John H. Knowles, Jr., President
CEO, Institute for Health Metrics
Joe Knowles is CEO of the Institute for Health Metrics (www.healthmetrics.org), a nonprofit incubator of evidence-based solutions to improve quality and outcomes in healthcare. He is a Trustee of the MGH Institute of Health Professions; Member of CRICO (Harvard hospital medical malpractice insurance firm) Strategies Committee; Director of Police Addiction Assistance Recovery Initiative (PAARI), Gloucester; and Treasurer of the Evelyn Lily Lutz Foundation, Beverly. He holds an AB (Government, 1979) from Harvard College, an MBA (Marketing, 1983) from Columbia University, and an MPH (Family and Community Health, 2002) from Harvard School of Public Health, where he was a Visiting Scientist in the Department of Society, Human Development and Health from 2002 to 2010.
Kyra Grenier
Chief Operating Officer
Kyra Grenier witnessed health equity firsthand growing up in rural Vermont where her father, a small town pediatrician, saw patients after hours at the family’s dining room table. After graduating from college Kyra moved to DC ready to change the world, she spent several years working for Senator Patrick Leahy before realizing that change rarely comes from DC. Kyra has spent over a decade growing a Boston based non-profit public health and human rights organization serving in roles which were critical to organization building and sustainability, focusing on internal communications and management, development, governance and relationship building. She is the director of the James Pace Clayton Fund, a philanthropic trust that makes life-changing gifts to individuals who have not had access to economic prosperity. As a long-time Bostonian, Kyra has developed deep connections within the Boston community. She and her husband and two young sons live in Jamaica Plain.
Dana Branco
Donor Engagement Manager
Drawing from her personal experience as a new mother, Dana Branco joins Family Health Project with a commitment to empowering and providing support to fellow new mothers during the pivotal first years of their children’s lives. Dana’s interest is rooted in recognizing the substantial influence that direct giving can have on local families, serving as a catalyst to diminish poverty and enhance outcomes for children. With nearly a decade of experience in development, Dana has championed the mission of several Boston-based non-profit organizations, higher education institutions, and healthcare institutions. She lives in Easton with her husband, toddler, and beloved pup.
Kia Garrett
Community Manager
Kia Garrett joins Family Health Project with experience in non-profit philanthropy and program implementation. Kia is passionate about the Family Health Project model because of the implicit dignity, simplicity, and immediate, direct impact of direct giving to reduce poverty. As a full-time student pursuing an MBA in Social Impact at Boston University, Kia is eager to apply her academic and professional interests with her commitment to economic justice and policy reform. She holds her bachelor’s degree in Latin American Studies and History from the College of William & Mary.
Pierce Gendron
Volunteer
Pierce is a volunteer supporting fundraising and communications for the Family Health Project. He is an advocate for Basic Income policies (including refundable Child Tax Credit payments) and is involved with several organizations delivering, studying, and promoting unconditional cash assistance. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Economics from George Washington University.
Board of Directors
John H. Knowles, Jr., President
CEO, Institute for Health Metrics
Joe Knowles is CEO of the Institute for Health Metrics (www.healthmetrics.org), a nonprofit incubator of evidence-based solutions to improve quality and outcomes in healthcare. He is a Trustee of the MGH Institute of Health Professions; Member of CRICO (Harvard hospital medical malpractice insurance firm) Strategies Committee; Director of Police Addiction Assistance Recovery Initiative (PAARI), Gloucester; and Treasurer of the Evelyn Lily Lutz Foundation, Beverly. He holds an AB (Government, 1979) from Harvard College, an MBA (Marketing, 1983) from Columbia University, and an MPH (Family and Community Health, 2002) from Harvard School of Public Health, where he was a Visiting Scientist in the Department of Society, Human Development and Health from 2002 to 2010.
Kate Barrand, Director
President & CEO, Horizons for Homeless Children
Kate Barrand began her tenure as President and CEO of Horizons for Homeless Children in November, 2015, but has been supporting Horizons for more than 25 years. She has served as both a volunteer going into shelters to play with children and as a member of the Board of Directors. Prior to her role with Horizons, Kate Barrand worked as a strategy consultant and operating manager in the finance and technology sectors, working with C-suite and executive teams of financial institutions, Fortune 500 companies, and nonprofit organizations. She was also the Founder and Chief Marketing Officer of Clareon Corporation, the first online business-to-business payment engine sanctioned by the US Treasury following her time at BankBoston leading Strategic Planning and Global Strategic Marketing. Kate holds a BA in Early Childhood Development from the Eliot-Pearson Department at Tufts University and an MBA from Boston University.
J. Richard Crowley, Treasurer
Financial and Operational Management Consultant
Rick Crowley has over 40 years of financial and management experience. Rick earned a BA in Economics from Providence College and received training in accounting at Cornell Business School. He earned his CPA while at Price Waterhouse and is a certified Cultural Transformation consultant. He has served as a management and financial consultant for over 60 companies since 1995. Industries include biotechnology, high technology, health information systems, medical device, publishing, manufacturing and not for profit organizations. Rick is currently the Treasurer of Lazarus House Ministries and serves on the finance committee at St. Augustine’s parish in Andover. He is a past Vice Chairman of the Board of Education in Massachusetts and finance committee member of the New England Baptist hospital.
Edith LaC. Dabney, Director
Chair Emerita: Museum of Science;
Chair Emerita: WGBH Educational Foundation;
Chair Emerita: McLean Hospital;
Trustee Emerita: Boston Symphony Orchestra
Edith LaC. Dabney, mother, grandmother and great-grandmother, is a retired volunteer fundraiser, or as she terms it, a “pick pocket” for several Boston non-profit institutions. Over the last few decades, Dabney has been Board Chair of the WGBH Educational Foundation, Chair of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Trustee Emirata of Boston Museum of Science, and is a Life Trustee of each of McLean Hospital and the MGH Institute of Health Professions. She graduated from Smith College in 1952. She has been deeply involved in a number of Boston area schools and colleges and is well known in the hospital and health care communities.
