About Us
Our History
Founded in 2010, Global Public Service Academies (GPSA) was created with an understanding that young people can make a difference in the world. We are a socially-responsible organization with the mission to empower young people to become active global leaders. We do this by collaborating with local authorities to promote health equity in underserved communities. Currently we support community health initiatives in Guatemala; Belize; Thailand; and West Virginia, USA; while providing hands-on experiential learning programs and cross-cultural engagement to young people who have an interest in leadership and global health.
Our first travel program site was in Guatemala in 2010, with us expanding to Belize in 2014, followed by West Virginia in 2017. Our newest site opened in Thailand in 2019.
We have always been strongly involved in developing global health curricula, offering high-quality learning opportunities as part of our travel programs. This evolved in 2020, when global travel became a challenge, thus leading us to launch a virtual course focused on global health and leadership. While this is conducted solely online, the content has a strong emphasis on participants taking action, by developing and implementing their own global health project, while improving their leadership skills.
Our Mission
Empowering young people to become active global leaders by collaborating with local authorities to promote health equity in underserved communities.
Our Vision
Young people taking action to make a positive impact globally.
Our Goals
- Building the leadership capacity of participants in order that they can play an active role in global health by becoming global citizens.
- Enabling participants to gain a different perspective about health accessibility and equity through a unique hands-on immersion experience in an underserved community.
- Challenging participants to stretch beyond their comfort zone.
- Strengthening collaborative relationships with local authorities to better support their communities and healthcare professionals in addressing health inequities.
Where We Work
Guatemala
We launched our first travel program within the surrounding communities of Quetzaltenango, Guatemala in 2010. In partnership with the Ministry of Health in Guatemala, the purpose of this program is to work alongside local health authorities in implementing community initiatives within remote areas with predominantly Maya indigenous populations. This is due to underlying discrimination and a lack of accesibility to healthcare.
Belize
In 2014, we partnered with the Ministry of Health in Belize to begin working in villages around San Ignacio, a city which is part of the Cayo District. The area is highly diverse due to the country’s long history of colonization and its proximity to other countries. Our program works to support the country’s efforts to provide healthcare to the people living in more remote areas.
West Virginia
Our work in West Virginia began in 2017, in partnership with The Williamson Health & Wellness Center. One of the purposes of having this program is to offer participants an opportunity to learn about health disparities in the USA, and to see that poor access to healthcare is a serious issue in a country considered by many as developed.
Thailand
Thailand is our most recent site, opening in 2019, based in Mae Sot. Mae Sot is close to the border with Myanmar and has many immigrants fleeing oppression or poor economic conditions. In partnership with the Mae Tao Clinic, most of the people we support are stateless, unable to access the Thai healthcare system and, in many cases, unwilling or unable to return to Myanmar.
Our Team
Vanessa Lee Brombosz joined GPSA in 2016, starting as the Ministry of Health Liaison Officer. As Director, she oversees operations and programming for GPSA. When she's not working, Vanessa enjoys concerts, dancing, cooking, and spending time with her family and friends. She has over 10 years of experience working in healthcare and has a passion for working with health authorities to address health disparities and improve the quality of life of people living in low resource communities. Vanessa worked as an occupational therapist specializing in orthopedic rehabilitation and dementia care in Canada and South America. She holds a MSc in Public Health from McGill University where she completed an internship with the World Bank Peru in the National HIV Allocation Efficiency Analysis program.
Vanessa Brombosz
Director
Lennert started at GPSA in 2014 with the role of Recruiter, then in 2017 as the Recruiting Manager. He currently oversees marketing, communication, and admissions activities, including visiting schools and partners globally. Lennert graduated from the University of Applied Sciences Utrecht, the Netherlands in 2001 with a degree in Communications Management. After college, Lennert worked in the Netherlands for six years as a recruiter and consultant for an engineering staffing agency. While originally from the Netherlands, he has lived in Guatemala since 2007, where he started to work as a volunteer for an afterschool program. He later worked in education with high school and college students.In his free time you can often see him hiking through the beautiful mountainous areas that Guatemala has to offer. or swimming in his favorite swimming pool in Almolonga.
