Board of Directors

Carole Mendoza - Board Chair
Carole Mendoza is a value-based leader and relationship builder whose career spans 20+ years in strategic program planning and design for multinational Fortune 500 companies, including IBM, Amgen, and Chevron. She recently joined Voya Financial as the Vice President of Benefits, where she will craft the enterprise benefits strategy, expand employee retirement readiness initiatives, and champion DE&I and health equity across the organization.

Leveraging her vast benefits experience, Carole has initiated global programs that continue to touch hundreds of thousands of employees worldwide. In addition to corporate work, she partners with employee coalitions and advocacy groups in Washington, DC, to advocate on the importance of employee health and long-term retirement planning. As a respected thought leader in employee insurance and benefits programs, Carole is frequently called upon to participate in industry groups and speak at national conferences, including The Conference Board Employee Health Care Conference and HLTH Conference.

Carole is an MPH candidate at The George Washington University—Milken Institute School of Public Health, where she is working to deepen her expertise in the US healthcare system. She also holds an MBA from UCLA’s Anderson School of Management and is certified by the International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans as an Employee Benefit Specialist. Carole serves on the Board of the Midwest Business Group on Health and as Board Chair of 2020 Mom, a nonprofit focused on closing gaps in maternal mental health.

Britt Newton - Treasurer
With several years of sales experience in both healthcare and technology, Britt takes pride in being a “dot connector”. Her personal story involves infertility and mild complications at birth so she understands the need to have access to resources. In addition, she has heard so many stories since being involved with Junior League Los Angeles on the impact of initiatives involving maternal mental health. She believes that the intersection of advocacy, assessments and accessibility in a proactive approach will make a monumental difference.

Alinne Barrera, PhD - Member at Large
Alinne is a licensed Clinical Psychologist and Associate Professor at Palo Alto University. Her scholarly work is focused on depression prevention, intervention adaptations, and the use of technology to deliver maternal mental health services and resources. As a byproduct of her cultural experiences, she is drawn to working with Spanish-speaking and Latinx communities. Alinne aims to integrate technology as a tool to meet the needs of perinatal women, especially women with limited resources. She is currently examining the use of simple technologies (e.g., text-messaging) as an adjunct to prenatal care and as an enhancement to a home visitation program. 

Jaime Cabrera, MPH - Member at Large
Jaime is a seasoned executive that has worked in healthcare operations and information systems for 20 years in a variety of complex and nationally-recognized organizations. She has extensive experience in strategic planning, business development, resource management, operations, and finance. She earned her Masters of Public Health in Management and Policy from UCLA and her undergraduate degree from the University of Pittsburgh.

Jaime’s appreciation of the intersection of healthcare delivery and services with systems-level policy change grew during her graduate studies. Her passion for improving the health of communities led her to focus on maternal child health. As the Executive Director of the Colorado Perinatal Care Quality Collaborative (CPCQC), Jaime leads efforts to advance the mission of improving the health of pregnant and postpartum people, infants, and their families in Colorado. She collaborates across sectors to influence clinical practice, public policy, and community supports that bolster the physical and mental health of birthing people and their families. Jaime is driven to change the fact that the United States is the worst nation in the developed world in which to have a baby, for reasons related just as much to failures of physical safety as failures of psychological safety and a lack of the supportive policies and communities needed by birthing people.

Jaime resides in Texas and works in Colorado, and is an active member of her communities in both states. She serves on the Board of Directors of Treasured Vessels Foundation, is the Immediate Past Chair of the March of Dimes Denver March for Babies, and has been a mentor with Big Brothers Big Sisters for more than eight years. Through local and national collaboration, Jaime strives to bring her skills and experiences to efforts to make the United States the best place in the world in which to give birth and to be born.

Sheryl Connelly - Member at Large
Sheryl has served as Ford’s corporate futurist for over fifteen years. As the Chief Futurist, Connelly and her team led discussions on long-term thinking, planning and strategy. Her responsibilities include identifying global trends, exploring potential implications and cascading the futuring insights to organizations throughout the company, including design, product development and corporate strategy. Forbes Magazine recently recognized her as one of the Most Influential Women in Futuring, Fast Company has identified her as one of the Most Creative People in Business and TechWeek has included her in its Top 100. At the request of the World Economic Forum, she sat on its Global Advisory Committee on transportation in 2015 and 2016. Sheryl has been featured speaker around the world included TED2018 and TED Global 2013. Before working for Ford, she practiced law. In addition to a Juris Doctorate, she holds a bachelor’s degree in finance and a master’s in business administration. Connelly lives in Michigan with her husband and their two daughters.

