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Kateri Medical Services Board of Directors

Rev. Thomas Furrer

President and Executive Director

Tom spent his early adult years starting a family and running a small masonry construction business.  Following a spiritual awakening in 1977, he began studying for the ministry.  He graduated from Wesleyan University and Yale Divinity School and was ordained in the Episcopal Church in 1986. For the next 30 years, he served as a priest in the Diocese of Connecticut as pastor of two churches, St. Paul’s in Huntington and Trinity in Tariffville. During his tenure at Trinity, the parish began a partnership with the Anglican Diocese of Kaduna, Nigeria to fund and facilitate a medical clinic in Kateri. He retired from active parish ministry in September of 2016. Since then, he divides his time and energy between Kateri Medical Services and serving as a part-time pastor of smaller churches. He is currently serving as Priest-in-Charge of Christ Church in Kent, Ohio. He has been married to Maryjane for 48 years.  Together, they raised three daughters and now have four grandchildren.

When I first went to Nigeria in 2002, I was stunned at the level of poverty for rural people and of the need for simple, decent and affordable medical care.  My hope and prayer is that we can bring hope and healing and love to hurting people through medical care.  I am a follower of Jesus and I want to demonstrate his love through our clinics.

Jim Lawson

Secretary

Jim is a Connecticut native and studied at Becker Junior College in Worchester, MA.  In 2005  he founded JMLAWSON Associates, L.L.C. ,  a company which specializes in marketing industrial metalworking and MRO products nationwide. Jim is a member of Trinity Episcopal Church in Tariffville and has served as Senior Warden and many other leadership roles over 38 years. Jim is a founding director of Kateri Medical Services and has participated in our medical missions in Nigeria.  He is also the very proud grandfather and spends his spare time traveling to Montana to hang out with his daughter Megan and his grandson Townes.

John Hart

Vice President

John was born and raised in Michigan and graduated from the University of Michigan with a BA in political science in 1959 and had two years of post-graduate studies in Philosophy and African Studies. He has been married to Liz since 1961.  Together they have three children and four grandchildren.  In 1982, he founded Hart Advisers, a real estate investment company which invests on behalf of pension funds and endowments. In addition to his business ventures, he has served as an elder of Covenant Presbyterian Church in Simsbury and on the vestry of Trinity Episcopal Church in Tariffville.
John was a founding member of Kateri Medical Services and has served on its board since the beginning.

The needs of the Nigerian people are totally overwhelming; to be able to help them thru our medical mission is a true and wonderful gift from God that thrills me.

Babatunde Green

DHA

Dr. Green is a native of Nigeria who came to study in the US in 1976.  After graduating from the University of Bridgeport, CT (UB),  he began a career as a medical technologist and rose to become a health care administrator. He later received his Doctor of Health Administration Degree.  He was adjunct faculty member at UB where he taught medical lab science, public health and epidemiology.  He worked for 36 years and finished up his career at the Veteran’s Administration Hospital in Rocky Hill, CT. He is married to Lola and they have four children – Moji, Tokunbo, Tunde Jr. and Nike.  After retiring from the VA in 2015, he and Lola returned to Nigeria to develop a consulting service for administration of health care facilities.
Dr. Green has served on our Kateri Board of Directors since 2006 and has participated in our summer mission teams.  He is now based in Lagos, Nigeria and is very helpful in keeping us informed of economic, political and cultural trends which affect our medical mission.

Anthony Galici

Treasurer

​Anthony was born in Brooklyn, grew up in Queens, New York, and graduated from St. John’s University in 1978 with a degree in accounting. He started his career in accounting and finance as an auditor with a large public accounting firm and became a
Certified Public Accountant in 1980. In 1997, Anthony, his wife Susan and their two children relocated to Simsbury, Connecticut, and became parishioners at Trinity Episcopal Church in Tariffville, Connecticut. Anthony retired in 2022 after spending 25 years as the Chief Financial Officer of a publicly traded real estate and landscape nursery company based in Bloomfield, Connecticut. Anthony currently serves as the
Treasurer of Trinity Church in Tariffville, having been in that position since 2017.

“As a member of Trinity when Fr. Tom was the pastor, I became aware of the great work being done by Kateri. Over the past 20 years, I have been lucky enough to be able to financially help support Kateri. Given the opportunity to be Kateri’s Treasurer, I pray that I can contribute to Kateri through my services so that they can continue to achieve their mission of providing decent and affordable medical care to those who otherwise cannot
afford it.”

The Rev. Robert Allen Osborne

Robert was born and raised in the state of Connecticut. He completed his undergraduate studies at Messiah College. During his time there, he was granted the opportunity to study abroad at several institutions, including: Chiang Mai University, Uganda Christian University, and the University of Oxford. His undergraduate research interests centered upon sociology, cultural anthropology, and world religions. From there, he went on to study human rights at the University of Oslo Faculty of Law. Robert felt a call to ministry after working in the field of human rights and peacemaking in Northern Nigeria. He completed a Master of Divinity at Trinity Episcopal School for Ministry in Ambridge, PA and was ordained to the priesthood in March of 2019. He currently serves as the Rector of St. Joseph of Arimathea Episcopal Church in Hendersonville, TN. ​

Archbishop Josiah Idowu –Fearon

BA, MA, PhD

Archbishop Josiah is Senior Advisor to the Board of Directors. He served as the
Secretary General of The Anglican Communion and is based in London at the
Anglican Communion office from 2015 until 2022. In that capacity, he assisted the
Archbishop of Canterbury in building bridges between all of the 80 million Anglican
Christians throughout the world. He served as Archbishop of Kaduna Province from
2002 to 2008 and as Bishop of  Kaduna, Nigeria from 1998 to 2015 and Bishop of
Sokoto from 1990 to 1998.  He also served as Archbishop of Kaduna Province from
2002 to 2009.  He is married to Comfort and they have three children and one
grandchild.

