Instructors:

Linda Usdin, DrPH

Linda Usdin received her undergraduate degree from Duke University; a Master's Degree in Public Health from the University of California at Berkeley, California; and her Doctorate in Public Health from Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine. For six years she managed Tulane University School of Public Health programs in Africa. For the last eight years she has worked as a planning and evaluation consultant to the Mayor's Office, the State Office of Public Health, local and national foundations, and community-based organizations. She was the team leader on a successful multi-year, multi-million dollar grant application for the New Orleans Jobs Initiative and for a violence prevention collaborative. She currently is working as Team Evaluator for the Annie E. Casey Making Connections Initiative in New Orleans. In addition, Dr. Usdin has taught courses on Building Community Collaboratives for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Graduate Certificate Program and for the South Central Public Health Leadership Institute.
 

Anne Witmer, MPH

Ms. Witmer is currently the Executive Director of PACE Louisiana, a community coalition of health and social service providers, government leaders, advocacy groups and concerned citizens who seek to promote optimum quality of life for frail and isolated elders at risk of nursing home placement. Previously, Ms. Witmer served as a senior staff member of the Louisiana Public Health Institute (LPHI) where she directed the Louisiana Turning Point Partnership, and the New Orleans Partnership for Care of the Uninsured. She had also served as the Program Coordinator, of the CDC/UC Public Health Leadership Institute and its alumni association, the Public Health Leadership Society. Ms. Witmer has written and published on several topics including the effective utilization of community health workers, innovative programs in health professions education, multi-sector collaboration in developing healthy communities, alternative structures for public health practice and collaborative leadership for public health. Ms. Witmer has had a variety of international and cross-cultural experiences including a four-month fieldwork fellowship in Mexico City; Vice President and Chair of the Health Committee for the local San Francisco chapter of Partners of the Americas; a study expedition on public health in Cuba; and extensive travel throughout Southern and Southeast Asia. She holds a Master of Public Health degree from the University of California at Los Angeles and a Bachelor of Psychology degree from the University of California at Berkeley from which she was graduated with honors.


Theodore Quant

Mr. Quant has served for the past 16 years as the Director of the Twomey Center for Peace through Justice at Loyola University. In 1987, Mr. Quant created the Twomey Training Center and began a two-year series of seminars with the New Orleans Police Department and residents of six federal housing developments. The seminars focused on cultural diversity, leadership development, team building, conflict resolution, and communications skills and resulted in improved the relations between officers and residents of the housing development. Quant co-founded a Leadership Training Institute to provide training for grassroots leadership in community-based projects, such as, the Great Expectations infant mortality prevention project. He designed and conducted leadership development, team building, and diversity training for the National Federation for Children with Special Needs and the Grassroots Consortium on Disabilities, a national multicultural coalition of community-based parent organizations. He co-designed and delivered five-day workshops on valuing diversity for the Dupont Corporation and two- and three-day workshops for the Department of Transportation, AT&T, Chevron Corporation, USDA, Southern University, and Louisiana State University Agricultural Center. The workshops helped employees identify stereotyping behavior and barriers to diversity and improved communications skills among various groups. Quant received a Bachelor's Degree in Sociology from California State College at Los Angeles in 1970.