Board of Directors
The association is led by a board of directors and advisors with experience in grassroots community organizations, mental health, psychiatry, nursing, sociology, education, law, and foreign service. Step Up! is based in Columbia, Missouri with collaborative chapters across the United States.
RANGIRA BÉA GALLIMORE, PH.D.
Dr. Gallimore is the founder and former president of Step Up! She is also a co-founder and member of the board of the Interdisciplinary Genocide Studies Center in Rwanda. She is an associate professor emerita at the University of Missouri—Columbia where she taught for 25 years and did research on women and violence. She has published books and articles in Francophone studies and on the genocide against Tutsi in Rwanda. Her recently co-edited book, Art from Trauma: Genocide and Healing beyond Rwanda, was published in 2019 by the University of Nebraska Press. Gallimore served also as an expert consultant to the U.S. State Department, UNESCO, and other international organizations on the role of women in post-conflict recovery. Gallimore is also a trained trauma counselor and a member of the Step Up! trauma training team. While conducting research at the Institute of Scientific and Technological Research in Butare, Rwanda in 2006, she interviewed a group of women who were victims and survivors of sexual violence during the 1994 genocide against Tutsi in Rwanda. Her encounter with these survivors inspired her to create the Nsanga Counseling Center to assist with their psychosocial needs. In 2012, she organized an international symposium on genocide in Rwanda that Step Up! co-sponsored with the Department of Romance Languages and Literature at the University of Missouri--Columbia. The keynote speaker was Roméo Dallaire the Canadian Senator and retired general who was the head of the United Nations peacekeeping mission during the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. She received the 2013 Humanitarian Award from the International Center for the Psychosocial Trauma that recognized for her significant contributions to the welfare of Rwandan women and children. She was also awarded The President of the University of Missouri for Cross-Cultural Engagement. She has directed summer study-abroad programs in Rwanda with different American universities for nine years. Through the internship program, these students from different American universities conducted in-country service-learning projects, including assisting in construction of the Nsanga Counseling Center annex, in Butare Rwanda. In 2014, she was a special assistant to the executive director of the Rwandan National Commission for the Fight Against Genocide. In that capacity, she conducted research and assisted the Commission to plan and implement the national commemoration program marking the 20th anniversary of the genocide.
Tola Olu Pearce, Ph.D.
Dr. Pearce, a medical sociologist, has been with the organization since 2005. She is professor emerita at the University of Missouri-Columbia where she held a joint appointment in the Departments of Sociology and Women’s and Gender Studies for 23 years. Prior to her appointment at MU, she taught at the Obafemi Awolowo University, (formerly the University of Ife), Nigeria for 15 years. Her research and teaching interests include the sociology of health and illness, human rights, social justice, social inequalities and development/globalization studies. Pearce has expertise in the political economy of women’s health in Africa, local responses and women’s survival strategies. She taught a summer seminar on Women’s Health in Africa at the Kigali Health Institute, Rwanda in 2009. She is a member of the International Sociological Association, and the International Association of Maternal Action and Scholarship (IAMAS). Pearce was, for many years, a short-term consultant with the United Nations Gender Unit at the Economic Commission for Africa (UN-ECA) in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. She is co-editor of the online Peace Studies journal: The International Journal of Conflict and Reconciliation. Though retired, Pearce teaches a course on Gender and Human Rights in Cross-Cultural Perspective at MU each year.
Deborah J. Doxsee, Ph.D.
Dr. Doxsee has degrees in nursing, law and psychology. She has worked as a registered nurse; an attorney and as a licensed psychologist. Dr. Doxsee worked extensively with survivors of violent crime and physical and sexual violence, as well as in the assessment of personnel who work in high-risk professions. She now works primarily with veterans at a VA hospital. Dr. Doxsee has worked as a psychologist since 1997 in both forensic and physical medicine and rehabilitation inpatient settings. Dr. Doxsee also has provided training and/or supervision to psychology graduate students, pre-doctoral psychology interns, hospital staff and psychiatric interns in the forensic, rehabilitation and health psychology settings. Dr. Doxsee is a member of the American Psychological Association and served for many years on the Board of Director’s Standing Hearing Panel, APA Ethics Office. Dr. Doxsee is a lawyer and served as the Assistant Director of the Center for the Study of Dispute Resolution, at the University of Missouri – Columbia, School of Law (1989-1996). She also served as an associate municipal judge for the City of Columbia, Missouri from 2003-2006. In addition, she has conducted training in Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kigali and Butare, Rwanda. Dr. Doxsee is a member of the Step Up! trauma training team and is a former treasurer and vice president of Step Up!
