Staff
Eliza Petrow, Founder & CEO
Eliza Petrow (“Lu Lu”) grew up outside of Boston and attended the Buckingham Browne and Nichols School (BB&N) in Cambridge, MA. After attending McGill University in Canada for one year to study intensive French, she graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Wesleyan University with a B.A. in Chinese History in 2000, and earned her MSc at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in 2005.
Ms. Petrow has had a rich career in public health, education and philanthropy and has extensive networks with leaders of various fields and industries around the world. She has lived and worked in the US, Canada, France, South Africa, Costa Rica and China and has traveled to 35 countries as part of her work. She has an active consulting business that includes clients such as the JC Flowers Foundation in New York, John Snow Inc. and World Education in Boston.
Ms. Petrow previously served as the Monitoring and Evaluation Director for Mothers2Mothers, in Cape Town, South Africa and over four years as the Director at the Boston-based Izumi Foundation, a Japanese Foundation that supports global health projects worldwide. She has also served as a Career Coach at the Harvard University T. H. Chan School of Public Health, advising students on their careers and facilitating post-graduate job placements and summer internships. Further, her work has included support for Executive learners through the Harvard China Initiative where she helped facilitate Executive Summer educational programs for visiting Chinese government officials.
Early in her career, Ms. Petrow spent over 2 years living in China where she worked as an English teacher at Shaanxi Normal University in Xian, China and later at a private boarding pre-school in Beijing. This experience fostered her passion for China and led her to return many times over the years on various projects with the Harvard University T. H. Chan School of Public Health and the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. In 2007 she founded PATS, The Pediatric HIV/AIDS Treatment Support Project- an organization that provides health and educational support to HIV-positive orphans and is based in Anhui, China and run largely by student volunteers in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Ms. Petrow speaks Chinese, French and Spanish. She is a frequent speaker, panelist and guest blogger on issues of public health, education and philanthropy and has published several articles in major journals on various global health topics. She holds several Board appointments and is a member of NEID (New England International Donors), a community of individuals, grantmakers, social investors and advisors.
Karina Ku, Chief Advisor
Karina Ku (顾嘉慧) grew up in Hong Kong, China. She attended the Diocesan Girls’ Junior School and Diocesan Girls’ School. When she was sixteen, Karina went abroad and studied at The Lawrenceville School as a boarding student in New Jersey. She graduated from Tufts University with a B.A. in International Relations and Child Development in 2003, and earned a M.Ed from Harvard Graduate School of Education in International Education Policy in 2004. After discovering teaching as her passion, she acquired her certification in lower elementary teaching through American Montessori Society in 2008 and earned another Master’s degree in Elementary Education in 2010.
Karina has taught at various private and public elementary schools in Massachusetts, including Kingsley Montessori school, Cambridge Montessori school, Tobin Montessori school (Public) and Walnut Park Montessori school.
She also helped organized and taught Mandarin Chinese in various after school programs in Arlington, Belmont and Brookline. Ms. Ku is a native speaker in Cantonese and fluent in Mandarin. She was the recipient of the Tufts Class of 1911 prize scholarship, Montle Entrepreneurship award and Montessori Schools of Massachusetts scholarship. She assisted in the research and editing of “The impact of Accreditation on the Quality of Education: Results of the Regional Accreditation & Quality of Education Survey, NEASC 2005” in the New England and Association of Schools and Colleges Publication. She has also volunteered with the Big Sister Association of Greater Boston and Boston Chinatown Neighborhood Center as an ESL tutor.
