Meet Our Team
Maggie Higdon, BSRT, RRT
Founder & Executive Director
Maggie Lyn Higdon, BSRT, RRT, CRC II, is the Founder, President, and Executive Director of Better Heart Foundation USA, Inc., a nonprofit organization dedicated to advancing access to life-saving pediatric cardiac surgical care in resource-limited settings worldwide.
A Registered Respiratory Therapist with frontline experience in critical care, Maggie serves as a Clinical Research Coordinator II at the Duke University School of Medicine, where she is pursuing a Master of Health Sciences in Clinical Research through Duke's Clinical Research Training Program, with plans to continue on to doctoral study. Her work bridges bedside clinical care and rigorous outcomes research, a combination that shapes BHF USA's dual commitment to humanitarian surgical missions and peer-reviewed research on pediatric cardiac outcomes in humanitarian settings.
Maggie founded BHF USA in 2026 as the U.S. affiliate of Better Heart Foundation India, extending a shared global mission into East Africa and beyond. Under her leadership, the organization's first international mission - a pediatric cardiac surgical mission to Hargeisa, Somaliland , reflects the model at the heart of her vision: training and equipping local medical teams to build sustainable, independent surgical capacity, rather than fostering long-term reliance on visiting volunteers.
She leads BHF USA from Raleigh, North Carolina, where she oversees the organization's clinical partnerships, research initiatives, fundraising, and mission operations.
Dr. Musthafa Janeel M., MBBS, MS, MCh
Vice President & International Advisory Director
Dr. Janeel serves as Vice President and International Advisory Director of Better Heart Foundation USA and is the Founder and Chairman of Better Heart Foundation India. A senior pediatric and congenital cardiac surgeon based in Kerala, India, Dr. Janeel has performed and led more than 4,000 pediatric cardiac surgeries across both resource-rich and resource-limited settings over a career spanning more than two decades.
Dr. Janeel trained in Pediatric & Congenital Cardiac Surgery at GreenLane Hospital in Auckland, New Zealand, one of the world's pioneering congenital heart programs and went on to serve at leading institutions including Apollo Children's Hospital in Chennai, where he was instrumental in developing the pediatric cardiac program. He currently serves as Senior Consultant in Pediatric Cardiac Surgery in Kerala and as a visiting consultant to hospitals across India, Iraq, and the UAE, including an offsite program at AlKafeel Hospital in Karbala, Iraq.
His work in global cardiac capacity building is at the heart of the BHF mission. Dr. Janeel guided the launch of the pediatric cardiac program in Hargeisa, Somaliland -the first of its kind in the region, where the local team has now completed more than 250 cases with outstanding outcomes. His achievements include performing India's first ECMO on a pregnant H1N1 survivor and placing a pacemaker in India's smallest-weight infant. He is recognized for his expertise in neonatal and complex congenital cardiac conditions and for surgical techniques that promote early recovery in children after surgery.
Having worked across diverse regions of the world, Dr. Janeel has developed mission models tailored to local resources, customs, and health systems — a philosophy that now anchors BHF USA's approach to building sustainable, independent surgical capacity in East Africa and beyond.
Eliza Stoddard, BSN, RN
Director of Clinical Nursing & Patient Care
Eliza is a registered nurse with a passion for pediatric cardiology, critical care nursing, and global health. She began her healthcare career in 2019 and earned her Bachelor of Science in Nursing from Utah Valley University in 2021. Upon graduation, Eliza began work in the Pediatric Cardiac Intensive Care Unit (CICU) at Primary Children’s Hospital in Salt Lake City, Utah, USA. During her time at Primary Children’s, Eliza not only provided quality care to her patients, but focused on initiating evidence-based projects that support CICU nurses as well as improving patient outcomes. She has helped educate and mentor new nurses through both clinical precepting in the pediatric cardiac intensive care unit and classroom instruction.
Alongside her role as Director of Clinical Nursing for Better Heart Foundation USA, Eliza is currently pursuing doctoral education at Duke University School of Nursing to become a Pediatric Acute Care Nurse Practitioner.
As Director of Clinical Nursing & Patient Care for Better Heart Foundation USA, Eliza is committed to strengthening pediatric cardiac nursing worldwide. Her interests include advancing nursing education, improving ICU teamwork, increasing clinical efficiency, and creating sustainable cardiac intensive care units in low-resource countries. She believes that empowering local healthcare teams through education and collaboration is essential to expanding access to high-quality cardiac care for children around the globe.
Savannah Barbieri
Treasurer & Director of Research
Savannah is a healthcare data and clinical research professional who bridges rigorous analytics with hands-on trial operations. She recently completed her Master of Science in Quantitative Management, concentrating in Health Analytics, at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business, where her coursework spanned causal inference (difference-in-differences, regression discontinuity, instrumental variables, propensity score matching), machine learning, predictive modeling, health economics, and data visualization.
As a Clinical Research Coordinator II at the Duke Asthma, Allergy, and Airway Center, Savannah applies this analytical training directly to real-world data infrastructure: she designs and builds REDCap data repositories and registries, develops screening and enrollment instruments with complex branching logic, and uses tools like Epic Report Workbench and SlicerDicer to generate patient-finder and grant-related analytics across multiple concurrent Phase II–III trials. Her technical toolkit includes Python, R, Tableau, and Power BI, which she has used to prototype enrollment and outcomes dashboards for clinical leadership.
At BHF USA, Savannah brings this dual expertise in registry architecture and outcomes analytics to her role as Director of Research, helping the organization build the data infrastructure to measure and communicate its impact in pediatric cardiac surgery.
Bethany Brey
Secretary, Director of Respiratory Care and Clinical Operations
Bethany’s career has been built in the neonatal and pediatric ICU and in pediatric trauma, managing airways and ventilator support for premature infants, post-operative surgical patients, and critically injured children during their first and most vulnerable hours. That work demands expertise in the narrow margins of pediatric respiratory care, where minutes matter and small bodies leave little room for error.
As a lead Respiratory Therapist, Bethany has trained and mentored many clinicians / led protocol and quality initiatives / served on rapid response and transport teams. She holds credentials in RRT-NPS, PALS, NRP.
Bethany joined the Better Heart Foundation USA board because she has seen firsthand what skilled respiratory support means for a child recovering from cardiac surgery and what its absence means for children in places where that care isn’t available. Her clinical expertise directly informs the Foundation’s work strengthening post-operative care in resource-limited settings.
Director of Outreach & Partnerships
Meredith Pawson
Meredith is a graduate of Wake Forest University where she studied psychology. She has worked extensively in Relationship Management in the financial and software industries and has a passion for building and growing partnerships. Meredith was inspired by the work of the Better Heart Foundation USA’s team of healers and world-changers and is committed to BHF USA’s mission of saving lives and building stronger, more self-sufficient medical communities in areas of the world that need them most.