Carissa Novak is the Assistant Director of Programs, overseeing all programmatic work at HGHI. Prior to joining HGHI, she worked at Duke University’s Nicholas School of the Environment with an ecology and infectious disease research team, where she spent time living and working in Madagascar.

She also worked at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill managing a large-scale sexual assault research network, which included leading the first ever prospective study of sexual assault trauma in adult women in the US. She lived and worked in Kenya and Uganda while studying barriers to reproductive healthcare, specifically in seeking treatment for HPV and cervical cancer. She received her Master of Science in Global Health from Duke University’s Global Health Institute, and her BA in International Relations from Auburn University.

Luke Testa currently supports programmatic initiatives focused on global HIV equity and climate change and health. Luke also supports HGHI’s communications portfolio.

Luke is a part-time student at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health where he is studying to earn a Masters of Public Health in the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences. Luke’s interests fall at the intersection of implementation science and behavioral health care.