Council Bios

Roxanna Bautista, MPH, CHES is the Chronic Diseases Program Director at the Asian & Pacific Islander American Health Forum (APIAHF), a national advocacy organization promoting policy, program, and research efforts to improve the health and well being of Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) communities. Ms. Bautista manages APIAHF’s tobacco prevention and cancer survivorship programs within the Chronic Diseases Program. She has experience in cultural competency trainings, technical assistance and training activities, working with both mainstream and AAPI organizations, proposal writing, policy advocacy trainings, and reviewing grants for local, state, and national funding groups to ensure inclusion of AAPI groups and projects. She has seven years experience working with AAPI community based organizations in building their organizational capacity to address cancer survivorship and tobacco control in their specific communities. She has worked with multicultural and priority population partners in the fields of tobacco control and cancer. She holds advisory, steering, and board roles on the California Tobacco Control Alliance, Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation Asian American and Pacific Islander National Advisory Council, California Department of Health Services Council on Multicultural Health, and the California Dialogue on Cancer (CDOC) Quality of Life Team. Ms. Bautista obtained her Bachelor of Science from University of California, Davis and her Masters in Public Health at Loma Linda University. (9/1/07 - 7/1/10)

Chris Bowden has been working in the pharmaceutical and biotech arena since 1997, predominantly in oncology drug development. He has global devevlopment experience from pre-IND through Phase IV including small molecule kinase inhibitors, cytotoxic agents, antithrombotics and peptides. Dr. Bowden graduated from the Hahnemann University School of Medicine in 1988. He conducted his internal medicine training in the Brown University Hospitals at Roger Williams Medical Center and the Providence, Rhode Island VA hospital from 1988-1991 followed by a fellowship in the Medicine Branch of the National Cancer Institute from 1991-1994. (9/1/07 - 7/1/10)

Crystal D. Crawford, Esq., serves as CEO of the California Black Women's Health Project, where she performs legislative, educational and policy advocacy to improve the health status of Black women and girls. Throughout her career, she has combined legal and policy approaches to civil rights and social justice issues.  Crawford was born in Harlem, New York and graduated  from Dartmouth College with a B.A. in history and sociology.  She earned her J.D. from New York University Law School where she served as an editor of the Journal of International Law & Politics, a Hays-Weber Civil Rights Fellow and Chairperson of the Black Law Students Association.  Crystal gained litigation experience as an associate with premier corporate law firms in Los Angeles, Boston and New York. After spending a few years in the private for-profit sector, she turned her attention to the non-profit sector, serving as Legal Director of the Alliance for Children’s Rights.   Crawford serves on a variety of boards and councils including Health Access, VIP Mentors, the California Breast Cancer Research Council and the Women’s Health Council for the state of California.  She is admitted to the bar in California, New York & New Jersey and serves as an officer of her church in Inglewood, California. (9/1/06 - 7/1/09)

Dr. Laura Fenster is a reproductive epidemiologist in the Occupational Health Branch at the California Department of Public Health (CDPH) where she has worked since completing her PhD in Epidemiology at the University of California at Berkeley. She has been the principle investigator and co-investigator on a number of epidemiological studies examining the effect of environmental and occupational exposures on a variety of female and male reproductive endpoints. Examples of some of the exposures she has examined in relation to reproductive endpoints include pesticides, disinfection by-products and solvents in drinking water and pesticides. She is currently a co-investigator with the CHAMACOS project in the Center for Children’s Environmental Health Research at UC Berkeley. This longitudinal birth cohort study in a farmworker population in Salinas Valley, California is a community-based participatory research project that involves multidisciplinary collaboration to investigate in utero and postnatal exposure to environmental toxicants and children’s health. (9/1/07 - 7/1/10)

Karren Ganstwig retired from a 30+ year career as an executive in retail management in order to more fully focus on breast cancer research and advocacy. A two-time breast cancer survivor, Karren is the community representative for her hospital’s IRB. She is a member and team leader for advocacy in the National Breast Cancer Coalition, a graduate of Project LEAD, and sits on the advisory board of the Iris Cantor – UCLA Women’s Health Center. She is co-chair of the Los Angeles Breast Cancer Alliance, and a board member of Team Survivor Los Angeles. She also sits on the board of the American Friends of Technion University, where she and her husband, Howard Welinsky, endow a breast cancer research scholarship Her goal is to use her experience as a breast cancer patient and advocate to help under-insured women who lack access to services and treatment. (09/1/07 - 07/1/10)

Diane Griffiths currently serves as Chief Counsel to the California State Assembly Rules Committee. In 1995-96, Griffiths served as Chief of Staff to Assemblywoman Barbara Friedman, the author of the legislation that created the California Breast Cancer Research Program. In 2002, she was herself diagnosed with breast cancer and underwent surgery, chemotherapy and radiation therapy to treat the disease. She also has served from 2002-2006 as a Commissioner of the California Medical Assistance Commission, which administers California’s selective provider contracting program for hospitals serving Medi-Cal patients. She also previously served in a number of legislative positions affecting a broad range of health policy decisions, including efforts to expand access to health care and to secure funding for California’s trauma network. She represented the Assembly on the Managed Health Care Advisory Committee and on the Managed Health Care Improvement Task Force. (9/1/06 - 7/1/09)

