Leadership

Frank Brightwell

Executive Director and CEO

Frank founded Somos Amigos in 1997 while still working as a counselor at a high school in the Washington, D.C. area. He has worked in schools on both the East and West coasts, and has also worked privately as a college admissions consultant for 25 years, but Somos Amigos has always been his passion. Frank lives in Punta Cana in the Dominican Republic with his husband Mark. He’s an avid runner, dog lover, and he enjoys traveling and spending time with friends.

Sheila Cullen

Board Chair

Sheila is a speech-language pathologist who specializes in the assessment and intervention of language disorders in Spanish-English bilingual children. She also serves on the board of Adelante Dual Immersion Charter School. Sheila earned her B.A. from UC Berkeley and master’s from the University of Colorado at Boulder. She loves to spend time with her family and friends, read books, hike in the mountains and jump in the ocean.

James McCann, M.D.

Board Vice-chair

Jim McCann is an Internist. He earned a B.A. from Dartmouth College in French and Spanish Literature and an MD from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York city. He trained in Internal Medicine at Kaiser Foundation Hospital in San Francisco, California, and worked as a hospitalist there for 15 years prior to moving to Boston, Massachusetts, where he worked as a primary care provider at the East Boston Neighborhood Health Center for 7 years. He enjoys spending time with his husband and friends and family, reading, gardening, cooking, and exploring the outdoors.

James Noonan

Board Treasurer

Jamie is a Project Leader at the Federal Reserve Board in Washington, DC, where he works as an accountant. In this role, he contributes to the development of accounting policy for the Reserve Banks and is involved in oversight of the Reserve Bank accounting operations. He also participates in a cross-disciplinary group that has responsibility for the oversight of the Markets Group at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. He earned a BS degree in accounting from Villanova University. Jamie enjoys spending time with his wife and two young children and rooting for the Villanova Wildcats basketball team.

Patricia Prince

Board Secretary

Patty is a clinical social worker who specializes in working with patients with blood-related illnesses going through stem cell transplants; she serves many international patients particularly from Spanish-speaking countries. She currently works in a medical research hospital in Bethesda, Maryland and serves on the board of The Aged Woman’s Home of Georgetown providing housing for indigent women. Patty earned a B.A. from Boston College in Romance Languages/Spanish, a Master’s in Education from Boston University and a Master’s in Social Work from The Catholic University of America. She shares that Somos Amigos Medical Missions has been an important part of her life for the past 20 years.

Amy Daubert

Board Member

Amy Daubert describes herself as a “professional volunteer.” She has been involved in development for various non-profits, churches, and educational institutions for over 30 years. She received a BA in Political Science from Williams College and a M ED from UNC-Chapel Hill in Counseling. She is her Class Agent and President and now a Vice Chair of the Williams Alumni Fund. She recently chaired the annual campaign for her church. She has been a Board Member for Partners for Youth Opportunity for six years and also developed and directs their post secondary counseling program. She is the wife of Jim Daubert, a Somos Amigos physician, and the mother of four (3/4 are Somos volunteers!) She loves to cook, garden, swim, take long walks with friends and family.

Russell Dyer

Board Member

Russell Dyer is the Chief Corporate Affairs Officer for Kenvue, the world’s largest pure-play consumer health company by revenue with iconic brands including Tylenol, Neutrogena, Aveeno, Band-Aid and Listerine. In this role, he oversees teams responsible for the company’s external and internal communications, public and government affairs and social impact efforts.  Dyer participated in Somos Amigos in 1997, the first year the Medical Mission program began, before earning a B.A. from Boston College in 2003. He lives in Winnetka, Illinois and is the proud father of three young children, plays electric bass in the area dad band, Performance Chinos, and volunteers and supports the Chicago Jesuit Academy.

James Hudson, D.M.D. PC

Board Member

Jim graduated from the University of Pennsylvania School of Dental Medicine in 1982 and joined his father in the practice of restorative, prosthetic and aesthetic dentistry at their Rockefeller Center location. He was affiliated with New York University College of Dentistry for many years involved in teaching seminars in Professional Ethics to second year dental and post-graduate students. He has served as President of the New York Academy of Dentistry, The Greater New York Academy of Prosthodontics the American Prosthodontic Society, and his local Board of Education.  He currently serves as the Deputy Chief Forensic Dentist for Manhattan. Jim has founded World of Smiles Inc. which has dental clinics to treat the underserved in La Romana, Dominican Republic.  World of Smiles has collaborations with the dental schools of Columbia University, Rutgers University, Stony Brook University and New York University. Teams of dentists, students and residents from area programs provide comprehensive and preventative care to the students of the schools of Fundacion MIR, Hogar del Nino and the patients and families of the La Romana Family Clinic.

Helen Jackson, M.D.

Board Member

Helen is a physician living in San Francisco and has volunteered with us seven times. She studied undergrad at UC Berkeley and medicine at the Medical College of Wisconsin. She’s Board certified for Internal Medicine and has been an attending physician with Kaiser Permanente in San Francisco since 2000, first as a primary care internist and for nine years as a hospital based specialist. In addition to volunteering with Somos Amigos, Helen has had international volunteer experiences in Peru, Bolivia, India, and Tanzania. She is also a longtime supporter of the San Francisco AIDS Foundation.

