Marya K Plotkin

Marya Plotkin grew up in a Quaker family amidst an overgrown Christmas tree farm in central New York State, and left for West Africa after high school. After studying biology and international studies at Marlboro College in Vermont, she spent a year volunteering at a malaria research station in Morogoro region of Tanzania. After completing a Masters in Public Health degree from UNC Chapel Hill in 1999, she was awarded a two year international fellowship and moved to Tanzania to work with the African Medical Research Foundation (AMREF) conducting program monitoring and evaluation of a national HIV testing program. Since 1999, she has worked with JSI, AMREF, Concern Worldwide and currently works with Jhpiego, an affiliate of Johns Hopkins University, conducting research and program evaluation on programs to strengthen health systems in Africa. In the course of over 11 years living in Tanzania, Marya has worked on programs to prevent maternal and newborn mortality, HIV/AIDS, cervical cancer, and malaria in pregnancy, and has been first author or a co-author on over a dozen articles in peer-reviewed scientific journals. She lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina with her two sons, Janusz and Tadzio, and is currently studying in the Executive Doctoral Program in Health Leadership (DrPH) degree program at UNC Chapel Hill, learning the Lingala language, and working for Jhpiego. She is fluent in Swahili.