{"id":1079,"date":"2025-08-19T06:31:33","date_gmt":"2025-08-19T06:31:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stg.womennc.org\/?page_id=1079"},"modified":"2025-10-22T01:17:57","modified_gmt":"2025-10-22T01:17:57","slug":"advisory-board","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/womennc.org\/index.php\/advisory-board\/","title":{"rendered":"Advisory Board"},"content":{"rendered":"

Meet our Advisory Board<\/h1><\/div>

WomenNC’s board are devoted gender equity advocates who are dedicated to improving the lives of women and girls in North Carolina.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>

Advisory
Board
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Wendee Wechsberg, PhD, Chair<\/h2><\/div>

Advisory Board \u2022 Chair of Advisory Board<\/p>\n<\/div>

Dr. Wendee Wechsberg was the Founding Director for the RTI Global Gender Center before retiring this year and remains an adjunct professor at Gillings School of Global Public Health. Having been a clinician and an NIH scientist working globally for 25 years, she remains committed to applied research with women and HIV. Dr. Wechsberg created and has chaired the International Women\u2019s and Children\u2019s Group (InWomen\u2019s) , a network of over 900 participants from 44 countries working in the field of substance use. Dr. Wechsberg has received numerous awards including NIDA International\u2019s excellence in mentoring 2013, NC\u2019s Women Most Admired leaders 2023, 2024 and the Forbes Women 50 Over 50 Impact List in 2022. She was president of Women NC from July 2020 – July 2022, then moved to lead the advisory board.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>

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Representative Cynthia Ball<\/h2><\/div>

Advisory Board<\/p>\n<\/div>

Cynthia Ball is a native North Carolinian, born in Franklin County. She graduated with a BA in Psychology from UNC-Greensboro (Phi Beta Kappa and magna cum laude) and completed an MBA from Virginia Commonwealth University. She continued extensive graduate work at NC State University in Human Resource and Organizational Development. Cynthia has worked in marketing and in university advancement and currently is a practicing certified mediator. Having lived in Wake County since 1983, she currently resides in Raleigh with her husband Dr. David Aspnes, Distinguished University Professor of Physics at NC State University. They are proud of their three children and six grandchildren. They have rescued many cats and dogs over the years, and several still give them much joy. In her third term on the City of Raleigh Civil Service Commission, she has volunteered for several non-profits over the years. She is serving in her third term at the NC General Assembly as State Representative for District 49 in Wake County.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>

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Felicia A . Browne, ScD, MPH<\/h2><\/div>

Advisory Board<\/p>\n<\/div>

Felicia A. Browne, ScD, MPH, is a senior research social epidemiologist. Dr. Browne has more than 18 years of experience working on HIV behavioral intervention studies for key populations in the United States and South Africa. She is also an Adjunct Associate Professor in Health Behavior at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC) Gillings School of Global Public Health and Associate Core Director of the UNC Center for AIDS Research\u2019s Social and Behavioral Science Core. Her expertise and research areas include the use of mixed methods in the adaptation and evaluation of multilevel HIV risk-reduction interventions, mobile health (mHealth) technology, and understanding and addressing the social determinants of HIV. Dr. Browne currently serves as a Principal Investigator of one NIH-funded R01 study, Multiple Principal Investigator of two NIH-funded R01 studies, and Principal Investigator of an R21 study.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>

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Robin Downs Colbert<\/h2><\/div>

Advisory Board<\/p>\n<\/div>

Robin currently serves as the Chief Program Officer (CPO) of Addiction Professionals of North Carolina (APNC). Robin works to build collaborative partnerships within the organization and with external stakeholders focused on promoting community-based prevention, harm reduction, treatment and recovery initiatives, supports and opportunities for people who serve and folx living with substance use disorder in North Carolina.
\nAPNC\u2019s mission is to unify the voice of North Carolina\u2019s addiction professionals through advocacy, technical assistance, and educational opportunities while providing innovative programs to advance the field.
\nRobin currently serves as a board vice-chair of Just Detention International, a health and human rights organization that seeks to end sexual abuse in all forms of detention.
\nRobin is the first and former Associate Director of the North Carolina Coalition Against Sexual Assault (NCCASA), former Chair and Treasurer of the North Carolina Coalition Against Human Trafficking (NCCAHT) and former two-term NC Judicial Branch appointee Victim Advocate to the NC Innocence Inquiry Commission (NCIIC).
\nRobin is in Christian Ministry and provides support and guidance to women seeking a closer connection with Christ. Robin has one biological daughter, Marissa, with her husband Maurice, and together they form a wonderful, blended family of 6 children and 15 grandchildren.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>

