Team

Naïké Ledan is a social justice defendant and a committed feminist of heart who brings forward 20 years of experience in human rights and health justice advocacy, women’s empowerment, the fight for universal access to basic services and social inclusion, as well as civil society capacity building. She has built extensive work in Canada, West Africa, and Haiti in civil rights advocacy capacity building while emphasizing the social determinants of structural exclusion. She values the principles of shared leadership, anticolonial, anti-oppressive, and anti-patriarchal spaces: the fundamentals of the soul of social justice. Naïké has organized, in collaboration with other activists, successful interventions to turn around millions of dollars PEPFAR intended to cut from Haiti’s response due to implementing partners’ failure to deliver human-centered care. She has also been instrumental in successfully structuring Haiti’s Community-led Monitoring of HIV/TB care. With Health GAP, Naïké continues to work to increase civil society involvement to hold governments, PEPFAR, and the Global Fund accountable to communities, while providing technical assistance on how to build effective community-led monitoring to different countries, and developing pertinent educational tools to empower stakeholders. She has supported grassroots initiatives for the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), Organisation of American States (OAS), UNAIDS, the Coalition of African Lesbians (CAL) amongst others, particularly in creating bridges between these international/regional organizations and LGBTQI+ CSOs and advocates. She holds an M.Sc in International Development from the Université de Montréal and is pursuing a postgraduate degree in Public Health at New York University’s Global Institute of Public Health.

Maureen is working in Kenya to influence the region by campaigning to win increased access to treatment, improve outdated HIV treatment policies and mobilize civil society to demand game changing new generic AIDS drugs faster. She collaborated with other organizations in Kenya to gather recommendations from people living with HIV to create the “PLHIV Manifesto” – a document she used to urge presidential candidates in Kenya to roll out AIDS treatment and healthcare for all Kenyans. Maureen worked with partners to successfully free up hundreds of millions in U.S. funding that had been stuck in PEPFAR’s “pipeline” to introduce lifelong ART for all pregnant women in Kenya and she continues to work to increase civil society involvement to more effectively make demands of the Government of Kenya, PEPFAR, and the Global Fund in order to scaleup of antiretroviral therapy (ART) in Kenya. Maureen’s background is in law and human rights, and brings to Health GAP her experience at a private law firm as well as with NGOs working to provide legal services to widows and orphans living in IDP camps displaced by election-related violence. She was an AVAC 2013 fellow working with AIDS Law Project and Health GAP and was listed in POZ 100 magazine as one of the most effective AIDS activists of 2014.

Lotti Rutter is an Associate Director of International Policy and Advocacy at Health GAP based in Johannesburg. Prior to this she worked at the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) in South Africa for five years, first as a Senior Researcher and then as the Head of Campaigns & Advocacy. Notably this included leading TAC’s campaigns to improve access to medicines such as the “Tobeka Daki Campaign for Access to Trastuzumab”, the “Bad Pharma Tours” and the “Fix the Patent Laws campaign”, a campaign that grew to include more than 30 diverse patient groups and lead to the release of an intellectual property policy that has the potential to radically reduce medicine prices in the country. Further she worked to end the ongoing crisis raging in the South African public health system that continues to threaten many lives – and regularly contributed to Spotlight (a joint publication of TAC and SECTION27). She has worked for nearly a decade in the global HIV/AIDS struggle in both South Africa and previously in the UK, coordinating the Student Stop AIDS Campaign and leading the campaign to improve access to medicines at STOPAIDS. Previously she was a founding member of the Climate Rush – a women lead climate action group – and was involved in numerous direct actions and campaigns around environmental issues.  

Jessica works to advance the Health GAP’s campaign goals by deploying a variety of communications tactics. Jessica previously served as the organization’s first communications director, and returns to Health GAP with more than a decade of strategic communications experience crafting and implementing campaigns for nonprofit, labor, political, and corporate clients. Most recently, Jessica worked as an active consultant and as the communications director for a national nonprofit working to close the opportunity gap in rural America. She previously was a Vice President at a leading progressive public relations firm and served in New York state government, working in the intergovernmental and communications offices of two governors and the state comptroller. Jessica was a founding member of the Student Global AIDS Campaign chapter at Saint Michael’s College, where she was deeply involved in bird-dogging presidential candidates during the 2004 cycle. She also studied the intersection of development, health and society in Nairobi and coordinated literacy programs as an AmeriCorps*VISTA at the Vermont Refugee Resettlement Program. Jessica lives in upstate New York and graduated from Saint Michael’s College in Colchester, Vermont.

