Our Team

BRIDGE showcases a wide reflection of perspectives through convening multi-disciplinary experts and patient advocates from around the world.

Co-Chairs

Ngawai Moss, UK

Patient & Public Involvement in Women’s Health Research Leader; Honorary Research Fellow at Queen Mary University of London; Founding Member of Elly Charity

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Ngawai Moss, UK

Patient & Public Involvement in Women’s Health Research Leader; Honorary Research Fellow at Queen Mary University of London; Founding Member of Elly Charity

“I wish for women of childbearing age living with chronic diseases to find comfort and support if they want to start a family. While navigating pregnancy, they may encounter challenges and occasional losses, but my hope is that they can confidently make decisions and embrace the journey to motherhood with strength, resilience and happiness.”

Ngawai Moss is a passionate women's health advocate. She has developed research centered around the needs and wants of women, in particular those with chronic conditions. Her dedication stems from her own journey, having participated in several pregnancy studies.

With expertise in patient and public involvement, Ngawai has advised institutions such as the UK National Institute for Health Research, Health Education England, and the Academy of Medical Sciences. She has also collaborated with universities and charities to shape inclusive research practices.

Ngawai is a founding member of Elly Charity committed to advancing women's health globally through patient-centered research. Her work aims to amplify the voices of women and families in shaping the research agenda.

Prior to her focus on women's health, Ngawai spent over a decade in the marine sector facilitating organizational learning and informed decision-making as a knowledge management professional.

Melissa Tassinari, US

Former Clinical Advisor at FDA;
Developmental Toxicology

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Melissa Tassinari, US

Former Clinical Advisor at FDA;
Developmental Toxicology

“In my vision, women living with chronic diseases are in charge of their health and health decisions. They are encouraged to ask questions. They, with their health care providers, are equipped with the best information and are empowered to choose the path best for them.”

Melissa S. Tassinari trained as a developmental toxicologist and her career has focused on maternofetal and child health. She retired from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) where she was a Senior Clinical Advisor in the Division of Pediatric and Maternal Health in the Office of New Drugs at the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER). Prior to FDA, Melissa worked at Pfizer Inc. where she held several leadership positions in the toxicology laboratories and in regulatory affairs.

Melissa is a past-president of the Teratology Society (now the Society for Birth Defects Research and Prevention) and has broad experience in developmental toxicology, pediatric drug development and pregnancy and lactation labeling for prescription medications. She received her AB in Biology from Mount Holyoke College, her PhD in Anatomy from the Medical College of Wisconsin and completed her post doctoral training in the Harvard School of Dental Medicine and the Department of Orthopedics at Boston Children’s Hospital.

Marie Teil, Belgium

Head of Women of Childbearing Age Mission, UCB

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Marie Teil, Belgium

Head of Women of Childbearing Age Mission, UCB

“I wish for a future where pregnant and breastfeeding women with chronic diseases are systematically given the opportunity to be included in research design and clinical studies. I believe that this will require a change in societal mindset and the collective engagement of patients, healthcare professionals, researchers, health authorities and the pharmaceutical industry to achieve this common goal.”

Marie Teil is the Global Head of UCB’s Women of Childbearing Age (WoCBA) Program, an initiative she built once joining UCB in 2013, to empower and support women of childbearing age living with chronic diseases to make informed decisions about their healthcare and pregnancies.

As a woman and a mother, her mission is to ensure that women have options, and reliable data to safely guide their choices. As part of the WoCBA Program, UCB proudly partners with patients, clinical teams, and organizations in the field to close the knowledge gap that still exists on drug safety before, during and after pregnancy.

With over 20 years in the field of health, ranging from roles within academia and clinical research, to ethics and operations, Marie first received her medical degree in Lyon, a Masters in Statistics in Paris, and obtained the Regulatory Affairs Certification from the U.S. FDA. After 3 years in clinical research with Sanofi, she joined Mount Sinai School of Medicine NYC in 2001 initially as Conflict of Interest Officer and Director of Education for the Ethics Committee. She then created and led the Clinical Trials Office in 2004. In 2007, she took the leadership of the Institute for Personalized Medicine as director of operations of the Biobank.