Shelley Hwang, M.D., is a surgeon at the Carol Franc Buck Breast Care Center, where she focuses on the early detection of breast cancer, especially of ductal carcinoma in situ. An expert in skin-sparing mastectomy and sentinel lymph node biopsy, she introduced these less invasive procedures to Singapore General Hospital, where she practiced before joining UCSF Medical Center. Hwang believes in providing the highest quality of care to patients at every stage of breast disease, from diagnosis to treatment to follow-up services. Hwang is the recipient of several awards, including the 2004 Local Hero Award of the Susan G. Komon Breast Cancer Foundation and the 2002-2005 Building Interdisciplinary Research Careers in Women's Health scholar awards of the National Institutes of Health. She is an associate professor of surgery at UCSF. (09/01/07 - 07/01/10)

Angela Lucia Padilla is the co-founder and leader of Bay Area Young Survivors (BAYS), the only support and activist group for women under 45 affected by breast cancer in the Bay Area. She is currently forming Mighty Moms, a support group for women with young children who are affected by cancer. Last year Angela was nominated by Lifetime Television as a breast cancer hero. (09/01/05 - 08/30/08)

Gordon Parry, Ph.D., is Senior Director, Oncology Research, at Monogram Biosciences, a biotechnology company focused on personalized medicine.  His current research is directed to the development of novel diagnostic and prognostic tests for breast cancer. Prior to joining Monogram in 2007 he was head of the Cancer Research Department at Berlex Biosciences in Richmond, California, where he led efforts to find new targets for drug development, and subsequent development of therapeutic antibodies against these targets. Prior to joining Berlex, Dr. Parry was head of cancer gene therapy efforts at Somatix Gene Therapy, (now Cell Genesys), where he developed some of the first cytokine based (GM-CSF) tumor cell vaccines. Prior to his work in the biotechnology sector, Dr. Parry spent 12 years in academic research, mostly as a Staff Scientist at the University of California’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL). At LBNL he made significant contributions to research on the regulation of mammary epithelial cell differentiation and to the discovery of antibodies targeting breast tumor cells. Dr. Parry obtained his Ph.D. in Biochemistry from the University of London, and carried out post-doctoral work at the University of California Berkeley.

Klaus Porzig, M.D., received both his undergraduate and Doctor of Medicine degrees at Stanford University, then completed his internship at University of California, San Francisco. He completed his residency in internal medicine and clinical fellowship in medical oncology at Stanford University. He was also a research fellow in the Laboratory of Cellular and Molecular Biology at the National Cancer Institute. For twenty-seven years he was a partner in Southbay Oncology Hematology Partners in Campbell, CA. During the past ten years he has concentrated on the care of patients with breast cancer. He retired from private practice in September 2006 and continues to practice at the Stanford University cancer center in the Breast Oncology Program. He is an active participant in the teaching program of the Department of Medicine and has received the Russell Lee Teaching Award for Excellence in Clinical Teaching several times. (9/1/06 - 7/1/09)

Catherine Quinn is the Executive Director of the California Health Collaborative. She has provided steadfast leadership to community health efforts in the Central Valley and throughout the state for more than 20 years. She directed health services for the Fresno County Economic Opportunities Commission and for Urban Indian Health Services, Inc. She is recognized for her program development skills and credited with the collaborative’s transition from a three-program, non-profit affiliate of the Hospital Council with an operating budget of less than $500,000 to an independent, Fresno-based, non-profit public benefit corporation with more than 20 local, regional and statewide programs and an annual operating budget of more than $15 million. (9/1/06 - 7/1/09)

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Maria Wetzel is an eight-year survivor of breast cancer. She has been active on BCList.org—an internet support list—since her diagnosis, a member of NBCC for the past six years, and is a volunteer with the Mendocino Cancer Resource Center, where she serves as a patient navigator, a consultation planner, and an information specialist to women newly diagnosed with breast cancer. (09/01/05 - 08/30/08)

Mary Alice Yund, Ph.D., received her B.A. in biology from Knox College and her Ph.D. in biology (developmental biology) from Harvard University. She moved to the Genetics Department at UC Berkeley where she lead an investigation of the molecular mechanism of steroid hormone action and the role of the hormone in Drosophila development. During her time in academic research Dr. Yund held NIH and NSF research grants, worked in Australia under the U.S.-Australia Cooperative Science Program, and served on the NSF Advisory Panel for Developmental Biology. Since leaving academic research she has done consulting work in technology assessment and market research for pharmaceutical and bioscience companies as well as collaborative writing and editing of scientific grants and papers. She is chair of the Northern California Chapters Committee of the Association for Women in Science and on the Board of BioScience Forum. (9/1/07-7/1/2010)