process change initiatives, to scheduling design reviews, to technology-enabled patient and provider experiences. These early experiences sparked a passion for data- driven investments, as well as a deep appreciation for intentional communications and education as part of lasting change efforts.