Kathleen Allden, MD
Kathleen Allden, MD is an expert in psychosocial and neuropsychiatric consequences of war, refugee trauma, torture, and human rights abuse. Dr. Allden has worked with Burmese refugees in Thailand for twenty years. She has played a leadership role in developing Burma Border Projects' mental health initiatives since its inception in 1999. She is a faculty member of Dartmouth Medical School and Program Director of the Peter C. Alderman Foundation (PCAF). Her current work with PCAF involves collaboration with universities and ministries of health in resource-poor regions to establish mental health programs for communities affected by war, genocide, torture, and natural disaster. PCAF has clinics in Uganda, Liberia, and Cambodia and sponsors an annual pan-African conference on psychological trauma. At Dartmouth, she teaches the course “Health, Humanitarian Assistance, and Human Rights” to medical and graduate students, and mentors students in the Dartmouth International Health Group and the student chapter of Physicians for Human Rights. From 1999-2007, she helped established and directed the International Survivors Center in Boston, a member program of the National Consortium of Torture Treatment Centers. In the 1990's, Dr. Allden was Medical Director of the Harvard Program in Refugee Trauma and led the Indochinese Psychiatry Clinic at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. Recently, she helped establish NESTT, the New England Survivors of Torture and Trauma program, which serves survivors of torture in northern New England. Since 2008, Dr. Allden has co-chaired the Working Group on Mental Health and Psychosocial Support for Harvard Humanitarian Initiative's Humanitarian Action Summit. Dr. Allden has provided consultation and training for governmental, non-governmental, and academic organizations, including Partners in Health, the International Rescue Committee, Physicians for Human Rights, International Committee for the Red Cross, the United Nations agencies for refugees and human rights, and the US, Mexican, and Danish governments. She has worked in multiple refugee, post-conflict, and natural disaster settings in Africa, Asia, Europe, North America and Haiti. Dr. Allden is co-author of the UN protocol on medical-legal investigation of torture and other cruel and degrading treatment, known as the Istanbul Protocol. She has provided extensive expert medical-legal testimony regarding political asylum as well human rights offenses perpetrated by corporations. This includes the landmark human rights case against Unocal Corporation for abuses in Burma during construction of a natural gas pipeline. She provided consultation on psychological torture and prisoner abuse for the International Committee of the Red Cross during their evaluation of Guantanamo detainees, and assisted Physicians for Human Rights in the evaluation of political asylum seekers detained in US jails and prisons.
Delia Chou, MA
Delia received her master's degree in Computer Science from The University of Massachusetts and works as an engineer IT for Cisco Systems, Inc. in Tewksbury, MA. Delia utilizes her undergraduate degree in Accounting to maintain the financial records of Burma Border Projects and file the corporation's annual tax returns with the US Internal Revenue Service, as well as deploying updates for BBP's website. Delia has also volunteered her time on various short-term humanitarian care-giving projects along the Thai-Burma border.
Polly Dewhirst, MSW
Polly Dewhirst is a licensed social worker, researcher, and senior manager with fifteen years of international experience working with victims and survivors of human rights violations. She obtained her master's degree in International Social Welfare from Columbia University and is currently consulting on a variety of projects. These include community work around refugee access to mental health services in South Africa, HIV/AIDS research, and a conference on human rights investigations and forensic science in Africa. She is an expert in transitional justice and has conducted extensive advocacy, research and intervention projects around South Africa's historic Truth and Reconciliation Commission with the Center for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation (CSVR). Polly has specialist expertise and a passion for working with relatives of those who have “disappeared” or gone missing due to political conflict. She established CSVR's South African Disappearance Project, which provided community-based psychosocial support to families and worked with them to conduct investigative research and advocacy around exhumations. In more recent years, she has worked with issue of disappearances at the global level and is on the Drafting Committee of the International Minimum Standards for Psychosocial Work in Enforced Disappearances. Polly has been working with organizations from Burma since 2002 and lived in Chiang Mai in 2004 to assist in the development of a human rights documentation network.
Jeffrey C. Dodson, MAM, MNRS
J.C. holds a bachelor's degree from the U.S. Air Force Academy; a master's degree from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University; and a master's degree from the National Defense University. He is a graduate of international executive programs at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton Business School and Oxford University's Said Business School. He brings a broad range of international strategy development, program management, and government relations experience to BBP. He also provides unique expertise associated with establishing critical community infrastructure in remote locations and post-conflict environments. J.C. is currently an executive with a large global defense and security company, headquartered in London, England. He is the company's primary U.S.-based advisor on international security matters and crisis management operations in high-risk environments. He began his private industry career in 2002, following a 22-year career with the U.S. Air Force that included operational, acquisition management and command assignments.