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Deidra Hudson<\/h2><\/div>

Advisory Board<\/p>\n<\/div>

Deidra has 24 years of experience in biopharma in sales, managed care, market access, patient access, operations, transformational change, health equity and has launched drugs and biologics across key disease states. She has worked at Apellis Pharmaceuticals, Inc., Novartis, Genentech, Amgen, Parke-Davis, and Prudential Healthcare.She has a passion for helping others especially women and has mentored colleagues in her industry and served on Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion councils.  Deidra also volunteers for the graduate chapter of her sorority,  Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc. and serves on several boards including, Pearls in Partnership, Healthcare Business Women’s Association, and WIL-LEN, Inc. Deidra studied Public Policy Analysis at UNC at Chapel Hill and earned her Bachelor of Arts in Political Studies from Meredith College.  She currently lives in Apex, NC with her husband Kevan and their doodles Maxwell and Romeo. She travels often with her husband to see her bonus children Samantha, Colin, Chase, Cameron, Carson, Cannon, and Mayson.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>

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Sree Anand Ratnasinghe<\/h2><\/div>

Advisory Board<\/p>\n<\/div>

Sree Anand Ratnasinghe brings more than 25 years of customer success and technical sales experience to her role as Director of Customer Solutions and cloud migrations and modenization for AWS Global Industries and Strategic Accounts. Under her leadership, the team helps customers gain value from their cloud and AI initiatives and accelerate innovation, modernization, and cloud transformation with AWS. Sree is focused on the intersection between agentic AI and modernizations.<\/p>\n

As an experienced Cloud Transformation Advisor and Leader, Sree excels at the intersection of talent development, tech co-invention, and customer advocacy. In her prior AWS roles, she has led teams focused on solutions architecture, modernizations, and best practices to be well-architected on AWS. Before AWS, Sree contributed significantly to IBM\u2019s cloud-native evolution, collaborating with enterprise clients on digital transformation initiatives.<\/p>\n

In 2025, Sree took on the Executive Sponsor role for the AWS Industries People Empowerment Team. She partners with the General Manager of a 2,500+-person internal organization to support retention, implement employee inclusion initiatives, and enhance organizational excellence.<\/p>\n

She is a sought-after speaker who has appeared at dozens of industry events annually \u2014 highlights include AWS re:Invent, IEEE, Women In Tech Network, and Grace Hopper\u2014 where she engages with executive decision-makers and senior leaders on AI, cloud migrations, and business innovation. She is also an ambassador for Amazon\u2019s Culture of Innovation.<\/p>\n

Sree is a graduate of Carnegie Mellon University with a Master\u2019s in Information Networking. She lives in Raleigh, North Carolina.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>

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Lia Willcoxon<\/h2><\/div>

Advisory Board \u2022 WomenNC Alumni<\/p>\n<\/div>

Lia is a PhD student in Infectious Disease Epidemiology at UNC Chapel Hill, where her research centers on how climate-displaced refugee women from the Global South navigate infectious disease care in the Global North. A former WomenNC scholar, she remains committed to promoting women\u2019s health equity through research and community partnerships. Lia has worked on global health projects across The Gambia, Switzerland, and Ecuador, and is passionate about using data and storytelling to elevate women’s voices in public health. She\u2019s thrilled to return to WomenNC in an advisory role and continue advancing opportunities for young women leaders. <\/p>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"100-width.php","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-1079","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"yoast_head":"\nAdvisory Board - WomenNC<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/womennc.org\/index.php\/advisory-board\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Advisory Board - WomenNC\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/womennc.org\/index.php\/advisory-board\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"WomenNC\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2025-10-22T01:17:57+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/womennc.org\\\/index.php\\\/advisory-board\\\/\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/womennc.org\\\/index.php\\\/advisory-board\\\/\",\"name\":\"Advisory Board - 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