Lecturer, Department of Pediatrics and Child Health, Consultant Pediatrician/Pediatric Critical Care, University of Nairobi, Kenya

Dr. Rashmi Kumar is a lecturer and Pediatric Intensivist at the Kenyatta National Hospital, University of Nairobi. She was the first pediatric intensivist in Kenya and instrumental in starting Kenya’s first Pediatric Critical Care Unit in the largest public tertiary care hospital in the country. She is an Executive board member of the Kenya Pediatric Association, Antibiotics Consensus Society of Kenya and Critical Care Society of Kenya. She is involved in bringing up the care of critically ill children through CME talks at various forums including the training of nurses. Dr. Kumar has been one of the key motors in starting the Fellowship Program in Pediatric Emergency and Critical Care at her institution.

A Paediatric Emergency Physician & Retrievalist by training, Mardi has lived and worked in the US, Australia & Kenya as a clinician, educator and health executive. As a co-developer of PECC Kenya, she is committed to multidisciplinary and cross-cultural healthcare training, leadership development and research. She is passionate about universal health coverage and value-based care, especially for the underserved – whether in LMICs or in pockets of less accessible care in any country. She can be found advocating for rural & remote Australians of all ages in her current role as Executive General Manager Medical & Retrieval Services at the RFDS Central

Operations, as well as East African critically ill children whenever possible – and thinking out loud on twitter at @mardi_steere, @MedDr_RFDS_COps and @PECCAfrica.

Credentials: Assistant Professor, Department of Pediatrics, Division of Pediatric Critical Care Medicine, University of Washington and Seattle Children’s Hospital

Dr. von Saint Andre – von Arnim is Pediatric intensivist at Seattle Children’s. She completed her medical training at University of Würzburg, Germany, followed by residency training in Pediatrics at Boston Children’s Hospital/Boston Medical Center, and fellowship in Pediatric Critical Care at University of Washington/Seattle Children’s.

Her academic focus is to improve outcomes of critically-ill children in limited-resource settings. She has been involved in the development of the fellowship in pediatric emergency and critical care and related research projects with the University of Nairobi and AIC Kijabe Hospital since 2011. She currently serves as the UW director of PECC activities in Kenya.

Arianna Shirk is currently a Pediatric Consultant at AIC Kijabe Hospital with the Samaritan’s Purse Post Residency Program. She graduated from Wake Forest University School of Medicine in 2007 after spending a year study the interaction of culture and medicine in Taiwan as a Luce Scholar. She completed her Pediatrics Residency, a chief resident year, and her Pediatric Emergency Medicine Fellowship training at the University of Alabama-Birmingham from 2007-2014. Arianna moved to Kijabe, Kenya with her husband and two children in September 2014 to work as a pediatric consultant and with special interest in training clinical and medical officers in pediatric shock, resuscitation, and compassionate care of children. She is currently an Adjunct Assistant Professor at University of Alabama-Birmingham in the department of Pediatric Emergency Medicine at Children’s of Alabama.

Sabreen Akhter is a board certified pediatric emergency medicine physician, who has worked at Seattle Children’s Hospital since 2012. Prior to coming to SCH, she also completed a global health fellowship and received a Diploma in Tropical Medicine and a Diploma in Humanitarian Assistance. She has worked in various circumstances, providing direct clinical care in disasters (in Kashmir following the 2005 earthquake, and in Haiti following the 2010 earthquake), pediatric medical education (in Honduras, Malawi, and Liberia), and specialty pediatric care (teaching pediatric advanced life support and resuscitation in Chiapas, Mexico). She hopes to continue her interest in providing specialty pediatric education in a global context through this fellowship at the University of Nairobi.