Jasper L. Hendricks III - Member at Large
Farmville, VA native Jasper L. Hendricks III has served as an aide to local, state, and federal elected officials as well as agencies and organizations all over the country. With extensive experience in bringing people to the table in order to work toward solutions, Jasper has been successful in building coalitions across diverse communities in order to build political and community strength through his working relationships with local, state and national groups, elected officials, and other community leaders as well as corporations.

Jasper currently resides in Nashville, TN where he is the President/CEO of public affairs firm Social Strategies.

Melanie Thomas, MD, MS - Member at Large
Melanie has held various roles at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and as faculty within the University of California, San Francisco Department of Psychiatry. Her primary focus is health services research and programmatic development in the area of perinatal mental health as a mechanism to interrupt the inter-generational transmission of stress and reduce health inequities. In addition to her current role as Director of the Solid Start Initiative, she has served as the Principal Investigator for several community-engaged research projects related to the development, implementation, and evaluation of mental health and other psychosocial services for pregnant women and families with children 0-3.

Dr. Thomas has been recognized as an expert in perinatal mental health through presentations at a variety of national conferences including the American Public Health Association, the American Psychiatric Association, and the World Congress on Developmental Origins of Health and Disease. Dr. Thomas is the Principal Investigator on a recent Research Engagement Award proposal to the Patient Centered Outcomes Research Institute.

Joy Burkhard, MBA - Executive Director
Joy is the founder and executive director of 2020 Mom. Joy was inspired to found 2020 Mom after several of her worlds collided, including losing her little brother to suicide, learning the complexities of the U.S. health and mental health system while working for a health insurer, becoming directly involved in health care policy change and experiencing the realities of birth and the postpartum period with her firstborn. She recognized she was in a unique position to learn why mothers (and others) were not being treated for mental health disorders in the same way they were for medical conditions.

She has a passion for quality and innovation and believes that the government's role should be to keep its people safe and to that end, establish baseline requirements for businesses so the U.S. can count on our health delivery system. She also believes it's business's role to surpass baseline requirements and delight people with the best possible care.

Joy is known as a collaborator as well as a fierce advocate representing the interests of our largest health care consumers – mothers.

Her most gratifying projects at 2020 Mom have included hosting the organization's annual FORUMs, which brings together hundreds of change agents pushing the envelope in the fields of maternal and mental health as well as the National Coalition for Maternal Mental Health, which convenes non-profits with shared interests in addressing gaps in maternal mental health.

Joy worked for the insurer Cigna where she spent nearly 25 years. She served as a regulatory affairs leader and has a passion for quality improvement and innovation. Joy is a member of the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology expert workgroup on Maternal Mental Health and the California Maternal Quality Care Collaborative, the nation’s first agency working to solve the U.S.’s maternal mortality crisis.

She has been recognized for her leadership and vision with several awards, including receiving The American Public Health Association’s Maternal Child Health Leadership and Advocacy Award, California's American Mother of Achievement Award, the "Emerging Leader" award in women's health from the federal Health and Human Services Agency, Office of Women's Health and Cigna's Volunteer of the Year award.

Joy lives with her husband and two Jr. High school-age children in Los Angeles, California.

Kandyce Hylick, MPH - Board Fellow
Kandyce serves as 2020 Mom's Staff and Board of Directors Fellow. She is a doctoral student in the Department of Health Promotion and Behavior at the University of Georgia, whose research investigates maternal and child health disparities. Currently, her work addresses the stressors caused by health disparities to reduce the incidence and prevalence of maternal mental health disorders among marginalized communities. Also, she is interested in expanding postpartum care by invoking policy changes and implementing innovative programs to make postnatal care more accessible via technology. Her professional experience includes teaching undergraduate-level public health courses, developing and implementing maternal and child health programs, and conducting public health studies both locally and globally. With great passion, Kandyce also serves as a board member for a local nonprofit mentorship organization for young girls. There she lends her expertise with program development and evaluation to aid in curriculum development and planning women’s health seminars for the community. Her ultimate goal is to reduce maternal mental health disorders among all birthing individuals while improving maternal well-being.