Sam Brownback, Founding Board Member, is committed to improving lives and fighting for basic human liberties.  He served as Ambassador at Large for International Religious Freedom from February 2018 to January 2021. He served as Governor of Kansas from 2011 to 2018.  Prior to that he represented his home state in the United States Senate and the House of Representatives.  While a member of the Senate, he worked actively on the issue of religious freedom in multiple countries and was a key sponsor of the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998.  Prior to his public service, Ambassador Brownback practiced law and taught agricultural law at Kansas State University.  He earned a B.S. from Kansas State University and a J.D. from the University of Kansas.

Ambassador Brownback currently serves as co-chair of the International Religious Freedom Summit and  chairman of the National Committee for Religious Freedom.  He continues to work with coalitions around the globe to promote and protect the fundamental human right to religious liberty and to defend human life.

Charles A. (Chuck) Donovan, Co-President and Founding Board Member, was founding president (2011–2024) of the Charlotte Lozier Institute. He served as legislative director of the National Right to Life Committee from 1978-1981, worked as a senior writer for President Reagan until 1989, helped lead the Family Research Council for nearly two decades and served as Senior Fellow in Religion and Civil Society at The Heritage Foundation. He is the author or co-author of numerous articles, monographs and books, including Blessed Are the Barren (Ignatius Press, 1991).  His prolific writing on family, life, and culture has appeared in such outlets as The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Washington Stand, and many others, and he has published in the peer-reviewed journals Linacre Quarterly and the Open Journal of Preventive Medicine.  He has also appeared widely on national and regional media outlets including CNN’s Inside Politics and ABC’s Nightline as well as programs on FOX, BBC, NPR, the Voice of America, EWTN and CBN.

Chuck has played key roles in the development of federal and state policy regarding public financing of abortion, compassionate alternatives to abortion, the child tax credit, marriage penalty relief, rights of conscience, and a wide array of other life and family issues.

James L. Sherley, M.D., Ph.D., Founding Board Member, graduated from Harvard College in 1980 with a B.A. degree in biology; and he completed joint M.D. and Ph.D. degrees at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in 1988. After post-doctoral studies in cancer cell molecular biology at Princeton University, he joined the Fox Chase Cancer Center as a principal investigator in 1991. In 1998, he joined the faculty of the future Department of Biological Engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he undertook research and teaching in the areas of cancer cell molecular biology, tissue stem cell bioengineering, toxicology, and environmental health science until moving to Boston Biomedical Research Institute (BBRI) in 2007. As a Senior Member of BBRI’s research programs in Regenerative Biology and Cancer Biology, Dr. Sherley established an academic center for developing adult stem cell-based technologies for advancing cellular medicine. After leaving BBRI, in October 2013 he founded Asymmetrex, LLC, which he now directs as President and CEO. Asymmetrex has the mission of advancing technologies for stem cell medicine. The company recently developed the first method of determining the dosage of therapeutic adult stem cells. Dr. Sherley’s awards include 1993 Pew Biomedical Research Scholar, 2003 Ellison Medical Foundation Senior Scholar in Aging Research, and 2006 NIH Director’s Pioneer Award. He is also “PGP-10” in the Personal Genome Project at Harvard Medical School. He writes extensively on an array of topics in biomedicine and bioethics, and has provided legislative briefings and testimonies at the federal and state level.

Kathleen M. Schmainda, Ph.D., MSEE, BSE, Founding Board Member, earned a BSE in biomedical engineering from Marquette University, her MSEE in electrical engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, her Ph.D. in medical engineering from Harvard University/Massachusetts Institute, and her PhDEE from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.  She completed her postdoctoral training in MRI at Harvard/Massachusetts General Hospital NMR Center. She serves as Professor of Biophysics at the Medical College of Wisconsin.  Dr. Schmainda’s research seeks to advance MRI technologies to improve the diagnosis, monitoring, and development of new treatments for brain and other cancers.  She is an internationally invited speaker on topics including software development, clinical trials, preclinical models, and tissue banking, and has served on numerous National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant review panels as well as several national advisory boards for clinical trials. She has also given invited legislative testimony at the state and federal level.  Dr. Schmainda serves as a faculty mentor for medical student pro-life groups and a member of the Milwaukee Archdiocesan Healthcare and Bioethics Committee. She is a board member of Prism Clinical Imaging and Petawa Women’s Cultural Center. Dr. Schmainda also co-founded two high tech start-up companies both of which have produced FDA-cleared medical imaging software products used worldwide.

Maria Feeney, Ph.D., Founding Board Member, earned her Ph.D. in Pharmaceutical Chemistry from The University of Kansas and her Bachelor of Science in Chemistry from Saint Louis University.  She has conducted laboratory research at various academic institutions and in the biotechnology industry. Dr. Feeney is a scientist and consultant who has trained and worked in the areas of chemistry, biochemistry, pharmaceutics, and biotechnology. Her interests include proteomics, post-translational modifications of proteins, and protein structure and function. As a Madison and Lila Self Graduate Fellow at The University of Kansas, she completed specialized training in leadership, communication, public policy, and business, alongside colleagues from a variety of disciplines in science, engineering, and the humanities. She has organized student groups, written commentaries, testified in state legislatures, and worked to create a network of scientists in support of ethical, life-affirming approaches to the challenges of biomedical research today, for the good of patients.