Brook has worked with Health GAP since 2001 and was a founder of the Boston Global Action Network Africa-AIDS Project. He has written, consulted, and campaigned extensively on intellectual property rights, trade, and access to medicines, including with the African Union, SADC, ASEAN, Venezuela, CARICOM, Thailand, UK DfID, the World Health Organization, the Millennium Development Goals Project, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, Open Society Institute, UNDP, Unitaid, the Medicines Patent Pool, the Global Commission on HIV and the Law, and others. Brook is tenured at Northeastern University School of Law and is an Honorary Research Fellow at the University of KwaZulu Natal. He has taught and consulted extensively in South Africa over the past 20-plus years, having spent almost three years in-country during that time period. Brook was an NGO board member to Unitaid 2013-18 and still acts as a key advisor. He has worked within both the Diagnostics and Therapeutics Pillars of the Access to COVID-19 Tools Accelerator as a civil society representative.

Brian is a feminist, influential leader, and activist who has spent nearly a decade campaigning for equality, dignity, justice, and freedom for LGBTQ+ people in Kenya and beyond. Brian comes to Health GAP from the Gay and Lesbian Coalition of Kenya (GALCK)—a LGBTQ+ coalition body, a fierce defender of sexual and gender minorities, and key ally in the fight for health justice and human rights for LGBTQ+ people in Kenya and across Africa. At GALCK, Brian served as Programs Monitoring and Oversight Officer, and was dedicated to elevating the visibility and agency of LGBTQ+ people, while challenging systems of power, impunity, and patriarchy. Brian is dedicated to creating a future where diverse sexual orientation, gender identity and expression is not just tolerated or accepted but is celebrated and revered. They are driven by integrity, fairness, and justice, which shapes their contributions to community organizing and LGBTQ+ movement building. In addition, Brian has spent years dedicated to holding decision-makers accountable to people living with, and most affected by, HIV. Brian has a Bachelors in Journalism from University of Nairobi. Brian identifies as a gender non-binary person and their pronouns are they/them/theirs; they prefer to be called Brian.

As the associate director of U.S. policy and advocacy, Aly spearheads work with Congress and government agencies.

A seasoned activist, Aly holds policymakers accountable to communities. Her role at Health GAP focuses on pushing for more resources for global HIV response. Most recently, Aly served with the Access to Medicines Program at Public Citizen, where she campaigned for public policy to expand the global accessibility and availability of COVID-19 vaccines.

Early in her career, Aly led diabetes camps in Haiti, the Dominican Republic, and the United States. Later, at the Helmsley Charitable Trust, her projects focused on increasing access to diabetes care and insulin. Working at the Feminist Health Center of Atlanta ignited Aly’s passion for legislative advocacy.

Aly holds a Master of Public Health from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She serves on the board of directors at Universities Allied for Essential Medicines.

Asia has been a leader in the fight against HIV for over 20 years, first as a community organizer and treatment activist in Philadelphia, and ultimately as part of the group who founded Health GAP in 1999, serving as our Director of International Policy until 2014. Asia is a 2008 recipient of the Keith Cylar Courage Award from Housing Works, the 2010 Kiyoshi Kuromiya Award from Philadelphia FIGHT, the 2011 John M. Lloyd Leadership Award, and an award in 2011 from The AIDS Service Organization (TASO), Uganda for her exceptional contribution as an AIDS activist. As Executive Director, Asia is responsible for strengthening and expanding Health GAP’s programmatic work, including in East and Southern Africa, while continuing to lead international policy campaigns that secure real change for communities. She is currently based in Kampala, Uganda, where she works with a coalition of local human rights, HIV, sexual and reproductive health and rights, LGBTI organizations and other allies to win bold action by the Ugandan and donor governments on AIDS and health funding and policies, fight homophobic and stigmatizing laws, and to build the capacity of activist and other civil society networks.