Members

Lase Ajayi, US

Director of Clinical Research & Diversity Initiatives at Scripps;
Research Translational Institute

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Lase Ajayi, US

Director of Clinical Research & Diversity Initiatives at Scripps;
Research Translational Institute

“I wish that women of childbearing age living with chronic diseases could have the peace of mind knowing that they can receive the best care for their body, and that care would translate to any child they may or may not be caring for. That they can breathe easy and have trust in knowing that they can be fully cared for.”

Dr. Tolúwalàṣé (Laṣé) Ajayi, MD FAAP, is a fellowship-trained palliative care physician and pediatrician. She is the Director of Clinical Research and Diversity Initiatives at Scripps Research Translational Institute as well as an Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at UC San Diego and Rady Children’s Hospital San Diego where she works as a community hospitalist and pediatric palliative medicine physician.

Dr. Ajayi served as a member of the Pediatric Operations Task Force and on the Digital Health Technologies committee of the All of Us Research Program with the National Institutes of Health. Her research focuses on opportunities at the intersection of novel digital medicine technologies and unmet needs in pain and palliative medicine as well as maternal fetal health. She hopes to further investigate how mobile health can provide real-time, patient reported outcomes that can be rapidly integrated into individualized clinical plans to improve health-related quality of life and increase participation of pregnant women and their newborn in clinical research. With these efforts, she hopes to augment how we manage the symptoms prevalent in serious illness and diversify the standard of care provided to pregnant women, with the goal of reducing health disparities across the life span.

Enrica Alteri, Switzerland

Former Head of Division at European Medicines Agency;
Member of the Proposal Review Committee at Unitaid

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Enrica Alteri, Switzerland

Former Head of Division at European Medicines Agency;
Member of the Proposal Review Committee at Unitaid

“Women living with chronic diseases should not be put in the position of choosing between their health or having a child. They should be able to make informed decisions based on complete and reliable information on their medicines' benefits and potential risks.”

Dr Enrica Alteri is currently a member of the Scientific Committee and faculty of the master course in Drug Research and Development of the University of Geneva, and lectures on regulatory topics in several university courses in Italy and Switzerland. Dr Alteri is a member of the Council for International Organizations of Medical Sciences (CIOMS) working groups Real World Data and Education. She was recently appointed Core Member of the Unitaid Proposal Review Team, and Member of the WHO Technical Advisory Group- WHO Listed Authorities.

After completing her medical studies in Rome and a postdoctoral fellowship at the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda (USA), Dr Alteri spent 25 years in the pharmaceutical industry, where she was involved in major projects that yielded important drugs such as Gleevec for myeloid leukaemia, Coartem for malaria and Reyataz for HIV-AIDS.

In 2012, she joined the European Medicines Agency (EMA), where she was Head of Human Medicines R&D support Division, and member of the Executive Board. In these roles, Dr Alteri was part of many high impact EMA’s initiatives, from the transparency of clinical trial data to the development of regulatory science strategy to 2025.

Tina Chambers, US

Professor of the Department of Pediatrics and Vice Chair of Clinical Research at University of California, San Diego School of Medicine and Rady Children's Hospital;
Program Director of MotherToBabyCalifornia

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Tina Chambers, US

“I would hope that women of childbearing age with chronic diseases could feel confident in making their reproductive choices with good quality, clearly presented, and accessible data to help inform the risks and benefits of treatments and the ways that they manage their chronic diseases before, during and after pregnancy.”

Dr. Tina Chambers is a perinatal epidemiologist, a Professor of Pediatrics, and Chief of the Division of Environmental Science and Health in the School of Medicine at the University of California San Diego.

She leads several national and international investigations into the safety of medications, vaccines, substances and other exposures in pregnancy and lactation with respect to child health and developmental outcomes. These include NIH-funded consortia such as the Healthy Brain and Child Development Study, the Consortium to Establish Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders Prevalence, the Collaborative Initiative on Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders Ukraine Cohort Study, and the Maternal and Pediatric Precision in Therapeutics (MPRINT) Centers of Excellence in Therapeutics.

She is also the principal investigator of two ongoing nationwide initiatives: the MotherToBaby Pregnancy Registries and the UC San Diego Human Milk Research Biorepository. She is a founding principal investigator in the Vaccines and Medications in Pregnancy Surveillance System (VAMPSS) which is coordinated by the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology.