Lennert Rohde
Director
Juliana joined GPSA as the Program Manager in the Summer of 2023. She is responsible for managing and coordinating all travel program and eCourse activities, developing new projects, supporting administrative tasks, and leading monitoring and evaluation efforts. Originally from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, she is currently based in Guatemala. She holds a B.A. in Communications and Musical Cultures of the Gulf South from Tulane University and is currently working on a Masters in Education. She brings years of experience in educational programming, non-profit administration and community organizing, with a focus on human rights and the roots of migration. In her free time, Juliana enjoys painting, drinking Guatemalan coffee, and creating radio shows and mixtapes.
Juliana Stricklen
Program Manager
Kallam Kara-Pabani joined GPSA as Project Officer in 2024. During high school, he participated in the Guatemala program for 3 consecutive years, first as a participant and later as a team leader. He recently graduated from University of Rochester with a Bachelor’s of Science in Neuroscience. During his time at university, he worked in a research lab and later helped younger students find and succeed in research positions. Kallam also volunteered at the hospital screening elderly patients for delirium, and took viola lessons at the Eastman School of Music. He will be spending the next year living in Guatemala and working in the Centro de Salud in La Esperanza while completing a diabetes research project. In his spare time, he enjoys cooking, listening to classical music, hiking, going to the gym, and playing squash.
Kallam Kara-Pabani
Project Officer
Ruby is from Myanmar but currently lives in Thailand with her family. She graduated in B.Sc (Maths) and Early Childhood Care Development (Dip). Last year she was studying at Pierce College, Los Angeles, majoring in Early Child Care Education and Health. Since 2009, Ruby started to work in different organizations along the Thai-Myanmar border area focused on the Education and Health fields. She joined GPSA as a part-time translator in March 2023, starting in August 2024 as Project Coordinator. Ruby also teaches online classes for Math and English to Burmese Children on weekends. She loves spending time with her two sons, riding her bicycle outside the city area and working with people all around the world to learn all of their cultures and have a chance to share about her country.
Ruby Thu
Project Coordinator
Ella is originally from the West Coast of Canada and has also spent time living in the United States before moving to Guatemala and calling that home. Ella has a background in Social Work and is a Certified Lactation Counselor. Ella has joined GPSA as the Admissions and Recruiting Coordinator, and she will be working directly with the partners and participants to coordinate the student admission and registration process and assist with recruiting activities. Ella has spent the majority of her professional life working and interpreting with various non-profit organizations and loves to spend her time in the communities around Antigua Guatemala working with mothers and babies doing prenatal and postnatal health consultations.
Ella Tuttle
Admissions and Recruiting Coordinator
Verónica Vásquez is originally from the village of Paxtocá in the department of Totonicapán, Guatemala. She joined the GPSA team in April 2024 and has experience in the area of accounting, taxes, administration and human resources. Since 2019 she teaches the language K'iche, her native language, as well as financial and administrative courses in a school in Quetzaltenango. She firmly believes that positive changes can be generated in the standard of living through education and intellectual development. That is also why she is currently studying a degree in Public Accounting and Auditing at the University of San Carlos de Guatemala. It is her goal to support the development of her community and country.
Verónica Vásquez
Accountant
Nataysia recently graduated from the University of St. Andrews (Scotland) with a Bachelor of Science (Honours) in Medicine. Nataysia’s Honours Dissertation, Identifying Clusters of Multimorbid Disease and Differences by Age, Sex, and Socioeconomic Status is the largest review of multimorbidity conducted to date and investigated 58 papers containing primary data from countries around the world. The dissertation included recommendations involving both clinical applications, such as modification of the Reeves effective team wheel as well as public health campaigns specifically educating the public about multimorbidity. Nataysia was a student volunteer and Leader in Training with GPSA in Guatemala and Belize, including leading a public health campaign centered around diabetes and transmissible diseases. Back home in Vancouver, Canada, Nataysia is a long-standing volunteer at the Vancouver Canuck Children’s Hospice. Nataysia will be attending the University of Edinburgh this fall, where she will be completing her Bachelor of Medicine and Surgery Degree (MBChB). She is passionate about public health, and will continue furthering her research about multimorbidity. Her hobbies include scuba diving, nature photography, and running.
