Meet The OAA Officers & Board
The OfficersAndrew Klaber, Founder, President, and Partner Scott Grinsell, Partner Adam Grogg, Secretary and Partner
The Board
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 Scott Grinsell graduated from Yale Law School in 2009 and clerked on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in New York. At Yale Law School, Scott served as Comments Editor of the Yale Law Journal, Executive Editor of the Yale Law and Policy Review, and was a Coker Teaching Fellow. Prior to attending law school, Scott received an M.Phil. in Modern History from Oxford University, where he was a Marshall Scholar, and graduated summa cum laude from Williams College in 2004. Originally from the San Francisco Bay Area, Scott has previously worked for Mayor Gavin Newsom and Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi.This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
 John Harabedian graduated in 2004 from Yale College where he received a B.A. degree in Political Science. Following graduation, John worked as an analyst at the investment banking firm Barrington Associates, completed a Masters degree in Comparative Social Policy at Oxford University, and served as a Coro Fellow in Los Angeles. He holds a Juris Doctorate degree from Stanford Law School and is a practicing lawyer in California.
OAA South Africa Project Director
Jake Masters is an undergraduate and Ingram scholar at Vanderbilt University. Originally from Surrey, England, in 2005 Jake began to collect and distribute Beanie Babies to AIDS orphans throughout South Africa; to date over 3500 Beanie Babies have been collected worldwide. During this initial endeavor, Jake was introduced to the children of Dikatole, a squatters' camp near Johannesburg. Jake expanded his work from distributing Beanie Babies to creating the Dikatole Scholarship Fund, which allows high-achieving children living at the camp to attend private school. The fund also provides financial support to a local nursery school (ages 3-6) and an after school program (ages 7-16). Jake's goal is to one day shake the hands of these students at their own high school graduation.
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 Lindsey Reynolds received her MHS in International Health from Johns Hopkins School of Public Health in 2006 and is now completing her Ph.D. in Public Health at Johns Hopkins. During her junior year at Wesleyan University, she won a research grant to travel to South Africa for one month and study HIV prevention programs. While there, she spent time at Holy Cross, an AIDS hospice and orphan care project in rural South Africa. After her first research trip to South Africa with Angela Larkan, Lindsey started Thembanathi (www.thembanathi.org), which aims to increase awareness of the HIV/AIDS pandemic and to provide support to Holy Cross and other organizations like it. Her continued work on HIV/AIDS led her to choose the field of public health as a career path. Since Lindsey's first work in South Africa in 2003, she has continued to work in South Africa with HIV prevention projects and programs to provide care for orphans and vulnerable children. Reynolds is completing research for her Ph.D. dissertation, working with organizations that provide care and support for children in AIDS-affected communities in South Africa.
The Board
Ronan Farrow is a writer and human rights advocate. His columns have appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the International Herald Tribune, The Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, and other publications. He has served as a UNICEF Spokesperson in Angola, Nigeria, and Sudan and has testified on African issues before numerous U.N. groups. Farrow has appeared as an expert witness before the U.S. Congressional Human Rights Caucus and as a commentator for MSNBC, ABC, and CNN. Farrow has also worked as Special Assistant to Ambassador Richard Holbrooke and for the Chief Counsel of the U.S. House Committee on Foreign Affairs. He is a graduate of Yale Law School and was elected a Rhodes Scholar to Oxford University.
Pooja Kumar grew up in India, Singapore, Indonesia, Canada, and the US. She is passionate about international health and has worked for Save the Children in East Timor, the International Rescue Committee on the Azerbaijan-Armenia ceasefire line, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees on the Congo-Zambia border, UNICEF in India, and McCord Hospital in Durban, South Africa. She graduated from Duke University in 2001 with a degree in health policy and from Harvard Medical School in 2007. She also received a master's degree from Oxford University, where she studied as a Rhodes Scholar; her thesis focused on humanitarian medical intervention. She completed her internship in emergency medicine at the Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston. Since 2008, she has been working with a leading management consulting firm, where she focuses on the healthcare sector.
Kedra Newsom, a Harvard Business School graduate, works out of Chicago for the Boston Consulting Group, where she uses her consulting skill set to champion public education and community development issues. Previously Kedra was employed by Merrill Lynch as a software developer and I/T strategist. Kedra graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2002 with a degree in Computer Science and Engineering.
Rohan Nirody, a Harvard Business School graduate, is an investment professional at Viking Global in New York. Previously Rohan worked as an associate at Elevation Partners and as an analyst at the Blackstone Group. Rohan graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a B.S. in Economics from the Wharton School and a B.A. in International Studies from the College of Arts & Sciences. He volunteers regularly with several non-profit organizations, including the Red Cross and OneVoice.
Rohit Sahni works at Permira Advisers, a European-based private equity firm focused on leveraged buyouts in a variety of sectors. Prior to Permira, Rohit worked at General Atlantic and Goldman Sachs. He is currently involved with the Echoing Green Social Investment Council, Big Brothers/Big Sisters, and the Asia Society. Rohit holds a dual degree in Economics and Mathematics from Vanderbilt University and an MBA from Harvard Business School. At Vanderbilt, he was awarded an Ingram Scholarship, given to students for their dedication to community service.