Stacey Landry, Director
Vice President for Advancement and Philanthropic Services,
Essex County Community Foundation
Stacey Landry is the Vice President for Advancement and Philanthropic Services at Essex County Community Foundation. In this role she works with individuals, families, and businesses to craft and execute effective philanthropic strategies that strengthen communities. Stacey is a nonprofit “lifer” having worked in the sector for more than 15 years. Most notably, Stacey is a co-founder of Rocky Mountain MicroFinance Institute, a Community Development Financial Institution in Denver, CO dedicated to ensuring entrepreneurship is a means for economic and social mobility. Stacey has also worked at the Rocky Mountain Children’s Health Foundation, home to the largest milk bank in the country. The foundation additionally provides support for direct needs such as diapers, clothing, cribs, and other basic supplies for new families. Stacey is driven by a core belief that “we belong to each other” and was inspired by Family Health Project’s work as the most basic yet most profound expression of that belief. She is a proud graduate of Penn State University where she captained the women’s lacrosse team and majored in Marketing. She lives in Beverly, MA with her family.
Gene Lindsey, MD, Secretary
Gene Lindsey, MD, has been an internist and cardiologist for over 40 years, practicing at Harvard Vanguard Medical Associates and its predecessors since 1975. In 1997, when Harvard Vanguard Medical Associates was created, Dr. Lindsey became its first Chairman of the Board. In 2004-2005, Dr. Lindsey joined the Atrius Health Board, and later became its Chairman, a position which he held until he was appointed as CEO. He has served on several healthcare boards and advisory groups including Guthrie Health and the Boston University Medical Group. Dr. Lindsey graduated from Harvard Medical School in 1971 and completed an internship, residency, and clinical fellow in cardiology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. In retirement, Dr. Lindsey has been active in nonprofit organizations in the Kearsarge Region of New Hampshire that work with families in need.
F. Bradley Neuenhaus, Director
Chief Business Officer, MindEdge, Inc.
After an extensive career in marketing technology, Brad Neuenhaus became involved in education. He was a founding partner of Keys to Literacy and since 2017 has served as a senior executive at MindEdge Learning, an online learning provider. Brad’s interest in literacy started in 1971 when he volunteered to tutor struggling readers in Paterson, New Jersey. After a long career as a Fortune 1000 executive and entrepreneur, he returned to his passion for literacy and in 2007 founded Keys to Literacy. Brad has served on the HILL for Literacy board since 2016. He is committed to the HILL mission and its ability to help districts, schools, teachers, and students build lifelong literacy skills. Brad has a B.A. from George Washington University and an M.B.A. from Boston University.
Advisory Board
Anthony S. Bashir, Ph.D.
Adjunct, Lynch School of Education and Human Development, Boston College,
Consultant, Architects For Learning
Anthony S. Bashir has spent a lifetime dedicated to children and adolescents with communication disorders and served for 25 years as the coordinator of speech-language pathology services in the Department of Otolaryngology at Boston Children’s Hospital. He spent twenty years at Emerson College where across his tenure there he served as the director of the Freshman Academic Studies Program, Coordinator for Academic Access, and director of the Writing and Academic Resource Centre. Currently, he continues to serve as an adjunct faculty member in Teacher Education at the Lynch School of Education and Human Development, Boston College. Anthony is a Fellow of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association and a recipient of its Honors. His years in clinical practice and teaching have led to research interests in the natural history of developmental language disorders as well as the literacy and self-advocacy needs of students who struggle with language development and learning.
Lisa A Gennetian
Pritzker Associate Professor of Early Learning Policy Studies,
Associate Professor in the Sanford School of Public Policy
Lisa A. Gennetian is an applied economist whose research straddles a variety of areas concerning child poverty from income security and stability to early care and education with a particular lens toward identifying causal mechanisms underlying how child poverty shapes children’s development. She is a co-PI on the first multi-site multi-year randomized control study of a monthly unconditional cash transfer to low-income mothers called Baby’s First Years. Her recent work bridges poverty scholarship with a behavioral economic framework. “The Persistence of Poverty in the Context of Economic Instability: A Behavioral Perspective,” describes such a framework for poverty programs and policy, co-authored with Dr. Eldar Shafir and her co-authored publication “Behavioral Economics and Developmental Science,” further advances the application of behavioral economic insights to the arena of children’s development. Lisa has since launched the beELL initiative; applying insights from behavioral economics to design strategies to support parent and family engagement in, and enhance the impacts of, existing childhood interventions.
Jeffrey G. Madrick
Senior Fellow, The Century Foundation
Jeff Madrick is a regular contributor to The New York Review of Books, and a former economics columnist for The New York Times. He is director of the Bernard L. Schwartz Rediscovering Government Initiative at the Century Foundation, where he is a Senior Fellow; editor of Challenge Magazine; and visiting professor of humanities at The Cooper Union. His most recent book, Invisible Americans, was published by Alfred A. Knopf in January, 2020. His 2009 book, The Case for Big Government (Princeton), received a 2009 PEN Galbraith Non-Fiction Award. He is also the author of Taking America (Bantam, 1987), and The End of Affluence (Random House, 1995), both of which were New York Times Notable Books of the Year. Taking America was chosen by Business Week as one of the ten best books of the year. Madrick is a fellow of the World Policy Institute and is a member of the board of The Center for Economic and Policy Research.