StepUp Board of Directors

Rangira Béa Gallimore, Ph.D., is the founder and president of Step Up. She is also a co-founder and member of the board of the Interdisciplinary Genocide Studies Center in Rwanda. Dr. Gallimore is an associate professor at the University of Missouri—Columbia where she teaches and researches on women and violence. She has published books and articles in the area of Francophone Studies and on the genocide in Rwanda. She served as an expert consultant to UNESCO and other international organizations on the role of women in post-conflict recovery. Dr. Gallimore is fluent in English, French and Kinyarwanda, the official languages of Rwanda. She is also a trained trauma counselor and a member of the Step Up trauma training team.

Barbara Bauer, Ph.D., is vice president of Step Up and a member of the trauma training team. Dr. Bauer is a psychologist with a specialty in training lay volunteers and mental health professionals in the treatment of trauma. Since 1995, she has provided evaluation and trauma training projects in the war-torn countries of Rwanda, Uganda, Bosnia, Kosovo, Pakistan and in the Palestinian territories. In 2003, Dr. Bauer completed a five-month mission in Nepal with Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors without Borders) where she trained volunteers in trauma interventions to help women victims of violence, including those caught up in the civil war. In February 2005, she went to Sri Lanka and Indonesia to train Tsunami aid workers. She is a member of the American Academy of Experts in Traumatic Stress.

Tola Olu Pearce, Ph.D., is a vice president of Step Up. She is a professor at the University of Missouri-Columbia where she holds a joint appointment in Sociology and in Women’s and Gender Studies. She teaches and publishes on human rights, social justice, class, gender, and development/globalization studies. She has expertise in the political economy of women’s health in Africa, local responses and women’s survival strategies. She is a frequent researcher and consultant for the United Nations agencies in Addis Ababa. Dr. Pearce is co-editor of the International Journal of Conflict and Reconciliation.

Shelly Evans is the treasurer for Step Up and. She will complete a Masters in Counseling Psychology in May 2009 with plans to continue in a Ph.D. program. She traveled to Rwanda twice with Step Up to assist in training laypersons in basic trauma counseling. She traveled twice to northern Uganda to train laypersons at a refugee camp. Her international work began in 2003 when she spent 18 months in South Korea teaching English as a second language. She has also lived and worked in China.

Malaika Gallimore is the secretary of Step Up. She is a Research Assistant with the Chancellor’s Diversity Initiative at the University of Missouri-Columbia where she will complete a Masters in Public Health in August 2009. She is also a trained trauma counselor.

Anne Deaton, Ed.D., has extensive experience in public policy health care issues for persons with special needs (both the elderly and persons of all ages with disabilities). Dr. Deaton previously served as Director of the Division of Developmental Disabilities in the Missouri Department of Mental Health and as the Deputy Director of the Division of Aging in the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services. Dr. Deaton is retired from her state positions but holds adjunct faculty appointments in the College of Nursing and the College of Human Development and Family Studies at the University of Missouri-Columbia. She is a trained trauma counselor who has traveled widely and served as a volunteer in underserved communities both in the U.S. and abroad. Dr. Deaton serves on many boards at the University of Missouri and in the Columbia community that address educational and leadership interests. She is active in community world service through the Columbia Rotary Club.

Deborah J. Doxsee, Ph.D., is a licensed psychologist, a registered nurse and certified health services provider. Dr. Doxsee specializes in working with survivors of violent crime and physical and sexual violence, as well as the assessment of personnel who work in high risk professions. She worked at the Missouri maximum security forensic mental health facility where she treated acutely suicidal patients and provided direct interventions with criminal perpetrators of physical and sexual violence. Dr. Doxsee also provided training and supervision to psychology graduate students, hospital staff and psychiatric interns in the forensic setting. Dr. Doxsee is a member of the American Psychological Association and serves on the Board of Director’s Standing Hearing Panel, APA Ethics Office. Dr. Doxsee is also a lawyer, mediator and dispute resolution consultant, and served as the Assistant Director of the Center for the Study of Dispute Resolution, at the University of Missouri, School of Law (1989-1996) where she remains adjunct professor of law. She also served as an Associate Municipal Judge in the City of Columbia from 2003-2006. She is a member of the Step Up trauma training team.

Mary Harris is a freelance artist and editor. She has created original works for Step Up using a variety of mediums.

Ambassador Joyce E. Leader is a retired diplomat whose Foreign Service career centered on African and humanitarian affairs. She currently serves as a consultant on African Affairs with an emphasis on conflict prevention and humanitarian action. Her expertise is on 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 also held posts in Nigeria, Burkina Faso, Geneva and Marseille. She received a Career Achievement Award for her work with the State Department.

Joan MacEachen MD, MPH, is a family medicine physician who has worked with the Indian Health Service for 21 years. In this capacity she has 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 Masters 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). She is the co-founder of Step Up and served as its vice president from 2005 to 2008.

Raeona Nichols, Ph.D., is a licensed psychologist who works as a clinician and educator at the Counseling Center at the University of Missouri-Columbia. She specializes in the treatment of adult and adolescent survivors of rape and sexual assault. In the past 20 years, she has treated hundreds of survivors of rape and other traumas. She has worked with international students from war-torn countries and treated combat veterans. Dr. Nichols is the co-founder of the nationally recognized Rape Education Program (now referred to as the Relationship and Sexual Violence Center) at the University of Missouri. She has given numerous lectures and workshops on topics related to rape and trauma. She received the 2001 Catalyst Award for her service to the LGBTQ community in her home city of Columbia, Missouri, and has received other service awards for her work at the University. Dr. Nichols currently serves on the University’s Sexual Assault Response Team, and on the Council on Violence against Women. She is a member of the Step Up trauma training team.