Thomas Scott received his BA in Development and African Studies from the University of South Carolina. He spent 2005 as a Rotary Ambassadorial Scholar at the University of Cape Town, where he researched cross-country differences in access to AIDS treatment. Traveling widely in southern Africa, Thomas became interested in the links between AIDS treatment provision, procedural fairness, and broader democratic consolidation. With assistance from the Zambian Ministry of Health, Thomas conducted some of the initial research evaluating a publicly-run ART program in a rural African content. In doing this, he focused on local constraints to ART access (such as gender, age, and geographical isolation) as well as on popular perceptions of inequality in ART provision. A Truman Scholar, Thomas is now pursuing a J.D. at Stanford and an MPA at Princeton.
Sid Shenai is an investment professional in Boston. He graduated from Harvard's College and Graduate School of Arts and Sciences with A.B and A.M. degrees in Physics and holds a JD/MBA from Harvard Law School and Harvard Business School. Sid worked as a consultant in McKinsey & Company's San Francisco office, where he advised Fortune 500 clients across multiple industries. As a consultant with Technoserve, he worked with rural entrepreneurs in Swaziland and Ghana to build agribusinesses that support development and alleviate poverty.
Keira Simon is a Principal Product Manager at Medtronic, where she is responsible for marketing new products in Drug Delivery Therapies. Previously she worked at CarVal Investors and at Goldman Sachs. Keira received her MBA from Harvard Business School and her MPhil in Bioscience Enterprise from Cambridge University, where she studied as a Marshall Scholar. Keira graduated summa cum laude from Yale College, receiving a B.S. in Applied Math with a concentration in Economics and Biophysics. She currently serves on the boards of the Yale Science & Engineering Association, the United Cerebral Palsy Association of Minnesota, and the Baldwin School.
Ganesh Sitaraman recently served as the Public Law Fellow and Lecturer at Harvard Law School, where his research spanned constitutional and international law, with a focus on law and counterinsurgency strategy. Ganesh also leads the Democratic Renaissance Project, a network of young progressives working to recover and mobilize the progressive intellectual tradition so it can be understood and applied to develop new policy ideas. He has worked on over a dozen political campaigns, investigated terrorism with ABC News' Investigative Unit, and consulted at the World Bank's Inspection Panel. He is the co-author of Invisible Citizens: Youth Politics After September 11 (2003), and has commented on youth politics, education policy, political strategy, and Afghanistan policy for the New York Times, The New Republic, Boston Globe, New York Public Radio, Voice of America, and the NBC Nightly News. An Eagle Scout and a Truman Scholar, Ganesh received his A.B. in Government, magna cum laude, from Harvard College. He received a Masters in Political Thought from Emmanuel College, Cambridge, where he was the Lionel de Jersey Harvard Scholar. And he graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law School, where he was an editor on the Harvard Law Review.
Originally from New Canaan, Connecticut, Eric Twerdahl graduated with Distinction from the U.S. Naval Academy in 2004, where he was the only member of his class to complete two major courses of study (Chemistry and English). From 2004 to 2006, Eric studied Human Physiology at Oxford, where he was a Marshall Scholar. While at Oxford, Eric led the Oxford University Strategic Studies Group, the university’s oldest international affairs society. Eric pursued his medical training at Harvard Medical School, from which he received his M.D. in 2010. At Harvard, Eric was a founding member of the International Relations & Biomedicine Circle and sat on the organizing committee of the Harvard Medical School Ethics Journal Club. He has traveled to nearly 30 countries, including the UAE and India under the aegis of Partners Harvard Medical International, and he has presented his research on the transformation of India's health care system in a variety of international forums. Eric is now a Resident in General Surgery at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. |
Andrew founded Orphans Against AIDS--an international non-profit organization that annually provides more than 600 children who have been orphaned or made vulnerable by HIV/AIDS with academic scholarships, basic health care, and decent nutrition in Kenya, South Africa, and Uganda--after confronting the plight of AIDS orphans during the summer of 2002. Klaber is interested in how the private, public, and non-profit sectors can build symbiotic relationships to promote social, political, and economic empowerment. Andrew served with the United Nations Inter-Agency Task Force on Orphaned and Vulnerable Children and was selected to speak about Orphans Against AIDS at the 2008 World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. A summa cum laude Ethics, Politics, & Economics and International Studies graduate of Yale College, Klaber earned Masters of Science degrees in Financial Economics and Economic History as a Marshall Scholar at Oxford University. Andrew holds a JD/MBA from Harvard Law School and Harvard Business School, where he graduated with Distinction. For his commitment to public service and leadership, he has been selected as a Goldman Sachs Global Leader, a Truman Scholar, a Udall Scholar, an Asia Society Young Leader, and a First-Team USA-Today Academic All-American. Andrew serves on the boards of several organizations, including the Yale Alumni Fund, the Echoing Green Social Investment Council, the Association of Marshall Scholars, and the Russell Trust Association.
Adam Grogg, from Frederick County, Virginia, is a Yale Law School graduate. He completed Williams College in 2004 with a degree in Political Science and Economics. As a Marshall Scholar, he pursued an MPhil in Comparative Social Policy at Oxford University, where his thesis addressed the politics of education reform. Adam has worked for Google in London and for CEOs for Cities, a U.S. network of cross-sector urban leaders headquartered in Chicago. He is particularly interested in understanding and advocating issues of equality in cities and schools.
Angela Larkan graduated from Wesleyan University in December 2005 with a degree from the College of Social Studies. Originally from South Africa, she witnessed the poverty experienced by many children while growing up. She began researching models of care for children orphaned by HIV/AIDS in 2003, after which she co-founded Thembanathi to raise funds and awareness for children in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. In 2007 Angela established 
