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TIFO Team

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Ronald D. Dobbin, M.Sc.

Board President

R. Denny Dobbin has over 40 years occupational hygiene experience as an officer in the US Public Health Service and as an independent practitioner. Mr. Dobbin is President of TIFO's Board of Directors. His assignments with the Public Health Service included seventeen years with the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health where he managed research programs and developed policy, including a two-year assignment with the U.S. Congress in the Office of Technology Assessment. Mr. Dobbin worked on toxic chemical issues at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and managed a Superfund grant program for model hazardous waste worker and emergency responder training for ten years at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. Since 1997 he has worked independently on occupational, environmental, and public health policy issues for non-profit, labor, and other non-governmental organizations. He has a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Idaho, and a M.Sc. in Occupational Hygiene from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Mr. Dobbin is a fellow of the Collegium Ramazzini, an international academy of experts in the fields of occupational and environmental health.

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Ed Galindo, Ph.D.

Board Member

Ed Galindo (Yaqui, American Indian) has degrees in Animal Science and Chemistry (B.S.), Health Science (M.S.), and Education/Physics/Engineering (Ph.D.). Dr. Galindo is a TIFO Board Member,  faculty at the University of Idaho, Associate Director for Education and Diversity for the NASA Idaho Space Grant Consortium, and affiliate faculty at both Idaho State University and Utah State University. He has worked extensively in education and research with Native American students. He was twice elected as the National Indian Teacher of the Year, awarded by the National Indian School Board Association. Dr. Galindo is currently serving as a board member with the Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship and Excellence in Education Foundation, and with the American Indian College Fund. Most recently, Dr. Galindo was inducted as a lifetime (Sequoyah Fellow) member of the American Indian Science and Engineering Society (AISES). Dr. Galindo is the Director of the Natural Resources Tribal Cooperative and is a science teacher in Highland High School in Pocatello, Idaho.

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Jeannie Harvey, Ph.D.

Board Member

Jeannie Harvey has a M.S. in Natural Resources Management and a Ph.D. in Natural Resources, International Development, and Gender Auditing. Dr. Harvey serves on TIFO's Board of Directors. She has served as a Gender Advisor with the US Agency for International Development (USAID), providing technical assistance to Feed the Future offices in Asia and Africa including training, gender analyses, consultation, and extensive field work. Previously, she served as Program Analyst for South Asia in the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) Foreign Agricultural Service. Dr. Harvey has served as a US Peace Corps Agriculture Extension Volunteer in Ecuador. She has broad experience in international development, food security, gender and agriculture development, and gender integration. Dr. Harvey has also served as Senior Manager for Gender Integration at InterAction; Director of University of Idaho Women’s Center; and Gender Advisor for USAID/Bangladesh.

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Philip J. Landrigan, M.D., M.Sc.

Board Member

Philip J. Landrigan, MD, MSc is a pediatrician and epidemiologist. He is Professor of Biology and Director of the Program in Global Public Health and the Common Good at Boston College. He was previously Professor and Chair of Preventive Medicine and Dean for Global Health in the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York. He is a member of the US National Academy of Medicine.

 

For four decades, Dr. Landrigan has been a leader in environmental and occupational health. His early studies of lead poisoning demonstrated that lead is toxic to children even at very low levels and contributed to the US government’s decision to remove lead from paint and gasoline. A study he led at the US National Academy of Sciences defined children’s unique susceptibilities to pesticides and other toxic chemicals and catalyzed fundamental revamping of US pesticide policy to protect children’s health. In 1997-98, he guided EPA in establishing the Office of Children's Health Protection.

 

From 2015-2017, Dr. Landrigan co-chaired the Lancet Commission on Pollution & Health, which found that pollution causes 9 million deaths annually and is an existential threat to planetary health.  To continue the work of this Lancet Commission, Dr. Landrigan has formed the Global Observatory on Pollution and Health at Boston College. The Observatory collaborates with UN Environment and the Centre Scientifique de Monaco and is currently undertaking studies of the Impacts of Air Pollution India on Health, Human Capital and the Economy; the Intersection between Pollution and Development in Sub-Saharan Africa; and Human Health and Ocean Pollution.

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Brock Keller

Environmental Health Scientist

Brock is a recent University of Idaho graduate holding degrees in Environmental Science and International Studies. His interest in global environmental health, water resources, and GIS analysis led him to TIFO, where he interned for a year before fully joining the team post-graduation. Mr. Keller has worked and studied overseas for several years. In high school, he was awarded a place in the Rotary Youth Exchange Program in France and was distinguished as the Bretagne-Mayenne district youth representative. He pursued higher studies at the University of New York in Prague before coming to Idaho for the Environmental Science program. Throughout his collegiate career, Mr. Keller worked as a translator, interned at a biodiversity non-profit in Costa Rica, spent months teaching adult evening classes and working on an ecological project in rural Morocco, conducted stream research in Washington State, and spent a month in Uzbekistan with TIFO on their preliminary assessment of the Aral Sea project. His professional experience and academic interest in environmental health and desertification led him to be selected as one of the U.S. Department of State’s 2022 Critical Language Scholars where he spent 2 months in Jaipur, India at the University of Chicago’s American Institute of Indian Studies. Mr. Keller organizes and participates in an alumni mentoring board for early-career environmental scientists.

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Casey Bartrem, Ph.D., R.P.C.V.

