Our Team | Join Our Impact-Driven Team — Institute for Intergenerational Impact

Leadership

Our core team brings together expertise in science, strategy, operations and global partnerships to tackle complex challenges across generations. We connect knowledge, people and ideas to build high-impact collaborations and accelerate solutions that improve health worldwide.

Meghan Azad PhD

Founder & Executive Director
Scientist and global leader in maternal and infant health, human milk, and the developmental origins of health.

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Meghan Azad PhD

Founder & Executive Director

Internationally recognized scientist and global leader in human milk, lactation, the infant microbiome, and the developmental origins of health and disease. Dr. Azad is Professor of Pediatrics and Child Health at the University of Manitoba, where she holds the Canada Research Chair in Early Life Nutrition and the Developmental Origins of Health and Disease. She is Director of the Manitoba Interdisciplinary Lactation Centre (MILC), leads the THRiVE Discovery Lab at the Children’s Hospital Research Institute of Manitoba, and co-founded the International Milk Composition (IMiC) Consortium, a multidisciplinary global research network spanning seven countries. Her research investigates how maternal nutrition, lactation, human milk composition, and the microbiome shape infant development and lifelong health, integrating epidemiology, clinical research, molecular science, and emerging technologies.

Dr. Azad also serves as Knowledge Mobilization Co-Chair for the CHILD Cohort Study, a national pregnancy cohort following 3,500 Canadian children, and is a CIFAR Fellow in the Humans and the Microbiome Program. Her research has been supported by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, Canada Foundation for Innovation, US National Institutes of Health, and Gates Foundation and her contributions to maternal and child health have been recognized with honours including the Gairdner Momentum Award, Steacie Prize, and election to the Royal Society of Canada College of New Scholars.

Emily Little PhD

Director of Impact
Developmental scientist and global health strategist focused on translating evidence into meaningful impact.

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Emily Little PhD

Director of Impact

Developmental scientist and global health strategist specializing in cultural models of caregiving and maternal-infant health. Dr. Little earned her PhD in Developmental Psychology from UC San Diego and has conducted research with infants and families across four continents, with broader global health experience spanning more than 30 countries. Her work integrates developmental science, community-engaged research, implementation, and strategic communications to ensure that scientific evidence is shaped by the communities it is intended to benefit and translated into meaningful improvements in health and wellbeing. She previously led a Gates Foundation-supported maternal-infant health initiative in rural Bihar, India, in partnership with the University of Texas at Austin and PCI India, directing community-based research, implementation, stakeholder engagement, and capacity strengthening. As the Founder and Executive Director of Nurturely, she built and led a seven-figure research-to-impact nonprofit advancing equitable approaches to pregnancy, postpartum health, infant development, and community care.

Dr. Little is also Founder and Chief Science & Impact Officer of Nova, a science translation studio focused on innovations for infants and parents, and an international speaker and science communicator whose work has appeared in peer-reviewed journals including Pediatrics and Child Development. Her work has been recognized with a 1st place prize from the US National Institutes of Health for excellence in community-led research.

Amy Oliver MBA

Director of Operations
Healthcare strategist and executive leader specializing in organizational development and health-systems innovation.

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Amy Oliver MBA

Director of Operations

Healthcare strategist, executive leader, and award-winning entrepreneur with expertise in organizational development, operations, leadership, and health system innovation. Amy is CEO of Amy Oliver + Co., where she advises healthcare organizations, business owners, and senior leadership teams on strategic planning, organizational performance, operational systems, and sustainable growth. Her work combines executive-level strategy with practical implementation, drawing on experience across healthcare delivery, pharmacy, entrepreneurship, and organizational leadership.

A pharmacist by training, Amy holds an MBA focused on Organizational Leadership and Health Administration and is a certified Project Management Professional and leadership coach. She has advised and coached hundreds of leaders and organizations across Canada and internationally, helping build the structures, teams, and systems required to translate ambitious strategies into effective operations. She is also an international keynote speaker on healthcare leadership, management, and organizational performance. Amy's leadership has been recognized through multiple professional and leadership awards, including being named an Emerging Leader by the Governor General of Canada, and she is an alumna of the Governor General's Canadian Leadership Conference.

Founding Board

Rhaea Bailey

Founding Board Member
Lawyer, VP of Legal Strategy at Legal Aid BC, advancing access to justice through strategy and reconciliation.

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Rhaea Bailey

Founding Board Member

Rhaea Bailey is a lawyer and strategic executive with more than a decade of experience advancing access to justice through legal service delivery, organizational strategy, and systems change. A graduate of the University of British Columbia Faculty of Law, she brings a collaborative, values-driven approach to leadership, with a strong commitment to reconciliation, equity, and practical solutions that improve outcomes for clients and communities.

Throughout her career, Rhaea has led and supported significant strategic initiatives that bring people, priorities, and governance together to produce meaningful and lasting outcomes. She played a pivotal role in the development of Legal Aid BC’s Reconciliation Action Plan and helped shape the organization’s 2023–2028 vision, mission, core beliefs, and strategic priorities. Her leadership is grounded in the ability to create clarity, build alignment, and move complex work forward in ways that strengthen organizational direction and impact.