Mike Keegan, M.D.

Board Member Emeritus

Mike Keegan is a recently retired Internist/Gastroenterologist. He has been a Somos Amigos volunteer and board member since the program started in 1997. He is married with 2 sons and 4 grandchildren. He enjoys golf, fishing, photography, travel and, most of all, spending time with his family.

Matt Marino

Board Member

Matt Marino is the co-founder and CEO of ETX Upstream, a developer of and investor in Energy Transition resources and development assets. Previously, Matt was co-founder and CEO of Galehead Development, a US-based developer of utility-scale renewable energy projects. Matt traveled with Somos Amigos to El Naranjito in 1996 and 1997, helping the community and program build the aqueduct and first medical clinic building. Following a running-themed Somos Amigos fundraising campaign, he returned to El Narnjito in 2010 and joined the Development Committee in 2023. He lives in Scituate, MA, spending as much time with his wife and daughters outside and in the ocean. Matt graduated from Boston College with a BA in Philosophy in 2001, and returned to Boston College to complete an MBA in 2010.

Micaela Mazzarella

Board Member

Micaela is a Spanish speaking volunteer from the Washington, D.C. area who has enjoyed serving on multiple trips since 2014. She was inspired to join Somos as a volunteer after her brother and sister volunteered in the early years of the organization and saw the incredible impact Somos had on the community. Professionally, she  works at Capital One as a HR Business Partner where she supports senior leaders with strategic planning of their business’ human capital needs. Previously she worked at Deloitte Consulting supporting Commercial clients in their business transformation initiatives, ranging from process optimization, technology implementation and organizational change management. She is excited to join the board and support Somos Amigos in their commitment to the community by bringing her organization, strategic planning and operational skillset. 

Magaly Peralta

Board Member

We officially welcome Magaly Peralta to our Board of Directors. This is an important milestone for Somos Amigos, in that we now formally have a representative from the community adding her voice to the highest level conversations regarding our organization.

Magaly has lived in El Naranjito her entire life. With Ernesto by her side, she has raised her family there. They have also opened their home to the Somos Amigos family, hosting volunteers for more than a quarter of a century. Magaly has been the teacher in the local school, El Centro Educativo El Naranjito Somos Amigos, for 29 years. She has also been instrumental in every chapter of the evolution of Somos Amigos since our inception.

Dr. Frinny Polanco, M.D., M.P.H.

Board Member

Dr. Frinny Polanco is a dedicated Pediatrician and Adolescent/Young Adult Medicine specialist with a deep commitment to health equity and community empowerment. She currently serves as the Medical Director at Bowdoin Street Health Center and as Faculty Assistant Director at the Harvard Medical School Office for Culture and Community Engagement.

Born in the Dominican Republic and raised in Boston, Dr. Polanco proudly identifies as Afro-Latina. Her journey in medicine and advocacy began at Brown University and continued through a prestigious Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute Fellowship in Washington, D.C., where she worked on health policy initiatives impacting underserved communities. She later conducted research at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), focusing on increasing minority participation in clinical trials.

Dr. Polanco earned her medical degree from New York Medical College, completed her Pediatrics residency at Tufts Medical Center, and specialized in Adolescent Medicine through a fellowship at Boston Children’s Hospital. She also holds a Master of Public Health from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, earned through the Commonwealth Fund Fellowship in Minority Health Policy.

Her professional experience includes leadership roles with the Massachusetts Department of Youth Services and ABCD Health Services. Her areas of focus include antiracism education for healthcare professionals, adolescent sexual and reproductive health, and policy advocacy to improve healthcare access for Latino and other marginalized communities.

A passionate advocate, educator, and clinician, Dr. Polanco brings her lived experience and professional expertise to the mission of Somos Amigos. Outside of her work, she enjoys dancing to Latin music, cooking, traveling, and spending time with her two children.

Chantal Tavarez, D.D.S.

Board Member

Chantal is a general dentist originally from Santiago, Dominican Republic. It was there in Santiago that she first graduated from dental school, and then afterwards she migrated to United States to obtain her dental license from Columbia University. Chantal lives and works in New York City and has volunteered with Somos Amigos for several years. “To be able to help my Spanish-speaking community in a foreign country with their oral health and to be able to return to my country and help those in need is one of the biggest joys that fills my heart and soul,” Chantal told our Board.

Laura Watkins

Board Member

Laura is a recently retired healthcare executive, leading marketing, communications, enrollment and outreach for Santa Clara Family Health Plan, a not-for-profit safety net health plan for low-income residents of Santa Clara County, CA. Prior to her work in healthcare, Laura worked in tech product management and marketing. She has volunteered with Somos Amigos since 2010, and currently serves on Board committees for Development and for Organization Growth and Succession. She has previous experience volunteering with and leading public health programs in Central and South America, in addition to holding board positions with a local school and several local non-profits. She has a BA from the University of Michigan and an MBA from Stanford. Laura lives in San Diego, CA, and is married with three grown children. She is a devoted gardener, enthusiastic hiker and appreciates any opportunity to spend time with family.