Ema Barbosa Brown, MPH; MPH; RD; LDN
Ema has been a member of Step Up! since 2018 and a former treasurer of the organization. She works at Brigham & Women’s Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts where she counsels patients seeking bariatric and metabolic surgery. Ema received a master’s degree in health policy and administration from Columbia University, and a master’s degree in nutrition from the University of North Carolina. She is a member of the U.S. and Massachusetts academies of nutrition and dietetics. As a public health and nutrition professional for 30 years, Ema promoted the health and wellbeing of underserved and marginalized populations. She was a founding member of the youth group HelpCV that assists poor families in Cabo Verde. Her community service also focused on women and children with HIV/Aids and women victims of abuse in New York City. She enjoys working with culturally and linguistically diverse populations and speaks English, Cape Verdean Creole, Portuguese, and Spanish. She mentors dietetic interns regularly and was an adjunct instructor in the Department of Nutrition and Exercise Physiology at the University of Missouri—Columbia.
Helen Nabasuta-Mugambi, Ph.D.
Dr. Mugambi is a Step-Up Board of Directors member and previously served on its Advisory Board for over 10 years. She is a professor emerita in the Department of English, Comparative Literature, and Linguistics at California State University, Fullerton. Her teaching and publications focused on gender issues, masculinities, and theories of women’s representation in life, art, and literature. She has conducted extensive field research on women-in-development performances in Uganda and in dirge performances as trauma therapy. For many years, Dr. Mugambi served on the Women's Studies Governing Board at her university where she helped establish the Women's Studies Department. She briefly acted as coordinator of that department and developed/taught a scriptotherapy seminar as a prototype for analyzing trauma in women’s lives. As a visiting professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, Dr. Mugambi co-chaired establishing the Institute for the Study of Gender in Africa. From 1985 to 1991 she served as Project Development Coordinator during the early stages of establishing the Kenyan non-profit organization, Village HopeCorps International (now Village HopeCore.) From 2006 to 2016 Dr. Mugambi sponsored a group of orphan boys and girls through their elementary school education. She also served on the editorial board for Jenda: A Journal of Culture and African Women Studies.
Malaika Gallimore, MPH
Malaika is the secretary of Step Up! She is an infectious disease control officer at the University of Missouri Hospital. She has been a registered nurse for several years and is currently pursuing a doctorate in nursing at the University of Missouri Sinclair School of Nursing. The focus of her dissertation is vaccine hesitancy in parents of young children. She previously worked as a public health nurse for the Columbia/Boone County Health Department. Her focus was on communicable disease surveillance and investigations as well as tuberculosis control and education. Prior to that she worked in a cardiac surgery unit at Boone Hospital Center.
Salama Gallimore
Salama Gallimore serves as General Counsel and Advisor on Governmental Affairs for Midwest Transplant Network (MTN), a federally certified not-for-profit organ procurement organization that works with organ, eye, and tissue donors, their families, hospitals, and other professional partners to extend legacies, provide hope and give life. Salama provides legal counsel to MTN’s executives, clinical teams, board members and the Human Resources department while supervising contracting operations and working with outside counsel to manage matters in litigation. Salama routinely drafts and revises operating and employment policies and represents MTN before federal and state administrative agencies. Additionally, she serves as MTN’s Privacy Compliance Officer and the organization’s Advisor on Governmental Affairs—influencing legislation and policies that impact OPOs at the local, state, and federal level. Salama has met with legislators in person, participated in legislative hearings, drafted public comments in response to proposed regulations and developed relationships with legislators who represent the citizens of Missouri and Kansas. Salama also serves as Chair of the AOPO Advocacy Committee, where she helps shape organ donation and transplantation policies and legislation on a national level in conjunction with OPO leaders from across the nation. Prior to working at MTN, Salama worked at a Kansas City law firm where her practice focused on education and employment law. Salama has also served as the Director of Investigations of the Office for Civil Rights and Title IX at the University of Missouri-Columbia. Salama holds an LLM in Health Law from the Loyola University Chicago School of Law; a Juris Doctor from the University of Missouri-Columbia School of Law; and a master’s degree in political science from Saint Louis University.
Ambassador Joyce E. Leader
A retired diplomat whose foreign service career centered on African and humanitarian affairs, Ambassador Leader currently serves as a consultant on African Affairs with an emphasis on conflict prevention and humanitarian action. Her expertise is in the Great Lakes region of Africa. She was Deputy Chief of the U.S. embassy in Rwanda during the three years prior to the 1994 genocide and served as Associate Peace Corps Director in Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo) in the late 1970s. As a senior fellow at The Fund for Peace, a non-governmental organization in Washington, D.C., Ambassador Leader wrote Rwanda’s Struggle for Democracy and Peace, 1991-1994, which details U.S. policy efforts to contain the violence that escalated into genocide. She is an adjunct professor in the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University, as well as a visiting scholar at Georgetown University’s Institute for the Study of International Migration. She has also worked with the Brookings Institution on strengthening respect for the human rights of internally displaced persons. She served as Ambassador to the Republic of Guinea, Director of the Office of Assistance to Refugees in Asia and the Near East, Deputy Director of the Office of West African Affairs and held posts in Nigeria, Burkina Faso, Geneva, and France. She received a Career Achievement Award for her work with the U.S. State Department.