Kim Webb is a health educator at the University of Missouri Student Health Center where she specializes in violence awareness, education and prevention. She has 14 years experience working with issues of violence against women. In 2007 she received a Catalyst Award for her service in this area. Kim is the Chair of the University Sexual Assault Response Team and the University Council on Violence Against Women. She is also a graduate student in counseling psychology.

Joanne Butler-Williams is the owner and director of A Good Start preschool which educates a diversity of children in Columbia, Missouri.

Barbara Herndon Williamson, Ph.D., is an Associate Teaching Professor in the College of Education at the University of Missouri-Columbia. She is the Associate Director of the college’s Center for Multicultural Research, Training and Consultation and a member of the management team of the Center for Advancement of Mental Health Practices in Schools. Dr. Williamson is also an international consultant in organizational and professional development. She is a veteran administrator and counselor in secondary school guidance programs as well as in assessments and training. She is a director on the board of several civic organizations including the Central Missouri Food Bank and the Boys and Girls Club of Columbia, Missouri.

Brent Blair is an actor, director, voice instructor, therapist and Theatre of the Oppressed (TO) practitioner who founded the Applied Theatre Arts emphasis at the University of Southern California School of Theatre where he is a senior lecturer. He has taught training workshops for cultural fieldworkers all over the world since 1996. His workshops explore the use of TO techniques for labor rights, homelessness, youth justice, education, homophobia, racism, and communities affected by trauma. He has adapted TO for trauma interventions in restorative justice among victims of violence in the United States and had done fieldwork on the technique in Rwanda among survivors of genocide. As a Fulbright Fellow, he studied the role of traditional theatre and community healing in rural post-war Nigeria. He is a member of the Step Up trauma training team.

Tim Gallimore, Ph.D., is Assistant Commissioner at the Missouri Department of Higher Education. He was Spokesperson for the Prosecutor of the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. As Assistant Project Director for the Rwanda Rule of Law/USAID project, he was responsible for conducting a national communications campaign and public opinion research about the post-genocide Gacaca community justice system in Rwanda. He is a certified mediator, facilitator and third party neutral in conflict resolution. He is also a senior researcher with the Interdisciplinary Genocide Studies Center in Kigali, Rwanda. He researches and writes on trauma healing and reconciliation and on violence prevention. He is also a trained trauma counselor and a member of the Step Up trauma training team.

Renée Reed-Miller is co-founder and Executive Director of Vessels International, a not-for-profit organization tasked with supporting women and children around the world. A published poet and aspiring ceramic artist, she holds a B.A. in English from Stephens College. As a member of the distinguished English Honor Society, Sigma Tau Delta, she has received national and regional literary recognition for her work. She currently serves as chair of the World Community Service Committee for the Rotary Club of Columbia, Missouri.

Judith Milner, MD, M.ED, Spec.Ed., 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 how to counsel children traumatized by war and natural disasters. She is a member of the Step Up trauma training team.

Helen Nabasuta-Mugambi, Ph.D., is a professor of comparative literature with a focus on gender at California State University, Fullerton. She has lectured extensively in Africa, Canada, Europe, China and Australia and recently participated in The Oxford University Round Table. Dr. Mugambi has served as Acting Director of Women’s Studies at California State University where she is also the Research Coordinator for the “Africa Cross-Cultural Research and Communications Project.” She has served as Vice President of the Association of African Women Scholars and is on the editorial board for JENDA: A Journal of Culture and African Women’s Studies. Dr. Mugambi is a senior researcher with the Interdisciplinary Genocide Studies Center in Kigali, Rwanda and, served as Vice Chair of the Center for the Study of Gender in Africa at the University of California, Los Angeles. She has also served as a resource person and committee member for The National Summit on Africa. From 1983to 1991 she planned women’s development projects for the non-profit organization, Village Hopecore International. Dr. Mugambi also serves on the Governing Board of Educational Program for African Children, headquartered in Accra, Ghana.

Jennifer Vanderheyden, Ph.D., is a Visiting Assistant Professor of French at Marquette University, where she teaches courses in French and Francophone Literature, Francophone culture and civilization. She specializes in Eighteenth Century French Literature, and has written a book and given several conference presentations on the philosopher and writer Denis Diderot. Her research interests also include Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century aesthetics, especially theories of artistic and theatrical representation.

Eleni Pardalos is an Adjunct Instructor of French at the University of Missouri-Columbia. She is certified by the National Academy of Sports Medicine as personal trainer and is a Black Belt recipient.

Nadège Uwase is a student at the University of Missouri-Columbia where she is majoring in political science. She served as President of the African Student Association and Vice-President of the Missouri International Student Council. She is a survivor of the genocide in Rwanda.

Maggie Zraly, MS, SM, Ph.D., is a medical anthropologist with public health training who is currently a U.S. National Science Foundation International Research Fellow at the National University of Rwanda School of Public Health. She is the Principal Investigator on a project studying how youth heads of household in Kigali engage in resilience through peer networks in the context of severe global and local socioeconomic inequalities. Her previous research analyzed resilience among women and girls in Southern Rwanda who survived rape during the genocide.