Executive Director

Dr. Bartrem has a B.S. in Environmental Biology/Zoology from Michigan State University and a Ph.D. in Environmental Science from University of Idaho. Her experience includes environmental sampling, exposure assessment, risk assessment, community engagement, and health intervention in vulnerable communities around the world. Dr. Bartrem lead the environmental sampling and data analysis in Zamfara, Nigeria to assess and address the worst outbreak of childhood lead poisoning in modern history. She has worked with mining/recycling communities in Kyrgyzstan, Bangladesh, Nigeria, and the United States and is a visiting lecturer at the American University of Armenia’s School of Public Health. Dr. Bartrem is a member of the Collegium Ramazzini. From 2007-2009, Dr. Bartrem was a US Peace Corps Volunteer in the Kingdom of Lesotho.

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Ian H. von Lindern, Ph.D., P.E.

Co-Founder and Board Member

Ian von Lindern holds a B.S. in Chemical Engineering from Carnegie-Mellon University and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Environmental Science and Engineering from Yale University. Along with his wife, Dr. Margrit von Braun, Dr. von Lindern is co-founder of TerraGraphics Environmental Engineering and co-founder of TerraGraphics International Foundation (TIFO). Dr. von Lindern has 38 years of US and international environmental engineering and science experience. He has directed over 40 major health and environmental investigations involving primary and secondary smelters and battery processors, landfills, and tailings at several major mining and smelting sites in the United States, as well as in Asia, Africa, Australia, and Latin America. Dr. von Lindern was the lead risk assessor for the State of Idaho on the Bunker Hill/Coeur d’Alene Basin Superfund Site for over thirty years. He has extensive experience applying exposure and biokinetic lead modeling in human health risk assessment, cleanup criteria development, and remedial design. Dr. von Lindern has served on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency  Science Advisory Board on five occasions, reviewing the scientific basis for domestic lead regulatory policy.

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Margrit von Braun, Ph.D., P.E.

Co-Founder and Board Member

Margrit von Braun is an environmental engineer with degrees from the Georgia Institute of Technology (B.S), the University of Idaho (M.C.E.), and Washington State University (Ph.D.). Dr. von Braun’s teaching and research at the University of Idaho (UI) were in hazardous waste management and risk assessment. She founded and directed the Environmental Science and Environmental Engineering programs at UI from 1993-2003 and served as dean of the College of Graduate Studies before retiring in 2011. She served as President of the Western Area Graduate Schools. Dr. von Braun and her husband, Dr. Ian von Lindern, founded TerraGraphics Environmental Engineering, Inc. in 1984. The company focused on remediation of hazardous waste sites. In 2012, Dr. von Braun and Dr. von Lindern co-founded TerraGraphics International Foundation (TIFO) as the nonprofit successor to TerraGraphics Engineering. Dr. von Braun received a 3-year leadership development fellowship from the W. K. Kellogg Foundation, the Outstanding Faculty Award, and the Graduate Teaching Excellence Award.  In 2012, she was elected as a Fellow of the Collegium Ramazzini, an international academy of  experts in the fields of occupational and environmental health.

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Martins Dada, M.B., B.S., MScIH, DTMPH

Board Member

Martins Dada is a medical doctor with a Master’s of Science in International Health (Royal Tropical Institute, Amsterdam) and a Diploma in Tropical Medicine and Public Health (Humboldt University/Charité, Berlin). He has worked primarily in global health and humanitarian aid for the last sixteen years defining and implementing operational and medical strategies for humanitarian interventions in complex environments. Dr. Dada has also had numerous leadership and management positions for health programs based in various countries such as South Sudan, Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of Congo, and many others. Besides his core expertise in health programming during Public Health crises, he maintains an interest in occupational and environmental health. Dr. Dada supported Medecins Sans Frontiere’s (MSF) project regarding factory workers in high-density neighborhoods of Dhaka, Bangladesh, from 2015 - 2019. Currently, he works as the Health advisor Coordinator with MSF’s Operations Centre in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. 

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Gulzat Madmarova

Project Coordinator

Gulzat Madmarova holds a degree in law and a M.S. in social work from Osh State University. She previously worked for Save the Children on humanitarian aid distribution in Kyrgyzstan. Gulzat subsequently worked for five years for Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) on a collaborative environmental health project in Kadamjay Rayon, Kyrgyzstan, partnering with TIFO, the Kyrgyz Ministry of Health, and local stakeholders. Gulzat started as a Data Base Officer with MSF before being promoted to Project Coordinator Support. She also worked for MSF in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan as part of their Women’s Health project. In 2022, Gulzat attended the MSF Switzerland General Assembly where she presented on MSF’s work in Kyrgyzstan. Gulzat joins TIFO as the Project Coordinator for the ongoing Environmental Health Project in Kadamjay Rayon.

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Whitney Schroeder

Digital Media & Communications Specialist

Whitney holds two bachelor's degrees, one in Journalism and another in Broadcast Digital Media, along with a master's in Public Administration from the University of Idaho. She joins TIFO from the private sector, having served as the Marketing and Sales Director for a clean-technology company in the agriculture industry. Prior to that, she held positions in IT, science writing, and marketing. Whitney has an extensive background in web and event management, along with digital media storytelling. She is a founding member and former Executive Director of the Institute for Community Partnerships and Sustainable Development, an organization supporting community-led approaches to ecosystem restoration and community development in Togo. Whitney’s expertise in development, marketing, communications, and outreach/engagement in both the public and private sectors help organizations tell their story effectively while focusing on mission and passion. She is currently pursuing a Data Analytics Certificate from Google. Outside of the digital landscape, she enjoys tuning up her green thumb, caring for the gaggle of critters she has at home, and spending time in nature.

*Participation on this board of directors does not reflect EPA policy, endorsement, or action.

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