Mercy Kamau RN, BSN, BSc,was born in Kenya and many of her immediate family continue to reside in the central province of Kenya. She graduated from UMass Boston in 2003 with a Bachelor in Management Science and Information System. In 2005 she returned to UMass Boston and graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Nursing (BSN) in 2007. As an undergraduate nursing student, she founded and is the president of a non-profit organization (Health For Nations Inc.), a health promotion initiative that recruits health professionals who volunteer to travel to Kenya and perform cardiovascular/metabolic health promotion projects. Mercy has been instrumental in developing the critical community linkages between UMass Boston and the Kenyan community and in assuring that the project reflects the spirit of community participatory research and appropriate cross-cultural care. Mercy is currently a doctoral student in the Nursing and Health Policy program at the University of Massachusetts Boston. She is active in the Kenya Diaspora Advisory Council of New England.