Christina Fink, PhD
Dr. Christina Fink is an anthropologist and the author of Living Silence in Burma: Surviving Under Military Rule (2009). Between 1995-2010, she was based in Thailand, teaching for the International Sustainable Development Studies Institute in Chiang Mai and running educational courses for members of Burmese civil society organizations. She is currently on the faculty of the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University in Washington D.C.
Michael Forhan, BBP Founder and Executive Director
Michael Forhan has spent much of his life working in the international arena. He successfully established two companies in Rangoon, Burma from 1994 to 1997. Prior to his time in Burma, Michael had built a career for himself in the international educational travel industry. In the summer of 1998, Michael traveled to the Thai-Burma border, where he met Dr. Cynthia Maung for the first time and received her permission to feature her in a documentary film. Meeting Dr. Cynthia, coupled with his growing awareness of the enormous needs of the Burmese refugees and migrant workers living along the Thai-Burma border, inspired Michael to enlist the support of several Boston-area trauma therapists to establish Burma Border Projects, Inc. as a tax-exempt, charitable organization in May 2000. At the time of assuming the role of Executive Director of BBP, Michael was Director of Special Projects in the Northeast and in Asia for NASA's Center for Technology Commercialization in Westborough, MA. He presently serves as Director of Corporate Development for Passports, Inc., a Massachusetts-based international educational travel company.
Sarah Gundle, PsyD, MIA
Dr. Sarah Gundle is a clinical psychologist in private practice in New York specializing in trauma. She holds a doctorate in Clinical Psychology from the Wright Institute and a master's degree in International Affairs from Columbia University, with a concentration in human rights. Dr. Gundle lectures on trauma and international mental health at St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital, where she is adjunct faculty and is on the supervisory staff. She serves as a trauma consultant to various non-profits in Manhattan and is credentialed through both St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital and Columbia University. She is a member of the 9-11 Trauma Commission therapist network, APA Disaster Relief Network, NY State Psychological Association Disaster/Crisis Response Network, the International Red Cross disaster team, the Cornell School of Medicine Women's Mental Heath Consortium, and the NYC Medical Reserve Corps. Dr. Gundle has worked in the past at the UN, the International Center for Peace and Democracy Training (Tel Aviv), and Defense for Children International (Jerusalem) where she focused on issues related to children's rights, torture, and refugee mental health. She was the founder and director of Images for Peace, a nonprofit devoted to coexistence between Arab and Jewish children through photography in Jaffa, Israel. Dr. Gundle currently supervises the clinical director of the Mae Tao Clinic Counseling Center in Mae Sot.
Ellen McCurley, LICSW, MPH
Ellen is a Clinical Social Worker with a master's degree in Public Health from Boston University. She does counseling and pubic health work with children and adults in Massachusetts. Ellen has experience in organizational development and programming, mental health practice, and applied research. 11 years ago, she co-founded The Pendulum Project, a humanitarian organization based in Malawi that works to strengthen the health and well-being of communities, families, and children affected by HIV/AIDS and poverty. She has worked in the US, Africa and other countries with local community groups, healthcare providers, and other organizations to provide resources, training, basic needs and psychosocial support for people who are affected by HIV/AIDS, poverty, and violence. She also serves on the board of the Face to Face AIDS Project.
Nancy Murakami, LCSW
Nancy Murakami s currently the director of social services at the Bellevue/NYU Program for Survivors of Torture, the largest comprehensive torture treatment center in the New York City area addressing the complex needs of torture survivors. She received her master's in social work from Columbia University in New York City, with a concentration in international social welfare and program development and evaluation. She received specialized clinical training in therapeutic methods of addressing the impact of psychological trauma on children, adults, and families while at the Anti-Trafficking Program and Counseling Center of Safe Horizon, a New York City advocacy and assistance agency for victims of crime and abuse. Nancy was BBP's first Director of Counseling Training based on the Thai-Burma border at Dr. Cynthia Maung's Mae Tao Clinic in Mae Sot, Thailand. She provided clinical and administrative training and supervision, program and resource development, and inter-agency coordination and capacity-building for displaced Burmese communities inside Burma and in Thailand. Prior to becoming a licensed clinical social worker, Nancy taught secondary school and led health and gender-based initiatives in rural communities in Malawi, Africa.
Henry Thein, MD
Dr. Thein was raised in Burma and graduated from the Institute of Medicine 2 in Rangoon, Burma in 1977. He practiced medicine in Burma until 1983, when he started working in Thailand for the UNHCR-affiliated agency COERR as a medical practitioner in refugee camp hospitals. Since immigrating to the United States in 1988, Dr. Thein has specialized in refugee mental health and mostly works with Cambodian and Laotian refugees. He is currently employed by the Massachusetts Department of Mental Health.