Msgr. Ralph Kuehner has over 40 years experience serving the poor in the United States and abroad.  He has also founded some of the most successful charitable organizations in the Washington DC area.  Msgr. Kuehner co-founded SOME (So Others Might Eat), Victory Housing, The Equal Rights Center, Community Ministry of Montgomery County, and the Interfaith Conference of Metropolitan Washington. Msgr. Kuehner continues to serve on the board of many of these charities and other local DC charities, including serving as Board President of Health and Education for Haiti.

After coming to Washington in 1967 he was a pastor in the Archdiocese of Washington for 17 years. He was also the director of a number of Archdiocesan offices, including two terms with the office for social concerns (1970 – 1978 and 1996 – 2002).

Among a number of awards received, Msgr. Kuehner was named Washingtonian of the year in 1999 by the Washingtonian magazine, and a National Point of Light in 2000.
 

Pat Labuda has been working in Haiti for over 20 years since she began the Parish Twinning program between St. Francis of Assisi parish in Rockville, MD and St. Pauls parish in Leon, Haiti in 1986.  In 1987 Pat and three others from St. Francis visited Haiti.  After that trip Pat organized and accompanied additional parish groups, a high school group  and a college group on trips to Haiti.   

After the 1991 coup d'etat, Pat organized and led several human rights groups to Haiti. These groups met with OAS representatives,  the Papal Nuncio and other officials. Pat also worked with the Haitian refugees living in the Washington DC area, and those being held in refugee camps in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.  She spent numerous hours visiting Congressional offices on behalf of the Haitian refugees.  She helped many of the refugees apply for political asylum including the first unaccompanied minor allowed in to the country. 
 

In 1996 Pat organized a group from St. Francis that included Dr. Frank Nice, a pharmacist at NIH.  The following year Frank organized the first medical team to visit Leon. In a few years the number of medical teams going to Leon numbered five each year.  She helped found Health and Education for Haiti to reach out to other underserved areas in the Grande-Anse.  Pat has helped to organize and has accompanied every medical team going to Haiti since the beginning of the program.

Pat is a member of the Archdiocesan Global Outreach Committee.  She was a member of the first diocesan team to visit Haiti in October 2004. She also participated in the second and third Global Outreach  trips.   She has worked with  members of the Global Outreach team to encourage churches in the Washington Archdiocese to twin with churches in Haiti and has accompanied several parishes to Haiti who have chosen to begin a parish twinning program. 

As a result of her commitment, Pat is in Haiti for most of February, June and October.  She is very grateful for the support she receives from her husband and from their six children and families.
 
 

Richard Gustafson is an Account Executive for SAP Public Services and is responsible for the US Navy account.  He has over 12 years of accounting and Federal financial management experience, including 10 years of Federal financial management systems experience. He has experience with all three major ERP application packages (Oracle, PeopleSoft and SAP).  In addition, Mr. Gustafson has been responsible for the financial management activities of a Washington DC-based consulting firm.  Those duties included the full range of financial management and payroll activities.  He also previously served on the Board of Directors of Options: A Benefits Training Foundation, a California 501(c)(3) public charity.

Mr. Gustafson is a Certified Public Accountant, licensed in Virginia, and a member of the American Society of Military Comptrollers, Association of Government Accountants, and the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants.  He received a BS in Accounting from Indiana University and an MBA from George Mason University.

 

Dr. Frank J. Nice currently serves as a pharmacist at the National Institutes of Health. He has organized and participated in over a dozen medical missions to the country of Haiti.  He recently retired from the US Public Health Service after 30 years of service as a Commissioned Officer and pharmacist.  He served 20 years of that time at the National Institutes of Health’s Clinical Neurosciences Program as Assistant Program Director.

Frank holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Pharmacy, a Masters Degree in Pharmacy Administration, and Masters and Doctorate Degrees in Public Administration.  He holds Certification in Public Health Pharmacy and is registered as a pharmacist in Pennsylvania, Maine, Arizona, and Maryland. 

In 2008, Frank received the President's Call to Service Lifetime Award for his volunteer humanitarian work in Haiti.  Please follow this link to read the article in the "NIH Record."  Frank was also profiled in the December 2009 NIH Clinical Center newsletter about our October 2009 medical mission to Carcasse.