Our Team
The Wiring WIC Initiative is a collaboration between New America, the MIT Media Lab, and the Department of Nutrition at The Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Heath. Design facilitation was provided by IDEO.
SUSAN BLUMENTHAL,M.D.
NEW AMERICA - PROJECT DIRECTOR
Rear Admiral Susan J. Blumenthal, MD, MPA (ret.) - chair provided distinguished service for over twenty years as a leading national U.S. Government health expert and spokesperson in the Administrations of four U.S. Presidents. She served as Assistant Surgeon General of the United States, as the first ever Deputy Assistant Secretary for Women’s Health, and as Senior Global and e-Health Advisor in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. She also was a White House Advisor on health issues. Dr Blumenthal has served as the top medical advisor to the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and as Chief of the Behavioral Medicine and Basic Prevention Research Branch at the National Institutes of Health. Throughout her career she has worked to bring understudied health and science issues to increased public and scientific attention including women’s health, global health, obesity, and disease and violence prevention. She was a pioneer in exposing the inequities in women’s health and then was a major force in moving these issues to the forefront of the national and global health agendas. She has been at the forefront of the application of information technology to improve health building several award winning federal websites.
Dr. Blumenthal is currently the Director of the Health Innovations Lab and a Senior Fellow in Health Policy at New America, a Clinical Professor at Georgetown and Tufts Schools of Medicine, and Public Health Editor of the Huffington Post. She is also a member of the MIT Media Lab's Advisory Council. Dr. Blumenthal, a national expert in disease prevention directs innovative programs to improve nutrition and health outcomes for participants in the Women's, Infants and Children Federal Food Assistance Program (WIC) and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).
Named by the Medical Herald and the National Library of Medicine as one of the most influential and important women in medicine and by the New York Times as one of the top doctors in the women’s health field, Rear Admiral Blumenthal is the recipient of numerous awards, medals and honorary doctorates for her pioneering contributions to improving health. She was named the 2009 Health Leader of the Year by the Commissioned Officers Association, its highest honor, and as a 2010 Rock Star of Science by the Geoffrey Beene Foundation.
DAVA NEWMAN, Ph.D.
DIRECTOR, MIT MEDIA LAB
The Apollo Program Professor of Astronautics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and a Harvard–MIT Health, Sciences, and Technology faculty member. From 2015 to 2017, she served as NASA Deputy Administrator, was the first female engineer in this role, and was awarded the NASA Distinguished Service Medal. Her research and teaching expertise include aerospace biomedical engineering, astronaut performance, advanced spacesuit design, leadership development, innovation, and space policy. Newman has been a principal investigator (PI) on four spaceflight missions flown aboard the Space Shuttle, Russian Mir Space Station, and the International Space Station, and is best known for her revolutionary BioSuit™ planetary spacesuit. Recently, she co-founded EarthDNA to accelerate solutions for spaceship Earth’s Ocean, Land and Air subsystems by curating near-space satellite data to make the world work for 100% of humanity.
WALT WILLETT
MD,M.D.,Dr.P.H.
HARVARD T.H. CHAN SCHOOL OF PUBLIC HEALTH
Fredrick John Stare Professor of Epidemiology and Nutrition at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Health and Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, Walt Willett, MD, DrPh studied food science at Michigan State University, and graduated from the University of Michigan Medical School before obtaining a Masters and Doctorate in Public Health from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Dr. Willett has focused much of his work over the last 40 years on the development and evaluation of methods, using both questionnaire and biochemical approaches, to study the effects of diet on the occurrence of major diseases. He has applied these methods starting in 1980 in the Nurses’ Health Studies I and II and the Health Professionals Follow-up Study. Together, these cohorts that include nearly 300,000 men and women with repeated dietary assessments, are providing the most detailed information on the long-term health consequences of food choices.
Dr. Willett has published over 1,700 original research papers and reviews, primarily on lifestyle risk factors for heart disease, cancer, and other conditions and has written the textbook, Nutritional Epidemiology, published by Oxford University Press, now in its third edition. He also has written four books for the general public. Dr. Willett is the most cited nutritionist internationally. He is a member of the National Academy of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences and the recipient of many national and international awards for his research.
HARRY ZHANG, Ph.D.
SENIOR ADVISOR, PROFESSOR, COMMUNITY & ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH, OLD DOMINION UNIVERSITY
Dr. Zhang is a Professor in the School of Community and Environmental Health at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia. As a health and behavioral economist, he focuses on WIC-related technology and behavioral research, including cash value voucher redemption, breastfeeding, and evaluation in the WIC program. He is the PI or Co-PI on multiple WIC projects funded by National Institutes of Health (NIH), U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), and Robert Wood Johnson Foundation-Healthy Eating Research Program (RWJF-HER). He is working closely with WIC stakeholders at the federal, state, and local levels.
EMILY STARK
PROJECT COORDINATOR, NEW AMERICA
Emily Stark is a research associate in New America's Health Policy program. At New America, she contributes to the work of the Health Innovations Lab that is exploring ways that technology can be used to improve health in the Digital Age and
works closely with Rear Admiral Susan Blumenthal M.D., a senior fellow in Health Policy at New America, and former U.S. Assistant Surgeon General. Before coming to New America, Stark worked with the Yale Women Faculty Forum to advance gender equity and diversity at the university through research, advocacy, and community building. She graduated from Yale College in 2017 with a B.A. in the History of Science, Medicine, and Public Health.
