Current Students
Heather Bello
Master of Science (SM2) candidate, HPM
Heather Bello is a second-year student in the HPM SM2 program. After graduating from Boston College in 2005, Heather spent two years working in the MA House of Representatives in the Committee on Public Health 
(2005 - 2007). It was here that she participated in the passage of Health Reform in Massachusetts. Her time at the State House made her keenly aware of the need for new care delivery and payment models. Heather wanted to be a part of developing and implementing these new strategies, which led her to leave the State House in 2007 to work at the Center for Connected Health (CCH). CCH is a division of Partners Healthcare whose mission is to research and develop new and innovative ways to utilize technology in delivering care to patients outside of the hospital setting. While at CCH Heather worked on a number of programs, one of which began as a large RCT aimed at determining the clinical effectiveness and financial outcomes associated with the use of a hypertension self management and monitoring program. Over the past two years Heather worked on the scaling and operationalization of this program, which has recently spun out into a for profit entity (Healthrageous: http:/www.healthrageous.com/).
Uzaib Saya
Master of Science (SM2) candidate, HPM
Uzaib Saya is a second-year Master’s student in the Department of Health Policy and Management. Prior to attending HSPH, he worked in the Division of Pharmacoepidemiology and Pharmacoeconomics at Brigham & Women’s Hospital helping to investigate how prescription drug usage policies in the US lowered co-payments and promoted the use of generic drugs. Uzaib grew up in Karachi, Pakistan and received his undergraduate degree from Williams College where he majored in History, and concentrated in Middle Eastern Studies. In his junior year, he participated in a program that took him to India, China and South Africa to study the health effects of globalization.
He has previously worked with Naya Jeevan in Karachi on an independent study project during his first year at HSPH, investigating the paying capacity of beneficiaries for primary care services at a social enterprise dedicated to improving access to catastrophic health insurance coverage for urban, low-income families. Uzaib spent this past summer in Malawi interning with Innovations for Poverty Action, an international development non-profit organization. He worked on a research project exploring the returns and risks of various informal saving options such as savings groups and saving collectors etc, and their impact on affordability for certain expenses including healthcare. Interested in innovative methods to finance health care in low-income countries, he aims to apply this experience and understand the extent to which small amounts of money can help save up for large health care expenses such as emergencies and/or preventative health products in the same way that micro-finance organizations are able to provide readily available lines of credit to small business owners. At Harvard, Uzaib is part of a student-run committee at the Hauser Center of Nonprofit Organizations that aims to increase outreach, support and engagement with students interested in nonprofits and civil society.
Jesse Ortendahl
Master of Science (SM2) candidate, HPM
Jesse Ortendahl is a part-time student in the research track of the SM2 program, which he began in Fall 2008. He intends to complete the program in Spring 2012. Since 2003, Jesse has worked as a researcher with Professor Sue Goldie of HPM, using decision analytic methods and models to inform cervical cancer policy domestically and internationally. Jesse earned a BS from University of Massachusetts-Amherst in Mathematics and Statistics, and has an interest in economics and using quantitative methods to improve decision-making and increase efficiency in resource allocation. He has been a TA for several years for the Economic Analysis course. In May 2011, Jesse was honored with the Harvard School of Public Health Teaching Assistant Award.
Martyna Skowron
Master of Science (SM2) candidate, HPM
Martyna Skowron is a second-year student in the management track of the SM2 program. She was born and raised in Czestochowa, Poland. Her family moved to the United States when she was 13 years old. Martyna graduated from Georgetown University in 2009 with a Bachelor of Science in Human Science and International Health. Among her activities at Georgetown, Martyna served as president on the Student Academic Council, participated in health systems research in Ghana and translational science research in Argentina, helped set up a medical/dental clinic in the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico, and served as a volunteer EMT on campus. Before coming to HSPH, Martyna worked for Booz Allen Hamilton on the Civil Health team and in strategic planning and new clinical program development at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. Martyna is interested in operational efficiency, streamlining workflows, and innovative and strategic planning at hospitals and healthcare delivery settings.
Roxane Gardner, MD, MPH
winning poet—described Kampala, Uganda, where she spent three years developing innovative, community-based public health programs. She believes her greatest accomplishment there was developing a groundbreaking prevention program that targeted couples where only one partner was HIV-infected.
about.” In his first position, at the Ellen Riegner Cancer Foundation in Bogota, he began to understand how a health system works, or does not work, and the impact of poverty on health. By “sheer chance,” he then found a job with the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative in Rwanda. That experience, he reports, taught him about the dynamics and challenges faced by NGOs in translating donor resources into effective services. These experiences brought him to the Department of Health Policy and Management, where Philip said he enjoyed studying with outstanding professors and fellow students. During his time at HSPH, he worked with Network Health, a local health plan providing coverage for Medicaid populations. Philip reported that “it [was] inspiring to be part of such a mission-driven nonprofit organization.” Philip was also the president of LAC Health, a student organization that focused on analyzing and improving health problems in Latin America and the Caribbean. Upon graduation Philip took a position in the Strategy and Operations practice of Deloitte Consulting where he hoped to “gain firsthand experience in the problems and opportunities faced by the management of health care organizations.”
India, Monisha discovered her passion for health care management. She moved with her husband to the United States several years ago and came to HSPH for the master’s degree program in health policy and management (HPM): “I liked the fact that the program required previous work experience, and students could bring these experiences into the classroom.” The former president of the HSPH Student Government, Monisha believed that HPM had many strengths, including the international student body, the real-world orientation of the HPM faculty, and the opportunity to take business classes at the Harvard Business School and MIT. In her final year of the program, Monisha completed her practicum at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, where she was a Lean Program intern in the Office of the President: “By identifying and reforming the non-value-added aspects of the patient care process, [we were] able to increase efficiency, productivity, and patient and staff satisfaction.” Prior to graduation, Monisha had already landed a job with McKinsey and Company and she has been with them since then. Of the nature of her work, she now says, “Every project requires the ability to solve problems: structure the problem and break it down into manageable portions for execution; leadership, and strong analytic capability the ability to build a model, run the model, and glean recommendations as a result.” 
Before entering HSPH in 2006, Myra had worked in the field of International Health. Beginning with a year in Botswana working on women’s legal rights and HIV-related health issues, she later lived in Washington DC and worked through the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and the Center for Global Development on reproductive health and US foreign assistance. After four years of traveling to southern and eastern Africa, Myra chose graduate school so that she could live and work in the same place. She wanted a community focus to her work, and chose Harvard due to its focus on economics and the strong academic reputation of the health policy program. Currently Myra works as a senior project manager for the Department of Primary Care at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. She works with eight primary care practices around Boston on a variety of process improvement, quality improvement, and financial analysis projects. “For me, the real value of the HSPH program is that it allowed me to transform my interest in policy to a career in management. What I love about my job is that I actually feel I’m working at a point where ideals in primary care policy meet best practices in implementation on the ground.” Myra uses skills daily which she learned in the Health Policy and Management Program, including cost accounting, financial management, Medicaid dental policy, strategic planning, behavioral economics, and history and reality of health care and regulation in Massachusetts. “HSPH gave me the knowledge to understand the context of community health care challenges and the confidence to apply my knowledge in new situations.”
Audrey Morse Gasteier received her SM from the Health Policy and Management department at the Harvard School of Public Health in 2008 on the policy track. Since then, she has been working at the Massachusetts Division of Health Care Finance and Policy, where she serves as the Director of Health Systems Policy and manages a variety of health research and analytic projects ranging from state health reform to health care cost trends. Prior to attending the Harvard School of Public Health, Audrey worked as a mental health policy analyst at the Association of Community Human Service Agencies in Los Angeles, California, where she worked on mental health policy and financing issues in Los Angeles County. During Audrey’s time at Harvard, she worked as a consultant for the Health Connector, a new state agency created under Massachusetts’ health reform initiative. She worked on issues related to enrollment in subsidizing a new state health insurance program, Commonwealth Care, and on market reaction to a new requirement that Massachusetts employers offer Section 125 plans to workers, allowing them to purchase health insurance using pre-tax income. Audrey received an AB from Mount Holyoke College in 2003.
