Our Team

Listed below are the directors of FOPH. But "us" is a great many other people — people who write checks, who get others involved, who arrange donations of needed equipment, and a few with special skills who go to Nepal to work at the hospital for a short time. We also should include those who inspire us: the dedicated Nepali and expatriate professionals at Patan, most of whom work for little pay in the service of God.

Because FOPH is dedicated to consensus and collegiality with the dedicated staff at Patan Hospital, it is our policy that at least two directors be drawn from Nepali staff at Patan and that all decisions regarding priorities and expenditures be made with input from hospital personnel. Financial decisions ultimately require an affirmative vote of 80% of the board.

— Rest In Peace —

FOPH has lost several of its charter board members in the past two years.

• Dr. Rebecca Mashburn passed away in March 2023 after a long battle with cancer.

• Amy Hecht, wife of FOPH founder Jim Hecht, passed away peacefully at home in June 2023 after a long and productive life of service.

• Long-time board member and devoted friend of Patan Hospital Bob Shields passed away in May 2022.

F. Joseph Feely III
Chairman of the Board
Joe received his B.S. in mechanical engineering and M.S. in industrial administration from Purdue University and his J.D. from the University of Virginia Law School. He retired from Verizon Communications in 2001 after working for 28 years as a lawyer. Before attending law school he worked as a development engineer for E.I. DuPont de Nemours Corporation in Newport, Delaware, and he served as a commissioned officer in the U.S. Public Health Service at the National Center for Air Pollution Control in Washington D.C. He served as a director and secretary of the board for VIDA Senior Centers in Washington D.C. for ten years until August 2012.

Catherine Bradshaw Michael, MD
President
Catherine earned a B.S. in biochemisty at the University of Notre Dame in 1991 and received her M.D. from Indiana University. She completed a residency in emergency medicine at Cook County Hospital in Chicago. Since then she has been working as an emergency physician in Indianapolis. She spent two months at Patan Hospital in 1994 as a medical student and returned for another month of volunteer work in the year 2000. Catherine and her husband Jon-Adam are active members of Grace Presbyterian Church (PCA) and have four children, the youngest born in 2010.

Dr. Aaron Mansfield
Vice President
Dr. Mansfield is an associate professor of oncology at the Mayo Clinic. He volunteered at Patan Hospital through Mayo Clinic's International Health Program. Since then he has worked with internists and pathologists at Patan Hospital to help optimize the care of patients with chronic myeloid leukemia. He looks forward to continuing to support Patan Hospital.

Eleanor Roberts
Treasurer
Eleanor Roberts graduated from Hastings College in Nebraska with a degree in music education. She taught public school music, owned a private music studio and served as organist and choir director for several different churches. She retired from the telephone industry where she was a trainer and course developer. Eleanor traveled to Nepal to do service work in 2000 and 2007.

Mark Haynes
Vice Chairman & Secretary
Mark is a cum laude graduate of the University of Michigan Law School. A resident of Denver, he is a member of the law firm of Ireland, Stapleton, Pryor & Pascoe, a professional corporation of which he is a shareholder/partner. He and his wife, Gwen, have four children, one of whom was a Nepali orphan.

Dr. Paras Kumar Acharya
Director
Paras is a professor of internal medicine. He was the director of Patan Hospital until 2012, when he became the founding vice chancellor of Karnali Academy of Health Sciences. He later returned to Patan Hospital and at present holds the post of registrar at Patan Academy of Health Sciences. He is active in the area of emergency medical services and serves as vice president of Nepal Ambulance Service. He is also the general secretary of Hospice Nepal.

Hon. Mary C. Carroll
Director
For the past thirty years Mary has given steadfast time and effort to volunteer service in Nepal. She has led medical camps, conducted VIP tours, arranged cultural exchanges, and organized day camps for as many as 250 Nepali children. She founded and was chair of the Nepal Foundation which adopted a remote community of 5,000 in the Solu-Khumbu district and in eight years brought it up to the highest standard of living it could sustain. In 2012 she was appointed Honorary Consul of Nepal in Hawaii by Nepal’s Foreign Ministry.

Before retirement in Hawaii she lived in the Philadelphia area where she served on over 25 community and national boards involved with the environment, international affairs, historic preservation, and others. She is a retired director of Aqua America, Inc, (now called Essential Utilities) which is the largest US owned water and clean gas utility on the NYSE. Mary was elected to the Distinguished Daughters of Pennsylvania and was awarded the Woman of Distinction from Lake Forest Academy. She was the first recipient of the Friend of Nepal award given by the Association of Nepalis in the Americas. She graduated magna cum laude from the University of Miami.