Megan Clowse, US

Associate Professor of Medicine in the Division of Rheumatology and Immunology at Duke

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Megan Clowse, US

Associate Professor of Medicine in the Division of Rheumatology and Immunology at Duke

“I hope that all women living with chronic diseases are able to create the family that they desire. As they go through this journey, which can be challenging, I hope they can find peace, kindness, support and joy.’’

Dr. Megan Clowse is a clinical rheumatologist with a long-standing research interest in understanding the real-world problems rheumatic diseases pose for our patients and identifying innovative approaches to solving these. She received her medical degree from Vanderbilt Medical School, followed by residency and fellowship at Johns Hopkins University. She joined the Duke faculty in 2005.

She is an international leader in the study and management of rheumatic diseases in pregnancy. She has cared for over 900 pregnancies in women with rheumatic diseases since initiating her prospective pregnancy registry in 2008.

Dr. Clowse was on the Core Leadership team for the American College of Rheumatology (ACR) Reproductive Health Guidelines. Through quantitative and qualitative work, she identified gaps in rheumatologists’ knowledge and communication skills as key drivers of poor pregnancy outcomes in women with lupus. To overcome these, she has created an in-clinic intervention and program to enable rheumatologists to provide effective pregnancy planning and management to women with lupus (LupusPregnancy.org).

Wiweka Kaszubska, Switzerland

Vice President and Head of Product Development at Medicines for Malaria Venture

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Wiweka Kaszubska, Switzerland

Vice President and Head of Product Development at Medicines for Malaria Venture

“My vision for the future is that women around the world have access to medications intentionally developed for them. This means anticipating that women with chronic illnesses may wish to have children and respecting their right to a healthy pregnancy without fear of causing harm to the baby.”

Wiweka Kaszubska is the Head of Product Development at Medicines for Malaria Venture (MMV) based in Geneva, Switzerland. MMV is a public-private partnership with a mission to develop new, effective and affordable medicines for malaria patients in endemic countries. She is responsible for the portfolio of anti-malarial drugs in development.

Prior to joining MMV in 2012 and pursuing her interest in Global Health, she spent over 15 years in the pharmaceutical industry working across all phases of drug development. She started her career in Discovery Research at Abbott Laboratories in Chicago in Metabolic Disease area. She then held a number of positions at Merck Serono in Geneva ultimately heading the Global Product Unit for Autoimmune and Inflammatory therapeutic area. She obtained a PhD degree in biochemistry from the University of Illinois, and a Bachelor’s degree in chemistry from the University of Chicago, USA.

Anne Lyerly, US

Professor of Social Medicine at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

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Anne Lyerly, US

Professor of Social Medicine at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

“My wish for women with chronic diseases is that they will be able to approach pregnancy with confidence and that they will be cared for with the best possible evidence, with peace of mind that the treatments that they are prescribed are the safest and most effective for them and their babies, and with the promise of good health as they build their families.”

Anne Lyerly, MD, MA, is Professor of Social Medicine, Research Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology and core faculty in the Center for Bioethics at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. A board-certified obstetrician/gynecologist and bioethicist, she studies ethically complex issues around gender and reproductive medicine.

She co-founded the Second Wave Initiative, an effort to ensure that the health interests of pregnant people are fairly represented in biomedical research and drug and device policies. She is PI on the NIH-funded PHASES Project addressing the ethics of HIV research and pregnancy and the PREPARE Project addressing the ethics of research engaging pregnant adolescents; and was co-PI on the Wellcome Trust-funded PREVENT project on research, pregnancy and public health emergencies.

She chaired the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists Committee on Ethics and served as advisor for organizations including the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and National Institutes of Health and the World Health Organization. She has written dozens of articles and book chapters for academic and public audiences, including publications in journals such as JAMA and The Lancet as well as the New York Times. She is author of a book, A Good Birth, published by the Penguin Group/USA.

Kimford Meador, US

Professor of Neurology and Neurosciences at Stanford University;
Clinical Director at Stanford Comprehensive Epilepsy Center

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Kimford Meador, US

Professor of Neurology and Neurosciences at Stanford University;
Clinical Director at Stanford Comprehensive Epilepsy Center

“Why is funding for medical research so woefully inadequate for women of childbearing age living with chronic diseases given the many unknowns in care that could adversely impact women and their future children?”

