Izabela Lundberg, Operations Manager
Ms. Lundberg oversees the continuity of participant services by providing guidance and support to the Executive Director and to the Healthcare, Psychosocial, and Legal Services departments in the ongoing effort to create the most effective model of service delivery, outreach and community-based interventions. She directly manages the Operations at RMSC, as well as the Culture Broker and Interpreter/Translator program. The interpreter bank currently has a core of more than 50 professionally-trained interpreters, translators, and culture brokers providing services to RMSC participants and to the community. Ms. Lundberg also conducts training for this program to the larger community.

Originally from former Yugoslavia, Ms. Lundberg speaks Bosnian, Croatian, German, English, Serbian and Swedish. She is directly involved locally, nationally, and internationally in the human rights arena as an event planner, organizer, and presenter.

Pam Nelson, Office Manager
Ms. Nelson manages all aspects of daily organizational life at RMSC. She also acts as the Database Manager and Volunteer Coordinator and functions as the in-house French interpreter.

If you are interested in volunteering, please click here or go to the section under Take Action entitled Volunteer for more information.

Barbara Zendig, Finance Director
Barbara provides all fiscal back-up, including fiscal reports, assisting with the fiscal end of proposals, monitoring and analyzing income and expenditures, managing accounts payable, and ensuring sound fiscal procedures.

Regina Germain, Legal Director
LL.M. Georgetown University Law Center; J.D., magna cum laude, University of Pittsburgh School of Law; B.S. Foreign Service, cum laude, Georgetown University

Ms. Germain is a nationally recognized expert on refugee and asylum law. She is a frequent lecturer on asylum law and is the author of AILA's Asylum Primer: A Practical Guide to U.S. Asylum Law and Procedure (4th ed. 2005, American Immigration Lawyers Association). Prior to assuming the position of Legal Director, Ms. Germain was a visiting professor at the University of Denver. She was also an advocacy fellow at Georgetown University Law Center, where she taught asylum law in a clinical setting. From 1995 to 2001 she served as the Senior Legal Counselor in the Washington Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). She has testified as an expert witness before the U.S. House of Representatives and has also served as an expert in federal and administrative court proceedings.

As Legal Director, Ms. Germain recruits, trains and mentors volunteer attorneys and law students. She maintains a legal website and a resource library for volunteers, including links to legal resources, asylum and refugee law treatises, and videotapes and DVDs which explain the U.S. asylum process. She coordinates monthly asylum breakfasts for volunteer attorneys and seasoned asylum practitioners to discuss legal and procedural issues and to hear from local, national, and international experts in the field. Recent speakers have included: Board of Immigration Appeals Member Juan P. Osuna; Jane R. Kochman, Senior Protection Office for UNHCR; Immigration Judge Donn Livingston; Ronald Rosenberg, Associate Counsel, Refugee and Asylum Law Division, US Citizenship and Immigration Service; and Steven Lang, Pro Bono Coordinator for the Executive Office for Immigration Review at the U.S. Department of Justice.

If you are a lawyer or law student and interested in volunteering or would like more information about the next asylum breakfast or volunteer training, please contact Ms. Germain at rgermain@rmscdenver.org or at 303-321-3252.

Kristi Disney, B.S.S.W. Paralegal/Administrative Assistant
Kristi Disney gained her values for community justice through growing up in a small family-centered farming town in rural East Tennessee. While pursuing her undergraduate studies in social work, economics and journalism at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Ms. Disney spent summers working in Kolkata/Calcutta, India with the Missionaries of Charity and the Mahatma Gandhi Welfare Centers; in in Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Northern Ireland with Global Children's Organization, coordinating cross-community programs with children orphaned by war and violent conflicts; in rural areas surrounding Havana, Cuba exploring social and economic programs while delivering medical supplies and humanitarian aid through the United Nations and Global Exchange; and in her own backyard organizing for better wages and health care for campus workers.

