Founding Curator & ChIEf Executive Officer

Nandini Oomman is a Global Health & Development Specialist, and the CEO & Founding Curator of The Women’s Storytelling Salon™. She has more than 20 years of research, program, and policy experience in global development. Nandini’s technical expertise and her penchant for storytelling have always driven her career interests. Ultimately, these same forces shaped her role as the Founding Curator of The Women’s Storytelling Salon™.

Before she discovered the joys of creative self-employment and entrepreneurship, Nandini led the HIV/AIDS Monitor Initiative at The Center for Global Development from 2006 to 2012, and consulted at The World Bank in Washington, DC and Hanoi, Vietnam, where she worked on a large project to strengthen the quality of primary health services. Nandini’s earlier work at the Rockefeller Foundation, at the Indian Health Organization, an HIV/AIDS prevention organization in Mumbai, India, and with URMUL, in rural Rajasthan, India, created a life long passion for human rights and social justice— with a focus on women’s health and gender equality.

Nandini has a BSc in Biochemistry from McGill University, and a PhD from the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health. She has published widely in academic journals, is a Huff Post and Medium blogger, and has served on boards of several non-profits in the health and education sector. She is currently a fellow in the inaugural cohort of the the WomenLift Health Program at Stanford University.

Chief Operating Officer

Kathryn Conn is a nurse, global health consultant and the new Chief Operating Officer of The Women’s Storytelling Salon™. She has expertise in sexual and reproductive
health, intimate partner violence, and gender equality. Kathryn’s work experience has shown her that in addition to research and facts, stories are essential to forging the connections that inspire the transformation of communities and systems.

Most recently, Kathryn worked with Nandini as a research associate and co-author on the Lancet Series: Gender Equality, Norms and Health. She has served as a public health nurse in a domestic violence shelter, where she piloted family planning education for survivors of intimate partner violence. Prior to that, she was a researcher with the Division of Global Health and Human Rights at Massachusetts General Hospital on projects to prevent human trafficking and improve maternal, child and newborn health in East Africa.

Kathryn has a BSN and MPH from Johns Hopkins University, as well as an MSN in the Women’s Health Nurse Practitioner specialty from Vanderbilt University. She is currently pursuing a PhD in Nursing.