As Vice President, Legal Strategy at Legal Aid BC, Rhaea leads the Legal Strategy Division and is responsible for helping the organization identify, set, and achieve its strategic objectives. Her portfolio includes Truth and Reconciliation and Equity, Diversity and Inclusion, as well as Tariff Administration for legal representation and advice services. Across these areas, she provides strategic oversight, aligns resources to organizational priorities, and supports effective stewardship of legal aid resources. She is known for creating clarity, building alignment, and advancing work that strengthens Legal Aid BC’s long-term impact.

Zulfiqar Bhutta PhD MBBS FRCPCH FAAP

Founding Board Member
Physician-scientist and global leader in maternal, newborn, and child health.

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Zulfiqar Bhutta PhD, MBBS, FRCPCH, FAAP

Founding Board Member

Internationally recognized physician-scientist and global leader in maternal, newborn, and child health. Dr. Bhutta is Co-Director of the Centre for Global Child Health at SickKids, where he holds the inaugural Robert Harding Chair in Global Child Health, and Founding Director of the Centre of Excellence in Women and Child Health and Institute for Global Health and Development at Aga Khan University. He also holds professorships at the University of Toronto and leads major research programmes across Toronto, Karachi, Nairobi, and other global settings. His work has advanced evidence-based interventions for maternal and child nutrition, newborn survival, early childhood development, and community-based care, particularly in low- and middle-income countries. His contributions to global health have been recognized with the Canada Gairdner Global Health Award and the 2025 Virchow Prize.

Jannette Festival RN

Founding Board Member
Nonprofit and healthcare leader with deep expertise in human milk banking and organizational growth.

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Jannette Festival RN

Founding Board Member

Founder and former Executive Director of NorthernStar Mothers Milk Bank and current Chair of its Board of Directors. A registered nurse and lactation consultant, Jannette founded the organization after witnessing the need for donor human milk while working at Foothills Medical Centre in Calgary. Under her leadership, NorthernStar grew from the Calgary Mothers’ Milk Bank, which opened in 2012, into Canada’s only community-based human milk bank, serving sick and fragile infants and building milk-donation infrastructure across Western Canada. Her experience spans nonprofit start-up and growth, clinical partnerships, governance, quality systems, advocacy, and organizational sustainability, bringing a valuable health-system and operational perspective to the Institute’s work in human milk and infant health.

Kiersten Israel-Ballard DrPH

Founding Board Member
Global health leader advancing maternal and newborn nutrition, human milk, and equitable health systems.

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Kiersten Israel-Ballard DrPH

Founding Board Member

Global maternal, newborn, and child health leader with more than two decades of experience advancing equitable nutrition and care for vulnerable infants. Dr. Israel-Ballard is an Affiliate Associate Professor of Global Health at the University of Washington and has held senior leadership roles within PATH's Maternal, Newborn, Child Health and Nutrition program.

Dr. Israel-Ballard has been a leading force in advancing human milk banking globally, working with governments and health systems to establish sustainable programs, develop implementation tools and technologies for resource-limited settings, and build the evidence base for donor human milk as part of comprehensive newborn nutrition. Her work has helped frame human milk access as both a lifesaving intervention and a global health equity priority, particularly for small, sick, preterm, and low-birthweight infants.

Sarah Stock MBChB PhD

Founding Board Member
Maternal-fetal medicine clinician-scientist and global leader in pregnancy research and innovation.

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Sarah Stock MBChB PhD

Founding Board Member

Professor and Consultant in Maternal and Fetal Health at the University of Edinburgh and Program Director of Wellcome Leap's In Utero program. A maternal-fetal medicine clinician-scientist, Professor Stock specializes in stillbirth, preterm birth, pregnancy complications, clinical trials, and international data-driven research. Through In Utero, she leads an ambitious global research program developing scalable approaches to measure, model, and predict gestational development, with the goal of reducing stillbirth without increasing unnecessary early delivery. Her work bridges laboratory science, clinical medicine, technology development, data science, and implementation, bringing to the Institute deep experience in building multidisciplinary programs designed to move scientific discovery toward measurable improvements in maternal and infant health.

Hany Zuhudi BS

Founding Board Member
Health innovation strategist and venture builder focused on women’s health and digital health across Africa.

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Hany Zuhudi BS

Founding Board Member

Nairobi-based health innovation strategist, product leader, and venture builder focused on building and scaling African health solutions. Hany co-founded Daya Africa, a femtech venture studio developing high-impact women's health ventures for African markets, and Founder of Tuliz, a culturally rooted wellness technology platform for African women. She has also served as General Manager of AfyaRekod, a digital health company building patient-driven health data infrastructure, where her work has included product operations and organizational scale-up. She brings a distinctive combination of product strategy, operational leadership, digital health, entrepreneurship, and locally grounded experience designing solutions within African health systems.