Leadership

dedicated governance

Board of Directors | Executive Director

Board of Directors

LifeRise AIDS Resources is privileged to have a dedicated, voluntary board of directors serving the cause of HIV/AIDS. Our board operates according to John Carver’s policy governance model. Board directors provide strategic leadership and oversight to LifeRise, ensure that plans and programs are implemented, provide legal backing, and make certain the public’s interest is served in accordance with our nonprofit 501(c)(3) charitable status.

Carolyn Klaus, MD, is a founding board director and serves as the Chair of the LifeRise board. She is the Executive Director of Hope In View (www.hopeinview.org), an international development organization mobilizing Christians and their communities to respond to the HIV/AIDS crisis. John Bongiorno, President of Angel Aid Foundation, as well as President of WorldServe International, a Christian NGO involved in health and water projects in poor countries, is also a founding board director, as well as Dr. Cynthia Calla (see below, Executive Director).

LifeRise is pleased to have recently added a new board director – Karen Herrera, RN, MSN. Karen is a missionary serving with HealthCare Ministries, where she leads the Field Ministries team. She has a masters in Community Health Nursing International Perspective. LifeRise is in the process of recruiting one additional board director to bring the board membership to a total of 5 directors.

Top of Page

Executive Director

Cynthia Calla, MD, MPH

Cynthia Calla, MD, MPH is the founder and Executive Director of LifeRise AIDS Resources. She has over 20 years of domestic and international health and development experience, working cross-culturally with the poor in underserved areas of the US and overseas. As a missionary doctor since 1993, she served in general health ministries in Cambodia for 2 years and then worldwide. In 2000, she began to feel a burden for those suffering because of HIV/AIDS. In answer to this calling, and in response to seeing the desperate need first-hand caring for AIDS patients in Africa, she founded LifeRise AIDS Resources in 2006.

Dr. Calla is board certified in the medical specialties of Family Practice and also Public Health and Preventive Medicine. She has a masters of public health in international health, as well as a diploma in tropical medicine. She received training in AIDS in the US, Uganda, and Zimbabwe.