Dr. Rajesh N. Gongal
Director
Rajesh is rector and a professor of surgery at Patan Academy of Health Sciences (PAHS). He was the founding dean of of the School of Medicine at PAHS and the founding chair of Primary Trauma Care Nepal (2005) which has established the Primary Trauma Course throughout the country to improve the care of trauma victims. Rajesh is also the founding president of Nepal Ambulance Service (2010), the first ambulance service in Nepal to run with EMT’s mobilized through a three digit phone number, and the founding president of Hospice Nepal (2000), the first palliative care center in Nepal. He completed a fellowship in palliative care from Northern Ireland Hospice and a masters in palliative care from Ulster University. In 2021, he was appointed Vice Chancellor of the Patan Academy of Health Science.

Maggie Le Beau
Director
Maggie earned a B.A in Economics at Northwestern University and received her M.B.A. from Harvard University's Graduate School of Business. She has spent her career in marketing and has experience across varied industries. She enjoys focusing on the growth of organizations, and much of her career was spent in Executive Marketing and Strategy roles in companies including American Express, US WEST, and Dex Media. More recently, she has been teaching at the University of Denver's Daniels College of Business, and she founded Nepali Tea Traders. Nepali Tea Traders is a social entrepreneurship that sells tea exclusively from the Ilam region of Nepal, with the goal of building a sustainable tea economy in Nepal. Maggie is following in the footsteps of her father and mother by joining our board in 2022. Her late father, Jim Hecht, was the founder and former president and chairman of FOPH, and her mother Amy also served on our board since its inception. Maggie herself has been personally involved in Nepal for many years. She lives in the Denver area.

Linda Hungerford, MD
Director
Linda Hungerford is a graduate of Oregon Health Sciences University and completed her internal medicine residency at Providence Portland Medical Center in 1995. From September 1995 to March 1996, she served with United Mission to Nepal at Patan Hospital on the internal medicine ward and in the clinic alongside Mark Zimmerman. She has maintained an active interest in medical missions and counts her experience at Patan Hospital as one of the most formative for her world view and practice of medicine. She has been in private practice with Providence Medical Group in Portland, Oregon, since 1996. She and her husband Ben have five children and a small family farm.

Dr. Saraswati Kache
Director
Dr. Kache is a clinical assistant professor of pediatric intensive care at Stanford School of Medicine. She practices at Stanford Hospital and Clinics and at Lucile Packard Children's Hospital. In 2009 she helped to develop a curriculum and training program for intensive care medicine at Patan Hospital and helped establish the PICU and NICU there. She remains dedicated to the care of critically ill children in Nepal as well as children throughout the world. She plans to return to Patan Hospital in a leadership role to provide further follow up training at these units.

Dr. Paban Sharma
Director
Dr. Paban Sharma became the director of Patan Hospital in August of 2012. Prior to this appointment he served as its medical director. He has practiced medicine at Patan Hospital for 20 years and specializes in OB/GYN.

David Shields
Director
Dave was introduced to FOPH by his father, Bob, a board member until his passing in May 2022. He has served with his father on the FOPH Endowment Committee since 2019. Now retired after 34 years of federal service, he serves on a number of church boards and volunteers at a local ministry's Crisis Assistance Network, helping the county's working poor. Dave earned an Electrical Engineering and Applied Physics degree from Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. But the best thing he got from college was his wife Patty, to whom he has been married 35 years. They have four adult children. He considers his marriage and family his greatest life accomplishment.

Dr. Kim Solez
Director
Dr. Kim Solez is a professor of pathology in the Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathology at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada, and president and CEO of Transpath Inc. His expertise and research interests include: kidney and transplantation pathology, technology and the future of medicine, and cyber-medicine. For many years he has been a member of the International Advisory Board for Patan Academy of Health Sciences. He is a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada.

Dr. George A. Taylor
Director
Dr. George A.Taylor is a distinguished professor of radiology at the Harvard Medical School who recently lightened his workload by stepping down as head of radiology at Children's Hospital in Boston. In March 2010 he visited Patan Hospital and provided training to the radiology staff there. In 2008 he arranged for the donation of equipment to Patan Hospital including 16 monitors and 13 infusion pumps for use in the pediatric wards. He has had a long and distinguished career in pediatric radiology that included being the president of the International Organization of Pediatric Radiologists, and he is interested in helping to bring volunteers to Patan Hospital to assist in training and providing imaging services.

Dr. Mark Zimmerman
Director
Mark received his M.D. at the Dartmouth Medical School. He then did his residency and chief residency in internal medicine in Syracuse, New York. In 1986 he joined the medical staff of Patan Hospital and also worked in the hill hospital of Amp Pipal. In 1998 he became the Medical Director at Patan. He met his wife Deirde, a native of Ireland, at Patan Hospital while she was working with the United Mission to Nepal Nutrition Program. In 2005 Mark resigned his position at Patan Hospital to become the executive director of the Nick Simons Institute, a huge program aimed at improving health care in the rural areas of Nepal. In 2016, he returned to Patan Hospital as clinical staff. He and Deirdre have two boys.