HCWH Staff
Southeast Asia
- Merci Ferrer, Executive Director of HCWH Southeast Asia, worked for more than a decade as an organizer and advocate for Indigenous Peoples rights to their ancestral lands and self determination in the Philippines. She has also worked as co-director of Philippine Development Forum (PDF) a US-Philippine initiated organization that gave information on US corporate investments' impacts on the Philippine environment. And she has served as a Program Officer for Initiatives for International Dialogue's program in Burma. She is a former board member of Amnesty International Philippine section. Merci is a social scientist who graduated from the University of the East, Manila with a background in Sociology. Email: merci@hcwh.org
- Faye V. Ferrer, Program Officer for Mercury, coordinates the Mercury in Health Care Program in the Philippines and the rest of Southeast Asia. She led the 1st Mercury-Free Health Care Southeast Asia Conference and is responsible for the 2004 Philippine Measles Elimination Campaign documentation that demonstrated that nationwide vaccination program is possible without resorting to incineration of immunization waste. Over the years, she worked in several non-government organizations as Program Officer for Citizen's Alliance for Consumer Protection and then as Campaign Paralegal for the Legal Rights and Natural Resources Center-Kasama sa Kalikasan (LRC-KSK) leading campaign initiatives on the issue of mining, ancestral domain and water rights. Seeing the need for environmental conservation, she got involved with Greenpeace Southeast Asia as Logistics/Volunteer Coordinator, Kids for Forest Campaign Project Coordinator and Logistics Coordinator for Clean Energy Tour of Southeast Asia. Faye studied Journalism at the Polytechnic University of the Philippines. A photographer and journalist at heart, she just finished her Diploma in Photojournalism at the Konrad Adenauer Asian Center for Journalism at Ateneo de Manila University. Email: faye@hcwh.org
- Ronnel Lim, Program Officer for Anti-Incineration, promotes non-incineration alternatives to medical waste treatment and coordination of linkages with other environmental groups working on other waste and environmental issues. He studied politics at the University of the Philippines and was previously with the Burma Program of the Initiatives for International Dialogue. Email: ronnel@gmail.com
- Maria Cristina Carganilla-Paruñgao, RMT, MBAH, is Administrative Officer and Program Officer for Promotion of Best Practices. A graduate of B.S. Medical Technology at Centro Escolar University in the Philippines, she is a Medical Technologist by profession and certified non-medical acupuncture practitioner by the Philippine Institute of Traditional and Alternative Health Care- Department of Health. Ms. Carganilla-Paruñgao acquired her Masters Degree in Business Administration in Health (MBAH) at the Ateneo Graduate School of Business, and also served as a development worker on primary health care with a focus on alternative and integrative medicine. At HCWH-SEA, she spearheaded the first Health Care Waste Assessment Project in Four Tertiary Hospitals in Metro Manila in 2005. She is the author and researcher of the following publications: "Best Practices in Health Care Waste Management-Examples from Four Philippine Hospitals" and "Health Care Waste Assessment Project-A partnership between Local Government Unit of Baguio City, Seven Tertiary Hospitals and Health Care Without Harm-South East Asia." Email: cris@hcwh.org
- Sonia G. Astudillo, Communications Officer, prepares the media plan for HCWH-SEA, writes press releases, letters to the editors and other media proposals, as well as oversees media coverage of the organization and deals with celebrity supporters. She writes a monthly column for HCWH-SEA at Enterprise Magazine, the only eco-friendly magazine in the Philippines. Over the years, she has had diverse media work in politics, magazines, TV and other NGOs as a political and media affairs staff for a Philippine Congressman, Advocacy and IEC Specialist for fisheries and ocean resources governance project, editor for several magazines, and segment producer for a television show. Right before HCWH-SEA, she worked as Asia Projects Assistant and Writing Coordinator for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA)-Asia Pacific and then as Head of Policy Research, Writers and Media Group of a Philippine Senator. She studied Journalism at the University of the Philippines and received an M.A in Public Policy at the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies in Tokyo, Japan. Email: sonia@hcwh.org
United States
- Gary Cohen is a founder, President, and Executive Director of Health Care Without Harm, the international campaign for environmentally responsible healthcare. He is also the Executive Director of the Environmental Health Fund, which works on domestic and global chemical safety issues. Gary is a member of the International Advisory Board of the Sambhavna Clinic and Documentation Center in Bhopal, India, which provides free medical care to the survivors of the Union Carbide gas disaster in Bhopal. He was awarded the Skoll Global Award for Social Entrepreneurship in 2006 and the Frank Hatch Award for Enlightened Public Service Award in 2007.
Europe
- Anja Leetz, Executive Director of HCWH Europe, created and coordinated "Chemical Reaction" — a Brussels-based joint project between the European Environmental Bureau (EEB), Friends of the Earth Europe (FoEE) and Greenpeace. The project's goal was to get the European public involved in the development of REACH. After Chemical Reaction, Anja worked as Head of Fundraising for FoEE and was appointed as Board Treasurer for HCWH Europe. In 2008, she stepped down from the Board to take the position of Executive Director. Before being involved in environmental issues, Anja also worked as a teacher and photographer.
Latin America
- Veronica Odriozola, Executive Director of HCWH Latin America, has worked for nearly twenty years on environmental health issues, doing research, promoting policy changes, campaigning and organizing communities that face pollution problems. She worked for the international environmental organization Greenpeace from 1990 to 2005. She is a founding member of the Argentinean Anti-Incineration Coalition and, between 1994 and 2005, she ran the Toxics Campaign of Greenpeace Argentina. Ms. Odriozola is a Biological Sciences graduate of the University of Buenos Aires and has trained in environmental health and environmental epidemiology in Argentina and in the United States.
