Pearls of Wisdom: Women Advancing Public Health in Black Communities

We invite you to join us for a conversation highlighting lessons learned and strategies to improve health outcomes for Black Communities. Click here to register.

The annual Pearls of Wisdom program uplifts the lived experiences of Black women and encourages intergenerational discussion on timely topics affecting the philanthropic sector, fostering community learning, professional development, strategy sharing, and connection. The Pearls of Wisdom Program is a signature event hosted each March in celebration of Women’s History Month.

Program Goals:

1. Discuss lessons learned from health initiatives and policy strategies to support positive health outcomes in Black communities

2. Identify Greater Bay Area grantmaking models that address the root causes of health disparities within Black communities, linking Black health outcomes to broader US population-wide health outcomes and cross-sector pillars

3. Cultivate relationships with peers who are engaged in health equity work

If you're interested in attending, register today! Registration for all attendees will close on Tuesday, March 24, 2025.

Who May Attend:

Attendance is open to the BFN member community. We invite our new and returning members, those ready to renew, as well as the allies and prospective partners who are interested in joining the network. Click here to learn more about BFN membership.

Meet the Speakers

Katherine Haynes

California Health Care Foundation

Katherine Haynes is a senior program officer in CHCF’s Improving Access team, which works to ensure that Californians — particularly those enrolled in Medi-Cal — receive responsive, comprehensive, and coordinated care that supports their health and well-being. She uses research, strategy, organizational design, futurism, and design thinking to create scalable, sustainable programs.

Before joining CHCF, Katherine worked as program director at Institute for the Future in Palo Alto, where she led systematic thinking about health and health care futures among executives of public and private organizations. Previously, Katherine built Kaiser Permanente Northern California’s diversity department — with the mission to advance language access and health equity — and served as its executive director. In this role, she directed a program that deployed design research and systems thinking to improve member experience to build accountability in the language program, and funded disparities-reduction projects in the health care delivery system.

She also served as the founding director of the technology and information exchange core at the UCSF Center for AIDS Prevention Studies, where she fostered collaboration among epidemiologists, psychologists, substance use researchers, population specialists, and community-based AIDS service organizations to pioneer a community collaborative research program that was replicated by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the state of California.

Katherine received a bachelor’s degree in humanities from the University of California, Berkeley, and a master’s degree in business administration from the Anderson School of Management at the University of California, Los Angeles. She currently serves as the chair of the board of the American Jewish World Service and is an instructor for the Institute for the Future.

Dr. Shakari Byerly

EVITARUS

Shakari Byerly, Ph.D., is Managing Partner of Evitarus. Dr. Byerly has more than 20 years of experience designing and conducting survey and focus group research. Dr. Byerly has served as a pollster for a host of businesses, foundations, non-profits, cities, counties, special districts, local school districts, community college districts, colleges and universities, special initiatives, campaigns, and research institutes across the country.

Her research has encompassed multi-lingual and mixed-methods studies related to health care, policy, and equity, mental health, homelessness, and housing, resident attitudes, perceptions, and preferences, conservation and climate, community safety, criminal justice reform, marketing, outreach and education, ballot measure campaigns, transportation, and voter mobilization and turnout.

Dr. Byerly is an active member of the American Association for Public Opinion Research (AAPOR) and Founding Chair of BAAPOR, an AAPOR affinity group that serves as a network of public opinion researchers, scholars, and professionals focused on research and best practices for conducting research, among Black, African American, and African diaspora populations. She also serves on AAPOR’s Strategic Planning Committee and the Inclusion & Equity Committee.

Dr. Byerly regularly presents academic research and leads polling-industry dialogue on the importance of methodologically rigorous sampling of diverse populations and of community participatory research. She is also a member of the American Political Science Association (APSA) and the National Conference of Black Political Scientists (NCOBPS).

Prior to EVITARUS, Dr. Byerly was a Senior Vice President at FM3 Research, Manager of the California Governance Project at the Center for Governmental Studies (CGS), and a Policy Consultant to members of the California State Legislature, among other roles in policy, education, and campaigns.

Dr. Byerly earned a Ph.D. in Political Science, along with a Master’s degree, from UCLA’s Political Science Department, a Master’s degree in Public Policy from the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs, and a Bachelor’s degree in Government from Dartmouth College.

Dr. Melanie Tervalon

Melanie Tervalon Consulting

Dr. Melanie Tervalon is a nationally and internationally renowned physician, educator, community activist, and thought leader. Her broad expertise in medical and social sciences, public health, and public policy is informed not only by her stellar academic training and professional experience but also by the connections she has forged with the streets where everyday people and their triumphs and challenges reside.

As a practicing Pediatrician at the Children’s Hospital in Oakland, CA, she founded the Multicultural Curriculum Program. “Cultural humility” was the moniker that described her efforts to train doctors to set aside the pre-conceived notions about patients that substituted for their own lack of knowledge about the diverse and culturally complex communities they served. For more than two decades since the inception of this program, Dr. Tervalon has demonstrated, in myriad ways, how cultural humility can make the difference between sickness and health in the treatment of individuals and communities.

In her current role as a consultant, Dr. Tervalon crafts strategic plans for program and funding initiatives, provides expert knowledge in the field of culture, race, ethnicity and identity in health and health services, guides leaders or teams from ideas to implementation while modeling participatory processes, synthesizing large amounts of often disparate information for use in organizational planning or redirection, facilitates meetings for large and small groups, and provides individual coaching. Dr. Tervalon has a reputation for building constructive, participatory relationships inside and outside of institutions, modeling respect for divergent points of view.

Dr. Tervalon received her MD from the University of California, San Francisco, and an MPH and BS from the University of California, Berkeley. She is a highly acclaimed public speaker.