International Women’s Day: Elevating local voices, delivering care

Dr. Rasha Khoury is a Palestinian American physician and public health activist born and raised in East Jerusalem. She moved to the US for medical education and completed her residency training in obstetrics and gynecology at the University of California, San Francisco. She then pursued subspecialty training in complex family planning and global women's health at Brigham and Women's Hospital, where she also received her master's of public health. In 2014 she moved back to East Jerusalem and joined MSF, fulfilling a lifelong dream. She has since completed six surgical assignments with MSF in Sierra Leone, Lebanon, Ivory Coast, Iraq, and for more than a year in Afghanistan. Dr. Khoury currently works clinically as a subspecialist in maternal fetal medicine and complex family planning at Boston Medical Center, a safety net hospital caring for patients from disinvested communities, including many forcibly displaced from Haiti and South and Central America. She joined the MSF USA board in 2019 to exercise participatory leadership and uplift and amplify the voices of patients and global staff in the MSF movement. Dr. Khoury was elected board president in May 2024 and will serve a one-year term.

Avril Benoît is the chief executive officer of Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières in the United States (MSF USA). She has worked with the international medical humanitarian organization since 2006 in various operational management and executive leadership roles, most recently as the director of communications and development at MSF’s operational center in Geneva, a position she held from November 2015 until June 2019. Throughout her career with MSF, Avril has contributed to major movement-wide initiatives, including the global mobilization to end attacks on hospitals and health workers. She has worked as a country director and project coordinator for MSF, leading operations to provide aid to refugees, asylum seekers, and migrants in Mauritania, South Sudan, and South Africa. Avril’s strategic analysis and communications assignments have taken her to countries including Democratic Republic of Congo, Eswatini, Haiti, Iraq, Lebanon, Mexico, Mozambique, Nigeria, Sudan, Syria, and Ukraine. From 2006 to 2012, Avril served as director of communications with MSF Canada. Prior to joining MSF, Avril had a distinguished 20-year career as an award-winning journalist and broadcaster in Canada. She was a documentary producer and radio host with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), reporting from Kenya, Burundi, India, and Brazil on HIV stigma, rapid urbanization, sexual violence in conflict, and political inclusion of women, among numerous other assignments and topics. Recent articles: Surge of humanity needed for migrants and refugees  

Kavita Menon is the chief communications officer for Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières in the United States (MSF USA). She manages the editorial, media, and public engagement teams. She joined MSF USA in 2017 as the editorial director, overseeing the creation and curation of stories about our medical projects for the organization's digital and print platforms. Prior to MSF, Kavita was the head of communications in North America for the International Crisis Group. She spent many years working as a press freedom advocate with the Committee to Protect Journalists, including as the Asia program coordinator and later senior program officer. She also has experience as a human rights researcher and campaigner on South Asia for Amnesty International. Kavita has done reporting, advocacy, and outreach work in India, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, and Thailand. She has contributed to news media including the Boston Globe, Los Angeles Times, International Herald Tribune, Ms. magazine, National Public Radio, and WNYC.  She holds a master's degree in journalism from Columbia University and a bachelor's degree in mass communications and sociology from the University of California at Berkeley. In 2003, she was awarded a Pew Fellowship in international journalism at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies.