Leadership Team 2020-2021

Overview of the HPREP Organization

Executive Directors
Stan Gill, Leonard Nettey, Gloria Ha, & Elizabeth May

Program Management Directors
Kim Hixon & Kerry McGowen

Mentoring Directors
Harim Won, Gerardo Zevala, Meredith Phelps, Sara Shin, Emily Goering, & Ayantu Temegsen

Curriculum Directors
Ryan Camire, Karthik Hullahalli, Adam Lowet, Priya Shah, Fasih Ahsan, & Della Syau

Finance Director
Ashley Kyalwazi

Special Events Director
Sepideh Ashrafzadeh & Megan He

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Directors
Marie-Angele Messou & Sayo Eweje

Admissions Directors
Catherine Jacob-Dolan, Leeza Santiago Millan, & Marisa Moret

Media Directors
Mahaa Ahmed

Alumni Outreach Directors
Chaim Chernoff

Evaluations Director
Juliana Coraor & Valentina Vargas

Overview of HPREP Organization

Directors are responsible for leading individual committees within HPREP and serving on the Executive Committee. The responsibilities of our various Committee Directors are described below. Directors serve year-round but may have increased time commitment during the HPREP season, which typically lasts from October-February. Previous involvement in HPREP at any level is a prerequisite for Director eligibility.

All Directors are eligible to serve on the Executive Committee, which is the main voting body of HPREP. At least one Director from each committee must serve on the Executive Committee, which meets on a monthly basis during the HPREP season.

Executive Directors

Program Management Directors

Program Management Directors serve an event management role critical for the success of HPREP, and work to coordinate all of the moving parts involved in each HPREP session. This position is ideal for anyone interested in project or nonprofit management, especially those with strong organization and communication skills. The Logistics Committee is unique in that it allows volunteers to participate in every level of HPREP, from taking attendance and setting up lunch during an HPREP session, to coordinating the scheduling and volunteer needs of multiple teams and communicating those logistical details effectively, to working with administrative contacts to put large-scale events like the Closing Ceremony.

Mentoring Directors

The Mentoring Committee coordinates and oversees the mentoring section of HPREP. The mentoring relationship is a critical aspect of the HPREP student experience. Directors work together to establish the overall mentoring curriculum, recruit and train mentors and pod leaders, organize student-mentor pairs, develop detailed weekly plans of activities, and communicate all logistics needs. Directors are also involved with mediating conflicts or issues from mentors, pod leaders, and students. This position is well-suited for volunteers interested in management experience who have good communication skills and enjoy working with others.

Curriculum Directors

The Curriculum Committee is responsible for coordinating and overseeing the HPREP classroom experience. Directors’ roles include design of the overall curriculum (lecture topics, guest speakers and scheduling), recruiting volunteers to develop and teach lectures, overseeing volunteers by holding practice lectures, and collaborating with other committees to coordinate lecture logistics. Curriculum directors get to interact with both other volunteers who teach and develop the lectures as well as with the students on the day of the lecture. This position is ideal for volunteers who are organized and great communicators and who are interested in gaining curriculum design and teaching experience, and interacting with many other HPREP volunteers who help to teach the lectures.

Finance Director

The Finance Director works closely with the Executive Directors and is responsible for HPREP’s fundraising efforts as well as overseeing the finances and budget. The Finance Director is further responsible for soliciting HMS departments for donations and may choose to lead initiatives to apply for grants available through Harvard or through external sources. This director is involved in both the big-picture planning of HPREP (establishing our yearly budget) and the session-to-session programming (approving purchase requests, writing finance reports). The Finance Director may oversee a team of up to 6 additional volunteers to work together on associated tasks.

Special Events Directors

The Special Events Directors lead an interdisciplinary committee of volunteers across different Harvard programs to organize events for HPREP students focused on professional development. The goal of the Special Events Committee is to encourage HPREP students to explore and to prepare for careers in science and medicine. For many of these events, Directors also partner with professionals in the greater Boston community to bring in guest speakers and expert advice. Directors are responsible for organizing a wide range of professionalism workshops, the Career Fair, the Student Reunion, and the Medical Student Panel. Special Events Directors also take on new creative initiatives during the year.

Professionalism and Career Workshops: HPREP holds a series of workshops on various professionalism and career-building topics, including SAT/ACT Preparation, Building a Resume, Tailoring Social Media Presence, Programming, College Admissions, and Applying for Financial Aid and Scholarships. Directors work with HPREP volunteers to develop and teach the content of these workshops, and organize the logistics for each workshop.

Career Fair: The career fair is an half-day event during which we invite professionals from various careers in medicine and science to speak with the students in small groups. Directors identify and partner with professionals in the Boston area to represent an array of careers of interest, and organize the activities with a team of Special Events Committee volunteers.

Student Reunion: The student reunion is a summer-time social event to which we invite students and mentors from the previous year. This is a laid-back event typically during either lunch or dinner, where students have an opportunity to connect and share what they have up to post-HPREP.

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Directors

The HPREP mission is to recruit high school students from underrepresented and disadvantaged backgrounds into science, medicine, and public health, with the ultimate goal of improving health access and outcomes by addressing educational disparities. In light of this, we believe that diversity sits at the core of the works that we do, and that it is critical to consider diversity in all aspects of HPREP. This led to the creation of this new Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion committee, which will be active starting in the 2018-19 HPREP year. While the Executive Directors will work closely with this new committee, the new Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Directors will have the opportunity to incorporate their vision to shape the goals and structure of this committee. This committee will work closely with other Committees, including but not limited to the Visionary Team and the Admissions, Mentoring, Curriculum, and Special Events Committees, to evaluate HPREP programming, and to provide ideas and resources for increasing diversity. Some specific responsibilities will include working with the admissions team to make sure that all aspects of diversity are taken into consideration during the application process, overseeing volunteer diversity trainings and the Diversity and Health Disparities lecture, and brainstorming ways to bring in diverse speakers and other volunteers. To fill these roles, we are looking for volunteers who enjoy working with others, who are up for ‘thinking big’, and who are passionate about the HPREP mission and promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion within the HPREP community.

Admissions Directors

The Admissions Committee is mainly responsible for the admissions process of our HPREP students. Directors will be responsible for reviewing the application questions and criteria of admissions, managing the application web site, compiling and maintaining database of high school teachers’, counselors’ and principals’ contact information, sending out solicitation emails, and acting as email correspondence regarding application questions. In addition, the committee is tasked to recruit application readers, coordinate the review process, and submit recommendations for admissions to the EDs. Being an Admission director is a very humbling experience as students share their personal life stories, challenges, hopes and dreams on the applications.

Media Director

The Media Director is responsible for establishing and maintaining HPREP’s media presence. Directors recruit and oversee a team of volunteers who perform on-site photography, manage social media including Facebook and Twitter, update the website, design monthly online newsletters and assemble printed media for the closing ceremony. Directors also initiate new creative projects to encourage HPREP student involvement, such as yearbooks or blogs.

Alumni Outreach Director

The Alumni Outreach Directors works with an intern at the DMS office to monitor the progress of alumni tracking to update student contact information and to encourage student/alumni connections. This position is well-suited for volunteers who are creative and have strong writing and communication skills. It is additionally ideal for anyone who is passionate about fostering an HPREP community that extends beyond the 10 week program.

Evaluations Directors

The Evaluations Director will oversee a team to create, distribute, and analyze student evaluation surveys. The committee is responsible for beginning and end-of-year surveys that are critical to evaluating the overall impact HPREP has made on each class of students, as well as surveys evaluating the lectures and other programming. The Evaluations Directors will additionally generate reports based on this data and present these reports at Executive Committee meetings. This position is ideal for anyone who is interested in gaining skills in program evaluation, and who would be interested in having a critical role in improving the HPREP student experience.

Stan Gill	Leonard Nettey	Gloria Ha	Elizabeth May

PhD Candidate in Biological & Biomedical Sciences	MD/PhD Candidate in Health Sciences and Technology/ Immunology	PhD Candidate in Systems, Synthetic, and Quantitative Biology	PhD Candidate in Molecules, Cells and Organisms Graduate Program
Harvard Medical School	Harvard Medical School	Harvard Graduate School of Arts & Sciences	Harvard Graduate School of Arts & Sciences

	Kim Hixon	Kerry McGowen

	PhD Student in Biological and Biomedical Sciences	PhD Candidate in Biological Sciences in Public Health
	Harvard Medical School	Harvard Graduate School of Arts & Sciences

Harim Won	Gerardo Zevala	Meredith Phelps	Sara Shin	Emily Goering	Ayantu Temegsen

PhD Candidate in Biological Sciences in Public Health	PhD Student in Chemcial Biology	PhD Candidate in Virology	Research Assistant in Department of Immunology and Infectious Diseases	PhD Candidate in Immunology	MD/PhD Candidate in Health Sciences and Technology
Harvard Graduate School of Arts & Sciences	Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences	Harvard Graduate School of Arts & Sciences	Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health	Harvard Medical School	Harvard Medical School

Ryan Camire	Karthik Hullahalli	Adam Lowet	Priya Shah	Fasih Ahsan	Della Syau

PhD Candidate in Immunology	PhD Candidate in Biological Sciences in Public Health	PhD Candidate in Neuroscience	MD Candidate in the Pathways Program	PhD Student in Biological & Biomedical Sciences	PhD Student in Biological & Biomedical Sciences
Harvard Medical School	Harvard Graduate School of Arts & Sciences	Harvard Graduate School of Arts & Sciences	Harvard Medical School	Harvard Graduate School of Arts & Sciences	Harvard Graduate School of Arts & Sciences

	Sepideh Ashrafzadeh	Megan He

	MD Candidate in the Pathways Program	PhD Candidate in Molecular and Cellular Biology
	Harvard Medical School	Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences