Board of Directors & Associates

Jamie O’Connell, JD
President of metformin weight loss side effects the Board of Directors
Jamie O’Connell is Lecturer in Residence at the metformin hydrochloride brand name University of California, Berkeley, School of Law. He has worked on human rights and development in over a dozen countries in Africa, the Americas, Asia, and Europe, under the auspices of the United Nations, local and international non-governmental organizations, and academic institutions. O’Connell has also directed the Human Rights Clinic at Fourah Bay College, University of Sierra Leone.

 

 

Peter Maybarduk, JD
Vice-President & Executive Director
Peter Maybarduk is a lawyer, composer and international advocate. As an attorney with Washington, D.C.-based Public Citizen, Maybarduk advises governments and civil society groups around the world on their rights to promote access to medicines for all under intellectual property rules. In 2009, his work yielded significant HIV/AIDS drug price reductions in Colombia and a new state access to medicines policy enacted by President Rafael Correa in Ecuador. Maybarduk lived in Sierra Leone as a child. He has co-founded and co-coordinated several successful advocacy groups and worked in over a dozen countries. Maybarduk studied anthropology at William & Mary and law at UCBerkeley.

Joy Spencer, MA
Treasurer & International Coordinator
Joy Spencer, MA — a Sierra Leonean educator — received her Master’s degree in International Educational Development from Columbia University’s Teachers’ College. Her research focused on education in Africa and related development issues, including condom usage and an examination of Sierra Leone’s progress in achieving universal primary education. She previously worked with Knowledge Ecology International in Washington, D.C. on projects related to intellectual property and consumer access to medicines and other knowledge goods. During 2008 to 2009, Spencer served as IPPSL’s Sierra Leone Coordinator, while teaching at the American International School in Freetown.

 

Joseph Opala, MA
Member of the Board of Directors
Joseph Opala, adjunct professor in the History Department and Honors Program at James Madison University, lived in Sierra Leone for 17 years, teaching at the Institute of African Studies at Fourah Bay College and consulting for a variety of international NGOs. Opala was the first scholar to identify the historical link between the Gullah people of South Carolina and Georgia with the people of Sierra Leone. In the 1990s, Opala joined Sierra Leonean human rights activists, Zainab Bangura and Julius Spencer, to form the Campaign for Good Governance, Sierra Leone’s largest pro-democracy and human rights organization.

 

Harriette Williams, MA
Member of the Board Directors
Harriette Williams, MA is a Sierra Leonean with ten years of academic and professional experience in development work. She has worked as a strategic planner for international organizations and government agencies. In 2008, Williams worked with the Sierra Leone government to design a national strategy for public sector reform. Ms. Williams holds a Master’s degree from Columbia University’s School of International & Public Affairs (SIPA). She currently works in Bujumbura, Burundi at the African Centre for the Constructive Resolution of Disputes (ACCORD), where she coordinates their in-country operations, and is a consultant with the World Bank.

 

Matthew D. Blanchard
Communications Associate & Webmaster
A 2002 graduate of The College of William & Mary, Matthew Blanchard earned a Bachelor’s of Arts in French Literature, with honors. During his final semester he was diagnosed HIV-positive. A profound desire to embrace his infirmity as blessing moved Matthew to aim himself toward good health & service. By 2003/4, Matthew had immersed himself in San Francisco’s vibrant culture of advocacy & activism, focusing his career on the provision of prevention education to disadvantage LGBTQ youth. The more recent focus of his work has involved Matthew in nonprofit communications & strategic development.