David graduated from Boston University School of Graduate Dentistry in 1985. He was in private practice in Concord NH from 1985-2021, and is currently the dentist for 3 residential care settings. He is on staff at a health care center that is a teaching site for the University of New England Dental School in Portland ME and is on its Adjunct Faculty. Dave has always been interested in projects that increased access to care for the underserved and has helped open dental clinics that care for everyone, regardless of ability to pay. Dave has been part of dental teams on several missions to Central America and Peru. Dr Bob Keene, who developed the dental clinic in El Rosario, has been Dave’s mentor and invited Dave to join the ACTS team.

Heather has worked as an agricultural educator in New Hampshire since 2009. Prior to that she worked in international development in Madagascar for 5.5 years teaching people to build fuel efficient wood cookstoves. She has a BS in Natural Resources and an MS in Plant Soil and Environmental Sciences. When she isn’t working she loves to hike, read, travel and spend time with her family in Maine.

Suzanne Burgos is a retired Physician Assistant who worked many years in both Primary Care and Hospital Medicine at Gifford Medical Center in Randolph Vermont. She has a special interest in health care in the developing world. Suzanne works closely with the health care professionals in El Rosario and heads up the ACTS Health Committee. She is an energetic traveler and particularly enjoys the collaborative work ACTS does with their Honduran partners in El Rosario and other local communities. “None of what we do would be possible without our Honduran friends helping us to improve their communities.”

Matt graduated from Dartmouth College in 2012, majoring in Economics with concentrations in Finance and Development Economics. He currently lives in New York and works in algorithmic trading, but maintains a strong interest in education and economic development. Matt made his first trip to El Rosario in 2019 as part of the Fuerza program, which he has been involved with ever since, including helping to lead the virtual program in 2020 when Covid restrictions prohibited travel. Excited to continue working with ACTS and the local Honduran communities, Matt joined the Steering Committee in 2022 and is focused on projects including the Fuerza program and the high school in El Rosario.

Linda works at Dartmouth’s Norris Cotton Cancer Center where she is responsible for global health. In collaboration with scientists and physicians from the U.S. and Honduras, she is coordinating a project to develop data that will inform a new plan for cervical cancer prevention and screening in Honduras. The area in and around El Rosario is the center of this effort. Previously, she coordinated La Fuerza para el Futuro, an ongoing leadership program for Honduran teens developed with Dartmouth student leaders, ACTS, and the El Rosario Health and Development Committee. Planning and organizing with Hondurans to improve their communities is what Linda thinks sets ACTS apart from other organizations.

Erin Lynch grew up in the Monadnock region and graduated from Boston University School of Education in 2002. After teaching for a few years, she decided to change career paths and subsequently began working in oncology research, which brought her to the Upper Valley in 2013. She earned a Master of Science in Clinical Trials Regulatory Affairs from Northeastern University in 2019, and is currently a leader within Dartmouth Cancer Center’s Office of Clinical Research. She has special interests in bilingual education as well as global oncology and cancer prevention.

Betsy retired after more than thirty years teaching in a public elementary school. She taught first and second grade for many years, later returning to her science training to teach seventh and eighth grade science; she also led the school choruses for many years. She is an avid gardener, and enjoys outdoor adventures. She and her family lived in South Africa for a time, and later she and her husband lived in Brazil. Home is in Plainfield New Hampshire. She joined ACTS leadership in 2015, with a special interest and in helping Honduran educators do all they can to provide an exciting and meaningful education to their students.

Peter is a family physician with over 40 years of community, rural, academic and international practice experience. He practices at Alice Peck Day Memorial Hospital in Lebanon, NH, and is actively involved in teaching medical students at Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth. He first volunteered in Honduras in 1999 after Hurricane Mitch, and has worked with ACTS since 2000 after traveling to El Rosario with Dean Seibert and falling under the spell of his community development model. The goals of ACTS are closely aligned with his other efforts to promote social justice and empowerment in impoverished and disenfranchised populations. In 2006, he was honored by the New Hampshire Academy of Family Practice as Family Physician of the Year.