Archbishop Josiah was the founder of Kateri Medical Clinic and, together with the
team from Trinity Church, began the partnership that eventually became Kateri
Medical Services, Inc. In his current role as Senior Advisor to the plays a vital role
in helping us to identify and develop new partnerships with Anglican dioceses in
Nigeria.​

Larlie Alvaranga

Larlie grew up in New Britain, Connecticut.  She spent 4.5 years in the United States Air Force.  Larlie earned her Bachelor’s Degree, Majoring in Business Administration from Central Connecticut State University (CCSU).  She later went on to received her Master of Business Administration (MBA) from the University of Connecticut (UConn).  She makes her home in Bloomfield, CT with her husband Robert.  Larlie has worked for Saint Francis Hospital, Hartford, CT since 2010.  She took her first medical mission trip to Nigeria in 2018. ​

“It was an honor to be among the people of Nigeria and experience their love and hospitality.  “The Kateri vision is to provide simple and decent medical care to rural and urban poor people in Nigeria who otherwise would not be able to afford it”.   I am committed to the vision of Kateri Medical Services. ​

Dr. Tioluwa Olokunde

MBBS, MPH

Dr. Tioluwa is a Nigerian medical doctor with a Master of Public Health (MPH) degree from Columbia University.  She is passionate about empowering communities in resource-poor settings to lead healthy lives through community education, engagement and development.  

Access of both rural and urban poor, especially women and children, to timely, quality and affordable medical care is one of my greatest public health concerns.  As a board member, I will provide relevant technical assistance for the organizations operations.

Randy Folsom

​Randy spent his early years growing up in New Jersey and then Connecticut. He received a BS from Babson College and then join the army. After 20 years of active and reserve military service he retired as a major. During this time he graduated from the University Vermont with a BS in nursing. After a second career in nursing, he retired from the department of Veterans Affairs.  Being a fully retired with lots of time on his hands, he took his first trip to Nigeria in 2019. He is looking forward to the next mission trip as soon as we are able to return. Randy is settled in North Carolina with his wife Cindy of 40 years. They have three children and six grandchildren. Over the years Randy and Cindy have moved seven times but are always active in their local church.

Moe Lavallee

I currently live in Tariffville, CT with my wife, Geri, of 37 years.  We have two adult children, Amanda and Nicholas, and a daughter-in-law Mariel.  I have been a member of Trinity Episcopal Church in Tariffville since 1989 and have served as youth group / ministry leader, mission trip participant, Sunday school teacher, Junior Warden, and part of the contemporary worship music team.  I currently run the in-church and streaming audio/visual for our weekly Sunday, and other various, services.

I just recently retired after completing a 41-year career as an IT professional supporting and managing all aspects of business technology implementations, ranging from direct hands-on, one-on-one hardware & software end-user support to large scale, distributed platform deployments as a project / program manager.  I  also worked part time as a nurse aide and was a hospice volunteer for a short period of time.

I am honored to have the opportunity to serve on this board of directors.  I have prayerfully and financially supported the Kateri medical clinic since it’s early days.  I first travelled to Nigeria in 2006 which was more of a relationship-building trip and which included a visit to the first clinic that was opened, and visits to remote villages.  I travelled again in 2013 as part of the hands-on, medical mission team where I worked in the triage area and helped to train other team members on taking vital signs.  I hope to return to Nigeria again for additional hands-on medical mission trips if/as opportunities arise.

Carrington Gerli

Carrington grew up in Avon, Connecticut, attending Trinity Episcopal Church from 1994-2011. Since moving to Raleigh, North Carolina in 2011, he has been attending St. Michael’s Episcopal Church with his wife, Diana, and two daughters, Amelia and Natalie. He earned his degree in Business Administration with a concentration in Management from Sacred Heart University and currently works for Lenovo as a Senior Manager of Worldwide Commercial Marketing. Carrington had the pleasure of volunteering on two mission trips to Nigeria in 2010 and 2011, furthering the outreach of the Kateri Medical Mission. After returning home from these trips, he was left with an indelible mark on his soul and has prayed every day since for the people of Nigeria, as well as for the mission of KMS. He is humbled to serve on the Kateri Medical Services Board of Directors to offer his skills and passion to further the mission set out by the founders to provide affordable medical care to the people of Nigeria.

​Tahoma Jabbe ​

​Tahoma Jabbe received his Bachelor of Medicine (MB) and Bachelor of Surgery (SB) and a Post- Graduate Fellowship in Family Medicine at the University of Jos Teaching Hospital. He is currently a staff doctor at the Central Bank of Nigeria Diagnostic and Treatment Center in Abuja, Nigeria. He has served with us on several medical missions at Kateri clinics over the years.

Adjunct Board Members

Helen Victor ​

Helen Victor received her degree in nursing and midwifery from St. Gerard’s Catholic Hospital School of
Nursing in Kaduna. She is currently Nurse Supervisor at Genesis Specialty Hospital in Lagos, Nigeria. She has served with us on every one of our medical missions for the past twelve years. She knows all of
the bishops, doctors, nurses and staff workers at every one of our clinics.