After graduating from the University of Tennessee, Ms. Disney took on the position of Fair Trade & Globalization Campaign Coordinator for the Tennessee Economic Renewal Network. During her five years of work with TERN, Ms. Disney coordinated international exchanges with dislocated workers and community leaders in the U.S., Mexico, India, Nigeria, Columbia, Nicaragua and Brazil, exploring the impacts of U.S. foreign policy on low-income and displaced workers while promoting changes to benefit these communities. Ms. Disney is co-author of The Global Activist's Handbook: Local Ways to Change the World and Grassroots Action for Global Change: Resources for Community-Based Organizers in Appalachia. She comes to Denver after over two years of paralegal experience with Levy, Phillips & Konigsberg, a leading plaintiff's personal injury firm in New York City, to pursue her J.D. and contribute to the work of RMSC.

Sarah Combs, RN, MPH, Ph.D.- Director of Healthcare Services
Dr. Combs manages the RMSC public health nursing practice, which represents a collaboration between the agency and the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center, School of Nursing (UCHSC-SON), where she is also an Assistant Professor. At RMSC, she assesses the health status of new participants and their families and acts as their case manager in obtaining health care and learning to live healthy lifestyles in the United States. She develops standards for care and documentation and educates community providers in the care of survivors of torture. As a clinical instructor, she supervises students from graduate and undergraduate nursing programs, doing clinical rotations at the organization. She received her PhD from UCHSC-SON; her dissertation examined the public health nursing model for survivors of torture. Her previous education was obtained at The Johns Hopkins University, the University of California at San Francisco, and the University of Puget Sound. She is an elected member of the nursing and scientific honorary societies, Sigma Theta Tau and Sigma Xi. She speaks fluent French and Spanish.

Emily Burke, RN, BSN, Public Health Nurse

Emily Burke assesses the health care status of new participants and their families. She provides case management and assistance in obtaining health care services as well as education regarding health promotion and disease prevention strategies. She supervises nursing students performing public health rotations at RMSC. 

Her educational background includes a Bachelor of Science in Business from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a Bachelor of Science in Nursing from the University of Colorado. She is currently pursuing a Family Nurse Practitioner Masters degree coupled with a Doctor of Nursing Practice degree from the University of Colorado.

Emily has worked in a sexually transmitted disease clinic in rural Tanzania, Africa and with children orphaned by the current HIV/AIDS epidemic in Tanzania. She also received rural healthcare experience working in a clinic in Dominical, Costa Rica. Emily is fluent in Spanish and conversational in Swahili.

Kerstin A. Palmer, MA, MAR, NBCC, LPC
Kerstin Palmer ensures holistic participant care by providing training, supervision of interns and psychotherapists, individual participant assessments, therapy and case management, while outreaching to professionals in the community and expanding the Mental Health Pro Bono network. Kerstin is a Licensed Professional Counselor (LPC) in the state of Colorado. She also holds a National Certification from the National Board of Certified Counselors, (NBCC). Her work as a psychotherapist began in 1996 after the completion of her two graduate degrees in Counseling and in Religion. Throughout her career, Kerstin has specialized in the treatment of trauma and of grief and loss. She has worked with severe and unthinkable traumatizations of children and adults. Other areas of knowledge include world religions and how immigration issues affect everyday life. Kerstin has taught with, and assisted, Pat Ogden PhD with Sensorimotor Psychotherapy Trauma Training and has also assisted Bessel van der Kolk, MD, in the Greater Denver Metro Area and in Sweden. Before joining RMSC, Kerstin's administrative and clinical responsibilities included the development of an outpatient program, and supervision of thirty-five clinical staff. Kerstin started with RMSC in April of 2007. She brings with her a great enthusiasm for working with survivors from all parts of the world. Kerstin finds it imperative to hold all people in high regard as she holds the compassion towards healing and the determination to restore and preserve the individuality and humanity of every child, adult, family, or group. Kerstin moved from Sweden to Colorado in 1983. She is fluent in English, Swedish and Norwegian.

Frederick A.B. Jayweh, BA, LL.B., LL.M., Senior Intensive Case Manager;              Jill Thurman, LSW, Mental Health Therapist / Intensive Case Manager
Jill Thurman and Frederick Jayweh provide all psychosocial assessments and casework. They act as a cultural bridge for the organization. They help clients to access resources, and are actively involved in community outreach. Mr. Jayweh speaks fluent Bassa, and is conversational in Krou, Loma, Via, and Kpelleh.