Board
Renee Cammarata Hamilton - Chair
Renee Cammarata Hamilton is a seasoned population and community health professional, with experience both stateside and abroad. She has extensive experience in population and community health improvement and directs the Cambridge Health Alliance’s Community Health Improvement Team. She leads this team of community health professionals who facilitate multi sectoral coalitions that convene, assess, plan and act to improve community and public health.
Renee’s work has focused on addressing health inequities caused by systemic racism that exists in all community bureaucracies. She has consistently worked to elevate the voices of historically disenfranchised communities and stood alongside these populations to demand action and correct the inequities that prevent them from achieving full health and wellbeing.
She received her BA from Clark University in Psychology, her MSW in Social, Economic, and Health Development at the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri and her MPA from the Maxwell School at Syracuse University in Social and Economic Development.
Gaye Gentes
Gaye was born in New York but grew up in Guadalajara, Mexico, where her family moved permanently when she was eleven. After earning a B.A. in English from Southwestern University in Georgetown, Texas, she moved about the country, living in Florida, New Orleans, and Chicago, before settling in the Boston area. From jobs in bilingual education and marketing she stumbled into the interpreting profession.
She had been working as a legal and medical interpreter, at first freelance and then full-time, when she was appointed the Director of Interpreter Services for Tufts New England Medical Center. In her five years there, she oversaw an increase in staff interpreter positions and the standardization of services. In 1998 she received the Lifespan Cultural Diversity Award for her effort in cultural awareness training. In 2001, she became the Manager of the Office of Court Interpreters at the Trial Court of Massachusetts, where she supervised the statewide program for the provision of interpreters. Her department was honored by the National Center for State Courts as a National Model of Effective Management. In her thirteen-year tenure, she oversaw great progress in both broadening and systematizing linguistic access to previously under-served linguistic minorities.
Gaye served on staff at Found in Translation as our Program Director for five years, overseeing our Medical Interpreter Certificate Training program. Her current position is Interpreter Resource and QA Director at CCCS/Embracing Culture. She has served as a Board Member and as the Treasurer of the NCIHC.
Dr. Eric Hardt
Dr. Eric Hardt is a former Associate Professor of Medicine at BUSM. His training included B.A. in psych from Yale 1970, M.D. from Tufts Med 1974. After 10 years at Harlem Hospital and Jacobi Hospital in the Bronx, he came to Boston City Hospital/BMC, where he worked for 34 years until retirement.
He is board certified in Internal Medicine, Medical Oncology, Geriatrics, and Palliative Care Medicine. Dr. Hardt’s activities in the area of non-English-speaking patients and medical interpretation are well known around the country.
He has produced educational materials for medical interpreters and for health care workers working across language differences. He has authored and co-authored book chapters and articles on medical interpretation and related areas. Dr. Hardt was a founding member of the International Medical Interpreters Association and served on the Advisory Board.
In 2011 he received the IMIA’s inaugural “Provider of the Year Award.” He was a founding member of the National Council on Interpretation in Health Care, served on its Executive Board, and co-chaired its Policy and Research Committee. He worked with the Massachusetts Office for Refugees and Immigrants and with the ABA’s Health Law Section about related legal issues.
Most recently, he served as a Board Director for the National Board of Certification for Medical Interpreters, which began national certification in 2010. For 34 years he served as Medical Consultant to Interpreter Services at BCH/BMC.
Sarah E. Lukas - Treasurer
Sarah is a retired partner of Edelstein & Co., LLP, a regional public accounting firm based in Boston, Massachusetts. Sarah specialized for over 30 years in providing tax, consulting and practice management services to health care clients. Her clients included a wide range of physician groups of various specialties and sizes. She also provided consulting services to hospitals and contributed to numerous new physician start-up practices. In retirement, Sarah continues to use her accounting skills to provide guidance and oversight to nonprofit organizations. Sarah obtained her MS in Taxation from Bentley University and her BA in Accounting from SUNY Binghamton.
Mark Stewart
Mark has recently returned to the board of directors after a hiatus. He co-founded Found in Translation with Maria Vertkin in 2011. He served on the board of directors in the organization’s first six years, and assisted with program development, with a focus on formulating methods for selecting applicants and evaluating program outcomes.
He is a family therapist and school psychologist who worked at Cambridge Health Alliance for 20 years, learning Haitian Creole and working primarily with Haitian children and their families. After his retirement from CHA, he has maintained a private counseling practice.
When he was working at Malden High School (through CHA) he was a co-founder of YouthHarbors, a program that provides wrap-around services for homeless high school students. Subsequently, YouthHarbors expanded and now serves six high schools in the Boston metro region. High school graduation rates for homeless youth average about 20% nationally, but students involved with YouthHarbors graduate at greater than a 90% rate. It was through YouthHarbors, where Maria worked as a Case Manager, that Mark and Maria met and began to envision what would one day become Found in Translation.
Mark was also a co-founder of Cambridge Youth Gamelan in 2016, a music group for youngsters aged 6-18, and is an assistant teacher for the group. CYG plays and performs the gamelan music of Bali, which uses xylophone-type instruments to play in a dynamic, melodic-percussive style.