Ximena is a Public Health student from Guatemala, soon to start her graduate program in Epidemiology. When she was 16, she moved to Norway to complete her International Baccalaureate degree. During her studies, she volunteered with the Red Cross and learned more about preventive care and health disparities. After high school, she studies Public Health at the University of Florida. In her freshman year, she enrolled in a research group where they worked on assessing the WASH issues in Haiti, how to improve their current health systems, and how to do so in a culturally competent way. Her professor, Dr. Wood, was extremely passionate about gender issues and she learned about the gender-responsiveness approach and data collection to address GBV. In her junior and senior years, she started her undergraduate thesis to evaluate women’s knowledge of Disaster Risk Reduction after tropical storms Eta/Iota in Guatemala. The same year she completed her internship assessing the impact of palm cultivation on the health of neighboring communities in the Alta Verapaz region, in Guatemala. At this time, she was finishing her Bachelor’s degree and decided to take a gap year to get another type of Public Health experience. That’s when she started a job position as a Grants Writer Coordinator for Habitat for Humanity Guatemala, an NGO working to reduce the housing deficit in Guatemala. In the fall of 2022 she will start a two-year program in Epidemiology. Soon, she will be moving to Granada, Spain, for year 1, and finish her graduate studies in Paris, France, for year 2.
Victoria earned her Master of Public Health degree from Emory University in 2019. Upon graduation, she became the Program Coordinator for the Ventanilla de Salud (Window to Health) Atlanta, a preventative community health program for individuals visiting the Consulate General of Mexico in Altanta. There, she implemented a personalized behavioral health intervention which increased healthy behaviors among participants and improved the quality of health services provided by the program. Before Emory, she served in the Peace Corps in Guatemala as a Maternal and Child Health Facilitator collaborating with the Ministry of Public Health and Social Assistance of Guatemala. She joined the Emory Prevention Research Center as a Project Coordinator for SurvivorLink, a patient-controlled digital health platform that was created to increase follow-up care among pediatric cancer survivors. Currently, she coordinates the implementation and evaluation of the SurvivorLink project with cancer clinics across the nation.
Neha graduated in 2014 from Emory University with a Bachelor of Science and in 2019 with a Master of Public Health. She is a current PHI/CDC Fellow in Strategic Information with CDC Mozambique. She currently works on a variety of projects, from supporting an HIV key population mapping and size estimation study to producing analytical datasets from a national, patient-level database. Prior to the fellowship, she worked in evaluation, impact measurement, community health education, and program management in non-profit and research settings. She is fluent in Spanish, although now it’s a mix with Portuguese and is learning Hindi. When not reading young adult fiction, you can find her walking to find street food.
Erica is a Research and Compliance Administrator in the Office of Research Affairs at the University of Florida, College of Medicine-Jacksonville. She is a Public Health professional with distinguished communication and interpersonal skills. Her 10+ years in research has yielded her experience in engaging, liaising with, and working with various populations including low-income, disadvantaged, and minority populations to senior university faculty. Outside of her role as a Research Administrator, Erica is an Adjunct Professor for the Department of Public Health in the Brooks College of Health at the University of North Florida. Erica holds an MPH with a concentration in Urban Health from Northeastern University, a Bachelor of Science degree in Biology from the University of North Florida, and has her Certification in Public Health. Erica’s happy place is the BEACH, she’s been on Wheel of Fortune (and won some cash!), and has lived in Iceland and Japan.