Advisory Board
Tim Gallimore, Ph.D.
Dr. Tim has been an advisor to Step Up! since its founding. He has 30 years of experience as a senior higher education academic affairs administrator and faculty member. Tim was a public information officer and spokesperson for the Prosecutor of the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda where he worked from 2004-2008. He was a consultant to the Government of Rwanda on genocide justice, genocide prevention and education when he helped to plan and implement the national commemoration program marking the 20th anniversary of the genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda. He served as a media consultant and trainer on several projects in Rwanda, including as Assistant Project Director for the Rwanda Rule of Law/USAID project, that conducted a national communications campaign and public opinion research about the post-genocide Gacaca community justice system in Rwanda. In 1994, he was a summer Fulbright Fellow in Hungary and Poland. He is a certified mediator, facilitator, and third-party neutral in conflict resolution. He researches and writes on trauma healing, reconciliation, and violence prevention. He is also a trained trauma counselor and a member of the Step Up! trauma training team.
Joan MacEachen, MD, MPH
Dr. MacEachen is the co-founder of Step Up! and served as its vice president from 2005 to 2008. She is a family medicine physician who has worked with the Indian Health Service for more than 25 years. In this capacity she provided outpatient and inpatient care for patients from newborn to geriatric. She has had leadership positions, quality management experience and supervisory designations. She was appointed to serve on the American Academy of Family Physicians National Research Network advisory group. She has a master’s degree in international public health. As a volunteer with the Peace Corps, she worked as a biology and chemistry teacher at secondary schools in Zaire (Democratic Republic of the Congo).
Renée Reed-Miller
Renée is an international trainer and founder of Reed-Miller Group, LLC—a small business devoted to elevating embodied emotional fitness in teams, organizations, and communities. She holds a B.A. in English and Master of Science in Rural Sociology with an emphasis in sustainable community development and global organizational leadership. She is certified in transformative psychosocial interventions useful for boosting recovery of communities, during and post-conflict. Renée’s work emphasizes collective healing using cross-cultural restorative practices, therapeutic modalities, and evidence-based practices rooted in trauma-sensitive expressive arts. As a member of the Rollins Society and Sigma Tau Delta, a distinguished English Honor Society, she has received national and regional literary recognition. Through the University of Missouri (and entirely separate from her own social and entrepreneurial endeavors) she serves as key personnel on projects funded at the national level. Renée is also a long-time member and past president of the Rotary Club of Columbia, Missouri—where she bridges clubs here and abroad—in service above self.
Judith Milner, MD, M.ED, Spec.Ed.
Judith is a general, child, and adolescent psychiatrist in private practice. She served as the Medical Director at the Child Psychiatry Research Center affiliated with Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons. She is a member of the Committee on Diversity and Culture at the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and an examiner for the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology. She has trained teachers and other professionals in several countries in how to counsel children traumatized by war and natural disasters. She is a member of the Step Up! trauma training team.
Sonia Dhaliwal, Ph.D.
Dr. Sonia Dhaliwal is a Licensed Psychologist and owner of Dhaliwal Psychological Services LLC in Las Vegas, NV. Dr. Dhaliwal completed her undergraduate degree at the University of Hawaii at Manoa where she majored in Psychology and minored in Asian Philosophy. She then went on to pursue a master’s degree in counseling psychology and an APA-accredited doctoral degree in clinical psychology at Pacific University in Forest Grove, Oregon. Dr. Dhaliwal completed an APA-accredited clinical internship at Michigan State University followed by a post-doctoral year of training at the University of Nevada in Las Vegas (UNLV). Dr. Dhaliwal is a generalist, who has worked with individuals from across the country and has provided expert consultation and advice to therapists and healthcare professionals, both nationally and internationally on issues ranging from diagnosis and assessment, emotion focused techniques, and treatment for anxiety and depression. Dr. Dhaliwal takes an evidence-based and strong multicultural approach to therapy. Identifying as a multiracial immigrant, she has a strong passion and commitment to working with immigrant populations. She also has training in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Interpersonal Process Therapy and Emotion Focused Therapy. She believes that exploring interpersonal dynamics as well as understanding the role of emotion are imperative for genuine psychotherapeutic change. Dr. Dhaliwal currently serves as president of the Southern Regional Board of the Nevada Psychological Association (NPA) and is also the chair of the Ethics committee for NPA.