CARES - Team

Team

Vishnu Shankar, BS

Vishnu Shankar is currently a master's student at Stanford University, studying computer science. He founded CARES in 2016 and has been working to make its vision a reality since.

Rebecca Bromley-Dulfano, MS

Rebecca Bromley-Dulfano graduated in 2018 with her bachelor's and master's degree in biology at Stanford University. During her undergraduate studies, she spent 3 years working as a peer counselor and mental health advocate, founding and directing the student Mental Health and Wellness Coalition (2016-2017).

Enrique Ciriano Cervantes, MSc

Enrique Ciriano Cervantes, from Spain, is a physical therapist, who feels strongly about making an impact in his community. As he has personally coped with mental illness, he hopes that his efforts in this project can help in healing others who are facing similar struggles.

Wellbeing Ambassadors

Steven Zhang, MD

Steven Zhang is currently an orthopaedic surgery resident at the University of Pennsylvania. He received his MD from Stanford University in 2019 where he was also a Howard Hughes Medical Fellow. He has been a writer for the Stanford Scope blog where he has been a strong advocate for resident well-being and mental health.

Advisors

Carole Pertofsky, MEd

Carole Pertofsky is a Lecturer at Stanford University and was the director of Stanford’s Wellness and Health Promotion Services. For over 25 years, she has created and taught courses about the art and science of self-compassion, mindfulness, emotional intelligence, work-life balance, and stress management.

Donnovan Yisrael, MA

Donnovan Yisrael is a senior health educator with iThrive Student Wellness Services at Stanford University. He has worked as an educator, presenter, and consultant on health issues for over 25 years, integrating ideas from positive psychology to teach students skills such as emotional intelligence, mindfulness, and compassion.

Tito Spínola, BS

Tito Spínola works at Ashoka, where he directs the European Changemaker Summit, the most visible milestone for Ashoka in Europe. Before Ashoka, he has 12 years of experience in the fields of international development and communications.

Ellen Beck, MD

Ellen Beck is a Clinical Professor and the Director of Medical Student Education for the Division of Family Medicine at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine. She is a family physician who has devoted her career to empowerment and creating environments where individuals, families, and communities can take charge of their lives and achieve wellbeing.

Mentor Dida, MS

Mentor considers himself as a compassionate and enthusiastic social entrepreneur that wants to see everyone live in harmony with themselves, others, and the planet. With a systemic impact focus, he is never content with just giving a person a fish, nor teaching them how to fish, he will not stop until the fishing industry is changed. As a systems changer, he has started many initiatives including Prosperity Initiative in Kosovo NGO, Path of Kindness NGO, Sustinability Leadership Kosovo NGO, Two Dollar Challenge movement at ASU, #KaArdheKoha movement, #PërTëMirën campaign and many others. Mentor currently works at Ashoka, the organization that pioneered the field of social entrepreneurship and has the largest network of social system changing entrepreneurs in the world. He is based in Washington D.C., and his role at Ashoka is to advance a collective mindset shift so that young people and adults are nurturbut ed to be well and to thrive as Changemakers.

James R. Doty, MD

James R. Doty is a professor in Dept. of Neurosurgery at Stanford University School of Medicine. He is also the founder and director of the Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education at Stanford University that studies the neuroscience of empathy, compassion and altruism and the value proposition of these behaviors. His memoir, Into the Magic Shop: A Neurosurgeon’s Quest to Discovery the Mysteries of the Brain and the Secrets of the Heart, is a New York Times bestseller and has been translated into over 30 languages. He is also the senior editor of the Oxford Handbook of Compassion Science. His work has been quoted widely in a number of publications and he speaks throughout the world on his research.

Tomas Alvarez III, MSW

Tomás Alvarez is an Oakland-based serial social entrepreneur and former nonprofit executive with 15+ years of experience leading social impact initiatives. In 2004, Tomás pioneered one of the country's first Hip Hop Therapy programs and worked with local youth, community artists and mental health providers to grow it into a nationally-recognized organization. Since then, Tomás has gone on to launch numerous social impact initiatives, consult with civic sector organizations, keynote large-scale conferences and be an advocate for issues related to children’s wellbeing and racial justice. Tomás is one of the principal architects behind the Children's Wellbeing Initiative (CWI), a national project incubated by Ashoka and funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, dedicated to ensuring every child regardless of their zip code grows up with a strong of self, belonging and purpose. For his vision, leadership, and impact, Tomás has received numerous awards, and his work has been featured by several media outlets including CNN, Forbes, New York Times, NBC Latino, Vice Magazine, Complex, Stanford Social Innovation Review, and NPR. He is an Ashoka fellow, CNN Hero, and NBC Latino Top 20 Innovator.

Sanjay Basu, MSc, MD, PhD

Sanjay Basu is a physician at Tenderloin Health Services—an integrated primary care, behavioral health, and substance use treatment clinic in San Francisco—and Director of Research and Analytics at Collective Health, an organization devoted to helping patients navigate the healthcare system. He previously directed the Analytics and Modeling Core unit of Stanford’s SPHERE Center (Stanford Precision Health for Ethnic and Racial Equity) and the Health Disparities section of Stanford’s Center for Population Health Sciences, and has served on the faculty of Harvard Medical School’s Center for Primary Care and the School of Public Health at Imperial College London. He received his undergraduate education from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University, and received his MD and PhD at Yale University before completing his residency training in internal medicine at the University of California in San Francisco. Dr. Basu was recently named one of the “Top 100 Global Thinkers” by Foreign Policy Magazine, and was awarded the NIH Director’s New Innovator Award.

Guy Whetstone, Pharm D, MBA

Guy Whetstone is a pharmacist by background and currently serves as a medical leader at Boehringer-Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals. Prior to his efforts in clinical development and medical affairs, Guy worked as a clinical consultant supporting chronic conditions in integrated health systems for three years. He has been a wellness advocate for over 10 years influencing strategic team member and patient engagement initiatives at both Target Inc. and Boehringer Ingelheim. In his free time, Guy enjoys the outdoors with his family in San Diego and is an active partner in HOPE Therapy Group, a trauma-informed counseling practice.

Partners

We gratefully acknowledge the support from the following organizations

Google Sites

Report abuse