Nicole Warren, PhD, MPH, CNM, is the founder and president of Mali Midwives. She worked with matrones in rural Koutiala, Mali first as a Peace Corps volunteer (1994-1996), and later as a midwife and researcher (2003-2004 and 2009). Nicole created Mali Midwives to address the needs of this committed group of women and to engage anyone who cares about maternal health and Mali to help support matrones’ efforts. Currently, Nicole is an Assistant Professor at Johns Hopkins School of Nursing. She has two children. Her daughter, Felix, aka “Sali Sanogo” spent her first year in Mali.
 

Craig Tower, PhD is a social and media researcher with extensive international experience, particularly in Francophone Africa. In the past, he has worked as an instructor on an experiential farm camp; a Peace Corps volunteer in Mali; a bicycle tour leader in Africa and the Caribbean; and director of educational programs at a national bicycling nonprofit undergoing a major restructuring.

Having studied in Senegal as an undergraduate, he served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Mali in the mid-1990s, learning Bamanankan while assisting villagers in the southeast of the country with gardening and forestry projects. He was impressed with the excitement that surrounded FM radio, which had only recently been liberalized. He was particularly interested in the use of FM, a new technology, in the preservation of cultural traditions, and thought it might be a good topic for a dissertation in cultural anthropology.

When he enrolled at Northwestern University, he went on to conduct 18 months of research assessing the uses of FM radio in West Africa. He ended up focusing on how FM is being used by audiences as a kind of social media, and how FM stations negotiated the competing expectations of international donors and fees-paying local audiences. Craig has presented the results of his research to a variety of audiences, to academics through publications and aural presentations; and to general audiences through articles on the internet and radio programs broadcast nationally in Canada.
 

Margot Fahnestock is a health policy analyst, researcher and project manager for Futures Group International with a current focus on developing policy in Africa for scaling-up community-based contraceptive distribution programs, policy barriers to contraceptive security and addressing HIV and AIDS in the private sector workplace. Currently, Ms. Fahnestock is the Regional Manager for West and Central Africa for the USAID-funded Health Policy Initiative project and oversees implementation of policy and advocacy activities regarding family planning and HIV and AIDS in several West African countries including Mali, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Senegal, Côte d’Ivoire, Cameroon and Ghana. Ms. Fahnestock has an undergraduate degree from the University of California at Los Angeles and a graduate degree in Public Policy from the University of Chicago. She was a Peace Corps volunteer in Mali, West Africa and currently lives in Washington, D.C.