Charlie grew up in Maine and graduated from Dartmouth and Middlebury with a B.A. and an M.A. in English. He has worked overseas in rural development in Vietnam as well as Honduras since 1990.

Juliana is an MBA student at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. She graduated from Dartmouth in 2013 and previously worked in strategy at Morgan Stanley. Jules first traveled to El Rosario in 2011 as a leader for La fuerza para el futuro, a leadership development program for Honduran teens. She co-founded Fuerza Honduras, a partner to ACTS, which continues to bring Dartmouth undergraduates and alumni to El Rosario to organize and develop the Fuerza program.

Lisa is the Director of Community Outreach and Engagement at Dartmouth Cancer Center. Lisa specializes in public health and education and has worked in Armenia, Ireland, Spain, Tanzania, and the United Kingdom. In her career, Lisa has managed research and health care projects and taught public health at Dartmouth’s Master of Public Health program and has been a Visiting Professor of public health and the American University of Armenia in Yerevan, Armenia and Muhimbili University of Health and Allied Sciences in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. Lisa is excited to be part of the ACTS project and has enjoyed traveling to Honduras and she looks forward to working on health and educational programs in Honduras.

Jennifer holds a bachelor’s degree in anthropology and a master’s degree in community health and epidemiology. She has a longstanding interest in Central America, first visiting Honduras as a high school student to work with an archaeological team in the 1980s, followed by a five year stint living in both rural and urban areas of Costa Rica. She returned to Honduras in 1999 to volunteer for a home-building project in the wake of Hurricane Mitch. Jennifer manages ACTS’ annual fundraising appeal and contributes her Spanish language and community health skills to various projects.

John is a cardiac surgeon. His wife, Karen, is a retired dental hygienist. They have each participated in trips to El Rosario twice in the past two years. John is a member of the Steering Committee and is interested in local medical care, development of local water supplies, and the future development of a strong dental presence in El Rosario.

Dean is Professor Emeritus at the Geisel School of Medicine who has been affiliated with ACTS for over twenty years and led the organization for most of those years. He has been to El Rosario as team leader over thirty times. Dean has a major interest in community development and the unique challenges of providing medical care across cultural boundaries. He has worked with the Tohano o’odum, Navajo, Hopi and Pueblo tribes of the American southwest, and has provided care to flood victims in the Mosquito Coast of Honduras following Hurricane Mitch, to war refugees in Albania, Kosovo and Liberia, to earthquake survivors in Pakistan and Haiti and to flood victims following the Indonesian tsunami and Hurricane Katrina in the U.S. Dean is the recipient of the Albany Medical College Alumni Humanitarian Award and the Geisel School of Medicine, John H. Lyons award for humanism in Medicine.

Hart is a retired polymers chemist who spent his career in technical and management R&D positions with several industrial companies, one of which was involved with the development of medical devices. Hart has been involved with ACTS for over 20 years, originally going to El Rosario as a member of the “Durham” team. He has been the Treasurer for over 12 years and a member of the Board of Directors during that period of time. His primary focus is the careful management of ACTS’ funds and maintaining the organization’s financial records.

Brad grew up a farm kid in the Arkansas Ozark Mountains. He moved east to attend veterinary school at Cornell in 1982 and has been practicing mixed animal veterinary medicine in New Hampshire since 1988. Now partially retired from private practice, Brad is putting substantial time and effort into ACTS. Since most of the people of the El Rosario area are subsistence farmers, Brad is working with ACTS to improve animal husbandry and agricultural practices in the area.

Helen is a retired community planning and development professional, who has worked for consultants, local governments and non-profits in the planning and development field in the US, Canada, and Australia. She helped develop a philanthropic program for a major Vermont-based company, and has written case studies on a planning software, and articles for a regional business journal. Helen serves as ACTS Secretary. She has been to El Rosario twice and looks forward to future opportunities to serve in country.