David A. Prentice, Ph.D., President and Founding Board Member, has almost 50 years’ experience as a scientific researcher, professor, academic leader and policy advisor.  He is the former Advisory Board Chair and a Founding Member for the Midwest Stem Cell Therapy Center, a unique comprehensive adult stem cell center in Kansas that he was instrumental in creating.  Dr. Prentice established Stem Cell Research Facts, an educational website about adult stem cells, and is an advisory board member for the Center for Bioethics and Human Dignity.  He earned his Ph.D. in biochemistry from the University of Kansas.  His previous service includes at Los Alamos National Laboratory, Professor of Life Sciences as well as Acting Associate Dean of Arts and Sciences at Indiana State University, Adjunct Professor of Medical and Molecular Genetics at Indiana University School of Medicine, Adjunct Professor of Molecular Genetics at the John Paul II Institute at The Catholic University of America, Senior Fellow and Director for Life Sciences at the Family Research Council, and Vice President and Research Director at the Charlotte Lozier Institute.

Dr. Prentice has provided scientific lectures, policy briefings, and legislative testimonies in 40 states and 21 countries, including before the U.S. House and Senate and numerous state legislatures, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, the U.S. President’s Council on Bioethics, European Parliament, British Parliament, Canadian Parliament, Australian Parliament, German Bundestag, French Senate, Swedish Parliament, the United Nations, and the Vatican.  In 2020, he was appointed by the Secretary of HHS to the federal Human Fetal Tissue Ethics Advisory Board.  He has published numerous peer-reviewed scientific and bioethics articles, including a review of stem cell science and adult stem cell treatments, has reviewed for various professional publications, and been interviewed in virtually all major media outlets.  He has also published many public commentaries and op-eds, and travels nationally and internationally to give invited lectures and advise professionals, policymakers and the public regarding stem cell research, fetal tissue research, gene editing, cloning, embryology, cell, molecular and developmental biology, cell culture and vaccines, biochemistry, biotechnology, bioethics, and science policy.

Tara Sander Lee, Ph.D., is a Founding Board Member, Science Advisor, and Consultant who earned her Ph.D. in Biochemistry from the Medical College of Wisconsin. She is a scientist with over 30 years’ experience in public policy, academic research, and clinical medicine with an emphasis on the cause of pediatric disease.  Dr. Sander Lee has provided policy advice to legislators and policymakers, given testimony before the U.S. Congress and state legislatures, and was a member of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary’s Advisory Committee on Infant and Maternal Mortality. Her training includes a fellowship in cell and molecular biology from Harvard Medical School and Boston Children’s Hospital. She was an appointed faculty member at the Medical College of Wisconsin, where she directed a research laboratory investigating congenital heart disease in children and served as Scientific Director of Molecular Diagnostics at Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin, as well as Vice President at Charlotte Lozier Institute.  Dedicated to promoting ethical advancements in science and healthcare that protect the sanctity of every human life, Dr. Sander Lee has given invited expert legislative testimony and numerous national media interviews.  She is published in various medical journals and textbooks, including her most recent contribution to the book, Choose Life:  Answering Key Claims of Abortion Defenders with Compassion. 

Teresa A. Donovan, M.P.H., has more than 25 years of research and communications experience in the federal government, public health, and academic research environments. She served at the Voice of America, then on the White House staff from 1988 through 1992, first in the Office of Domestic Policy of then-Vice President George H.W. Bush, and later as Senior Writer and Editor of Presidential Messages and Correspondence. She later served as a center director for A Woman’s Concern Pregnancy Health Centers in Boston (1996-2002) and director of the Massachusetts Physicians Resource Council. Concurrent with graduate studies at the Northwest Ohio Consortium for Public Health (2002–2005), Donovan served as managing editor for Social Philosophy and Policy, a peer- reviewed journal published by Cambridge University Press and the Social Philosophy and Policy Foundation.

Her writing has appeared in The Boston Globe, The Wall Street Journal, The Des Moines Register, The Journal of Agromedicine, The Washington Stand and numerous other regional and national publications. She worked for 8 years at the University of Kentucky College of Public Health, including the federally funded Southeast Center for Agricultural Health and Injury Prevention and the Central Appalachian Education and Research Center. At the University of Cincinnati and its College of Medicine, she served for a decade as program director of the Center for Environmental Genetics, funded by the National Institutes of Health-National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences (NIH-NIEHS).  Donovan’s research interests and publications focus on women’s health, maternal-child health, environmental exposures, and the developmental origins of health and disease.