Dr. Kimford J. Meador is a Fellow of the American Academy of Nursing (FAAN), Fellow of the American Epilepsy Society (FAES), Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh (FRCPE) and is Professor of Neurology & Neurosciences at Stanford University.

He has authored over 400 peer-reviewed articles, which are predominately in epilepsy or neuropsychological brain mechanisms. He has directed a long running NIH multicenter study of pregnancy outcomes in women with epilepsy and their children. Among his honors are American Academy of Neurology past section chairs for Behavioral Neurology and for Epilepsy; American Epilepsy Society Clinical Research Award; named award for him for research in women with epilepsy; and ranked in the top 500 neuroscientist in the world by Research.com in 2022.

Catherine Nelson-Piercy, UK

Consultant Obstetric Physician at Guy's and St Thomas' Hospitals Trust;
Lead Obstetric Physician for the South East London Maternal Medicine Network

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Catherine Nelson-Piercy, UK

Consultant Obstetric Physician at Guy's and St Thomas' Hospitals Trust;
Lead Obstetric Physician for the South East London Maternal Medicine Network

“I wish that women of childbearing age living with chronic diseases receive timely, appropriate, evidence-based advice and counselling from experts in women's health and pregnancy and medical problems for all their reproductive needs.”

Catherine Nelson-Piercy is a Consultant Obstetric Physician at Guy’s and St. Thomas’ Hospitals Trust and the Lead Obstetric Physician for the South East London Maternal Medicine Network. In 2010, she was awarded the title of Professor of Obstetric Medicine at King’s College London. Her undergraduate studies were at King’s College, Cambridge University and St Bartholomew’s Hospital. She trained as a physician and was taught Obstetric Medicine by Professor Michael de Swiet.

Professor Nelson-Piercy is past President of the International Society of Obstetric Medicine (ISOM). She was founding co-editor in chief of the journal Obstetric Medicine: the medicine of pregnancy.

Professor Nelson-Piercy has been involved in the development of several evidence-based National Guidelines notably for “Contraception in Women with Heart Disease”, BTS / SIGN “Asthma in Pregnancy” and Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists Green top guidelines on “Reducing the risk of thromboembolism during pregnancy, birth & the puerperium” and “Management of nausea vomiting of pregnancy and hyperemesis gravidarum”. She has over 250 publications and has edited five books and written the successful Handbook of Obstetric Medicine, now in its sixth edition. She is also one of the central physician assessors for the UK Confidential maternal deaths enquiry.

Angela Nguku, Kenya

Founder and Executive Director, White Ribbon Alliance Kenya; Global Co-Chair, White Ribbon Alliance Movement

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Angela Nguku, Kenya

Founder and Executive Director, White Ribbon Alliance Kenya; Global Co-Chair, White Ribbon Alliance Movement

“I would wish that women of childbearing age living with chronic diseases have the same rights as other women of childbearing age. I would wish that they have the right information to navigate their pregnancy and childbirth journey smoothly with the support that the need from all those that are responsible for them and that their self -articulated needs and concerns are considered in shaping their care throughout their childbearing continuum’’

Angela Nguku is the driving force behind White Ribbon Alliance Kenya, championing Reproductive, Maternal, and Newborn Health (RMNH). A graduate midwife and a passionate advocate, her advocacy resonates deeply, pushing for the prioritization of the self-articulated needs of women, girls, and newborns and midwives in under-resourced regions. Angela played a critical role in the unprecedented and transformative What Women Want Campaign, emphasizing the ASK-LISTEN-ACT approach, which reshaped programming by centering on the articulated needs of end-users.

Beyond advocacy, Angela's leadership extends to regional and global platforms, where she has influenced and still influences policy and strategy. Her roles on various committees and boards, including the AlignMNH committee, the Unifying Midwifery in Africa steering committee, the People's Advisory Board of the Lancet Global Health Commission on High Quality Health Systems in the SDGs Era, Merck for Mothers Advisory board, the WHO Postpartum Hemorrhage (PPH) steering committee, the WHO PPH guidelines development group among others underscore her commitment to impactful change. Angela's expertise is in high demand as a speaker and author, shedding light on crucial topics such as women and girls (people) -led health agendas and the indispensable role of midwives in achieving quality healthcare for all. As the co-chair of the global White Ribbon Alliance movement, Angela continues to drive progress towards equitable RMNH and gender rights worldwide.