DESIGN Facilitator
HEATHER BOESCH
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, IDEO
Heather Boesch helps lead IDEO’s public sector practice. At IDEO, a global design and innovation consultancy, Heather works at the intersection of business, design and organizational strategy across industries, with a focus on helping local, federal and international governments tackle complex systemic challenges and design innovative citizen-centered services. Her recent work includes advising US Immigration and Customs Services and the City of Boston on modernizing their digital presence, and working with USAID to adapt private-sector demand generation techniques to improve public health outcomes in sub-Saharan Africa.
Prior to joining IDEO, Heather lived in the Middle East while serving as the Director of Operations for a trucking company run by tribal Sheikhs that endeavored to bring economic relief to communities adversely affected by war, and simultaneously co-founded New World Design, a collective of designers working on humanitarian projects in post-war Iraq, including potable water dissemination networks, wheelchair distribution, transportation infrastructure, mobile medical services, and affordable housing constructed from US military refuse. Heather has also worked as a research analyst at McKinsey, as a member of the education team at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, and as part of a core team that designed a specialized air cargo shuttle service using decommissioned US Air Force jets to transform the supply chain logistics of industrial projects in the world's most remote locations.
Heather holds a BA with Honors in Economics from Harvard, where she graduated in the top 2% of her class, and an MA in Architecture from the Harvard Graduate School of Design. Outside IDEO, Heather is an advisor at Eastern Foundry, an incubator convening startups, government agencies and contractors to drive innovation in government and currently serves as an appointee on the National Advisory Council on Innovation and Entrepreneurship for the Department of Commerce.
Past contributors
ART BURGER
PRESIDENT/CEO, BURGER, CARROLL & ASSOCIATES, INC (BCA)
Art has over 30 years of experience advising the Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC), and was selected by the US Department of Defense to guide the development and implementation of WIC Overseas. Art is also widely-regarded for his 25+ years of experience in SNAP and WIC EBT. He is currently leading eWIC initiatives in 3 states and the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico. He is also overseeing Independent Verification and Validation (IV&V) monitoring projects for the Office of the New Mexico Secretary of State, State Personnel Office, and the Departments of Environment, Finance and Administration, Information Technology, and Tax and Revenue.
Art is advising several initiatives to apply advanced e-payment technologies (chip card, mobile, web and biometrics) in the delivery of government benefits, with the intent of enhancing the integrity of these payment systems and migrating the clients to the commercial financial mainstream. Art is a Chair-Emeritus of the US eGovernment Payments Council (eGPC), and was the group’s 2011 Pioneer of the Year Award winner. Previously, Art was adjunct faculty in the Information Systems Management Program at the University of San Francisco, California. Art holds a Bachelors and a Master’s degree in Political Science from the University of California, Riverside.
HILDRETH ENGLAND,RDN
DIRECTOR, HESTIA DESIGN LAB; FORMER ASSISTANT DIRECTOR, OPEN AG, MIT MEDIA LAB
Hildreth manages people, potential and partners at the Open Agriculture Initiative (OpenAg). She also leads research in user experience and interaction design for the group, fusing her expertise in health behavior change with emotion-based design methodologies and persuasive technology to create easy, engaging, positive behaviors in food systems.
She is a Registered Dietitian and designer who’s spent the last fifteen years leading communications, policy and technology development projects in the public and private sector. Before joining the Media Lab, Hildreth led digital innovation strategy for the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC), and is particularly passionate about designing for and serving the most vulnerable populations in our society.
She is an award-winning performer and director, and her designs (under HESTIA design lab) have been featured at the Triennale di Milano. Hildreth has degrees in foreign service from Georgetown University, in nutrition from Texas State University, and recently completed a food innovation and design fellowship at the Università degli Studi di Modena e Reggio Emilia.
ANN KIM
FORMER PORTFOLIO DIRECTOR, IDEO
As a Portfolio Director at IDEO’s Cambridge studio, Ann explores the human dimension of design – what motivates people, how they think, how they choose – and using storytelling as a design tool. She has worked on projects for diverse clients, including American Express, Sanofi, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, and GE, and is passionate about bringing impact and innovation to public and private sectors through design. Most recently, Ann spent over a year as an IDEO.org Innovator-in-Residence as US Health and Human Services serving in the Office of the Surgeon General, where she provided creative direction for the Surgeon General’s various campaigns, publications, and storytelling platforms. In this role, she is creating new ways to bring evidence-based health information to the public through a human-centered design approach, furthering the Surgeon General’s role as America’s Doctor and leading voice in public health.
As a designer with roots in anthropology & documentary film, Ann’s approach starts with getting into the field and talking to the end user. Ann worked for over a decade as a filmmaker and journalist for public media, covering a range of issues from life in North Korea to the counterfeit drug trade in India. Her credits include Frontline, NOVA, Antiques Roadshow, PBSKids, as well as two duPont-Columbia Awards, broadcast journalism’s highest honor. She continues her work as a documentary film director, currently finishing her documentary Lovesick, a film about matchmaking for HIV-positive singles in India.
Ann holds a joint degree in Anthropology and the Study of Religion from Harvard College. She is a fellow of the Sundance Institute labs and Sundance Women’s Film Initiative, and term member of the Council on Foreign Relations.