Clover Barnes

Ms. Clover Barnes is a nurse executive with over twenty years of combined experience in healthcare and public health. A champion for health equity, diversity, and inclusion, Ms. Barnes has a demonstrated track record of engaging staff and facilitating change while promoting an organizational culture that supports innovation, collaboration, and data driven decision-making.  For seven years, Ms. Barnes served as the bureau chief of the Care and Treatment Division of the HIV/AIDS, Hepatitis, STD, and TB Administration (HAHSTA), where she provided excellent leadership and administrative oversight of the Ryan White Program and DC Health’s Ending the HIV Epidemic Initiatives. In late 2021, Ms. Barnes was appointed to the position of senior deputy director of HAHSTA. Prior to joining DC Health, Ms. Barnes served in a myriad of healthcare administration/nursing positions in her career, including serving as staff/charge nurse, clinic coordinator, nursing manager, ambulatory manager, and chief operating officer.  Ms. Barnes received her Bachelor of Science in Nursing degree from Milwaukee School of Engineering (MSOE) in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and a Master of Business Administration from University of Phoenix in Phoenix, Arizona.  Ms. Barnes has a passion for working with the underserved and invests her time and energy in improving the community in which she lives.

Maranda C. Ward, Ed.D, MPH

Maranda C. Ward, Ed.D, MPH, is an assistant professor and director of equity in the Department of Clinical Research and Leadership in the GW School of Medicine and Health Sciences. Dr. Ward is an expert in advancing anti-racism efforts within health professions education and in designing curricula to enable students and faculty to competently promote health and racial equity in practice. Her research focuses on diversity, equity, inclusion, justice and antiracism educational interventions as well as stakeholder-engaged community-focused studies on HIV, Black women's health, and youth identity. As a member of the DC Center for AIDS Research (DC CFAR), she is the principal investigator on Two in One: HIV and COVID Screening & Testing Model that allows her to lead a national research-based educational intervention for primary care practitioners to routinize screenings for HIV, PrEP/PEP, and the COVID vaccine. This research will lead to a set of policy recommendations for overall practice-based changes for all patients and culturally responsive messaging for racial, ethnic, sexual and gender minoritized patients. She is also skilled in the application of participatory action research methods.

We would like to acknowledge the significant contributions of Nikhil Kalita, BS and Sadhana Matheswaran for their roles in researching, compiling, and editing content for this 9-part course series.