Our Team

  • Michelle Lyden, Founder and Executive Director
  • Katherine Wear, Director of Business Development
  • Anne Merrill, Director or Communications

Katherine Wear is currently a senior at Duke University where she is majoring in public policy with a focus on global health. She was selected in the Class of 2009 to be a Baldwin Scholar. In 2007, Ms. Wear worked for the marketing department at Fossil Asia in Hong Kong, where she produced a quality control analysis for the managing directors from the Asian headquarters. She began working for Global Action in May 2008. Ms. Wear’s skills include consulting, marketing, communications, web design, grant writing, fundraising, event planning, and photography.

Anne Merrill is a communications professional with 15 years of experience in helping organizations heighten public awareness about their mission, programs, and current priorities. For the past seven years, she has worked in higher education marketing and communications, with an emphasis on development communications. She is currently the director of advancement editorial services at Georgetown University. Anne has also completed projects for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University, and the Massachusetts College of Art and Design. She holds a bachelor’s degree from Yale University and a master’s degree in French literature from Boston College.

Global Action Members of the Board of Directors

Robert I. Rotberg- Chairman

Robert I. Rotberg is a Professor of Public Policy at the Harvard University Kennedy School of Government and is the Director of the Belfer Center’s Program on Intrastate Conflict and Conflict Resolution at the Kennedy School of Government as well as the President of the World Peace Foundation. He is a member of the Belfer Center’s board of directors. He was Professor of Political Science at MIT; Academic Vice President of Tufts University; and President of Lafayette College. He was a member of the Secretary of State’s Advisory Panel on Africa, 2003-2004, and was a Presidential appointee to the Council of the National Endowment for the Humanities. He is a trustee of Oberlin College and a visiting professor at the College of Europe in Bruges, Belgium. He is the author and editor of numerous books and articles on US foreign policy, Africa, Asia.

Michelle R. Lyden- Founder & Executive Director of Global Action

Ms. Lyden has over 15 years experience as a nurse practitioner. Her clinical training is in general pediatrics, HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment, and nutrition. Prior to Global Action, Ms. Lyden worked in Africa from 2004 to 2006 training doctors and nurses in HIV/AIDS treatment and management. While working with children with HIV/AIDS in Africa, she discovered that malnutrition was a pervasive problem receiving little attention. In 2006, Ms. Lyden returned to the US and founded Global Action, an NGO that works in Africa to implement micronutrient malnutrition and safe drinking water programs. Ms Lyden received a BS and MS from Boston College and a Master of Public Administration from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

Robert Hernreich

Bob Hernreich is a part owner of the Sacramento Kings of the National Basketball Association and part owner of the Arizona Rattlers of the Arena Football League. Mr. Hernreich is President of Remonov Capital and co-owner of Remonov & Company, Edwards, Colorado. Both are private investment firms. Previously, Mr. Hernreich was Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Sigma Broadcasting Company, formerly Arkansas’ largest television and radio station group. Mr. Hernreich is currently a member of The Vail Valley Foundation, The Board of Trustees of Washington University in St. Louis and The Snowboard Outreach Society in Vail, Colorado. He was a founding member of the Youth Foundation in Vail, a past director of K2, Inc., board member of The Eagle Valley Land Trust, The Miss America Organization, and past chairman of the board of Colorado Parks and Outdoor Recreation. Mr. Hernreich received a BS and MBA from Washington University.

Patrick Webb

Patrick Webb worked for several years as Chief of Nutrition for the World Food Program (WFP). While at WFP, Dr. Webb built up a nutrition department with global responsibilities for emergency food interventions (including response to the Asian tsunami), overseeing maternal and child programs in 30 developing countries, and elaborating policies and procedures for micronutrient fortification of food aid. He worked on inter-agency program coordination and policy harmonization, including developing deep operational collaborations with UNICEF, FAO, the International Committee of the Red Cross, and other agencies. He served on the Hunger Task Force of the Millennium Project, which reported to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan. He is a Senior Fellow of the Centre for Development Research (ZEF), in Bonn, Germany, and serves as a member of the board of the International Nutrition Foundation.

Earlier, Patrick spent 9 years with the International Food Policy Research Institute, stationed for most of that time in Ethiopia, Niger, and The Gambia, working with national government officials on food and agricultural policy and famine relief. He has researched many aspects of malnutrition, household food security, agricultural policy, and humanitarian practice. He currently focuses on nutrition-disease interactions (including in HIV programming), the role of the private sector in supporting relief, and measures of diet quality (micronutrient issues) in emergency settings. Patrick has worked in more than 20 countries across Africa and Asia, involved in policy analysis, program design, project feasibility assessment, M&E, and impact assessments. His co-authored book on Famine in Africa (published by Johns Hopkins University Press in 1999), sold out of its first edition and went into a second run. His monograph on Food as Aid was translated into 8 languages. Other publications include involvement in 5 books, 17 book chapters, and almost 40 peer-reviewed journal articles.

Kristina Hare Lyons

Kristina Hare Lyonsis the co-owner of Portobello Road, a lifestyle store for women in Chestnut Hill, MA, which encourages socially responsible shopping by highlighting products that "give back” and which are eco-friendly and/or fair-trade. Portobello Road is committed to supporting women and children in our community and in developing countries, where many of our products are manufactured or made by hand. Previously, Ms. Lyons worked at Physicians for Human Rights, where she supervised a landmark study on war-related sexual violence and led an international advocacy effort to draw attention to the needs of victims of the civil war, and to promote peace and reconstruction efforts. Prior to her work in human rights, Ms. Lyons worked as an editor at ELLE Magazine, an Associate Producer at Frontline, an assistant to filmmaker Oliver Stone, and as an organizer on the Dukakis campaign. She received her M.A.L.D from The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, and her B.A. in International Relations at Tufts University. It is her ongoing interest in the rights and health of women and children globally which links the various stages of her education, career and ongoing charity efforts. She currently resides in Brookline, MA with her husband and their two young children.