Our Team

Jessica Brown, MPH, is the Manager of Training and Workforce Development for the Center for Learning & Innovation at the SFDPH—a center of excellence in training and professional development that seeks to bolster the capacity of San Francisco’s public health workforce. For over 10 years, Jessica has served in both the government and private sector of public health where she has gained experience in health program development and management. She has gained much of her experience at the California Department of Public Health, Office of AIDS, HIV Surveillance and HIV Prevention Branches. There, she served as lead in managing the HIV Incidence and Molecular HIV Surveillance Programs, as well as provide high impact HIV prevention technical and capacity building assistance for local health departments. In addition, she has also developed trainings for the Black AIDS Institute on Social Determinants of Health, HIV Treatment Strategies, HIV Science, Current Directions in HIV Research, and Biomedical Interventions.

Karina Ng is the Program Assistant at the Center for Learning and Innovation at SFPDH and provides admin support for the CBA program.

Wesley is the program coordinator for CLI and provides key support to our team. He brings experience in sustainability programs, clinical trials, and user experience research to CLI.

Dr. Susan Buchbinder is the Director of Bridge HIV at the San Francisco Department of Public Health and Clinical Professor of Medicine, Epidemiology and Biostatistics at UCSF. Dr. Buchbinder focuses her research on risk factors for HIV acquisition and interventions to prevent HIV infection, including HIV vaccines, PrEP, behavioral interventions, rectal microbicides and combination modalities. She serves in leadership positions in the HIV Vaccine and Prevention Trials Network, and has participated in numerous NIH and UCSF advisory committees including the AIDS Research Advisory Committee, Prevention Sciences Working Group, Office of AIDS Research Advisory Committee, the UCSF Center for AIDS Research Internal Advisory Board, and the UCSF AIDS Research Institute Scientific Council.

As Health Officer for the City and County of San Francisco, Dr. Aragón exercises leadership and legal authority to protect and promote health and equity. As the Director of the Population Health Division, he oversees public health services. He teaches epidemiological computing at the UC Berkeley School of Public Health and is interested in the practical application of decision and complexity sciences to health leadership and organizational performance. Dr. Aragón is the Principal Investigator of a CDC grant to develop and deliver training in complex decision making. He is also a fellow in the California Healthcare Foundation Leadership Program.

Dr. McFarland’s experience ranges from mentoring undergraduate students to mid-career faculty as well as providing training, technical assistance, and capacity building to personnel of local health departments and national ministries of health. He also serves as Joint-PI for the SFDPH Summer HIV/AIDS Research Program (SHARP) for underrepresented minority undergraduate students. He oversees UCSF’s training programs for visiting scholars from Africa and the Middle East and has directly mentored over 50 young investigators from 18 countries for degree and short-term training programs. Dr. McFarland’s long term capacity building goals are to increase the representation of minority scholars and health officials and ensure that trainees from biomedical disciplines are bridged to the methods, perspectives, and advances in prevention research from diverse social sciences fields.