About the Hyper IgM Foundation

Akiva Zablocki, MPH

President

Akiva Zablocki is the founder and president of the Hyper IgM Foundation. As president of the Hyper IgM Foundation, Akiva is responsible for overseeing, managing, and implementing the Foundation’s activities in support of its charitable mission, which is to improve the treatment, quality of life and long term outlook for children and adults living with Hyper IgM through research, support, education, and advocacy to families and patients.

Akiva has an extensive background in healthcare and nonprofit work.  Akiva obtained his Masters in Public Health Policy and Management from Columbia University and is a member of the Board of Directors of the Children’s Brain Tumor Foundation. Akiva has worked as a healthcare consultant for both Mercer and Willis Towers Watson, where his clients included Fortune 500 companies, large hospital systems, pharmaceutical companies, and large manufacturing firms. Akiva founded Health2Social, Inc., and was in the process of developing an initiative devoted to empowering patients to make better healthcare decisions when his son, Idan, was diagnosed with Hyper IgM Syndrome. Akiva’s personal mission to improve healthcare is by no means over, and he continues to pursue initiatives designed at leveraging the information and people network of social media to radically modernize and improve patient choice and our healthcare system at large.

Amanda Zablocki

Secretary

Amanda Zablocki is a founding board member of the Hyper IgM Foundation. Her son, Idan, was diagnosed with X-Linked Hyper IgM in the Spring of 2013. Together with her husband, Akiva, Amanda was frustrated with the lack of information accessible on Hyper IgM and set a personal goal to correct that with the founding of this foundation.  Amanda is a corporated and healthcare partner at Sheppard, Mullin, Richter & Hampton LLP.

Read Amanda Zablocki’s profile on Sheppard Mullin’s Website

David Hagin, MD, PhD

Board Member

David Hagin, MD, PhD, is the Director of the Allergy and Immunology department at the Tel-Aviv Sourasky Medical Center and is setting up the Israeli Immune Diagnostic Lab (iiDL). 

In the past, Dr. Hagin was a Senior Allergy and Immunology Fellow at the University of Washington and Seattle Children’s Hospital (SCH). His clinical interests include diagnosis and management of patients with primary immunodeficiency diseases (PIDD) and Immune Dysregulation. His research relates to identifying basic cellular mechanisms that underlie immunodeficiency and autoimmunity.

Dr. Hagin earned his medical degree from The Hebrew University Hadassah Medical School in Jerusalem, Israel, completed residency in Internal Medicine at Tel-Aviv Sourasky Medical Center, and received a PhD in immunology from the Weizmann Institute of Science.

Tiffany Hill

Board Member

Tiffany Hill is a proud and dedicated mother to her four children , Oliver, Liam, and twins, Elijah and Lily. Both Oliver and Liam were both diagnosed with X-Linked Hyper IgM and underwent Bone Marrow transplants at very young ages.

While Oliver is now thriving and considered cured from his transplant in 2014, it was the complete opposite when Liam sadly passed post transplant, at only 13 months of age in 2016.

After everything Tiffany and her husband, Joshua, and her family have endured, she wants to ensure that Hyper IgM families all around the world have a community where they feel supported, have access to a wealth of knowledge, and contribute to a cause that pushes for a better cure and treatment options for Hyper IgM. 

Pras Ranaweera

Board Member

Pras Ranaweera is a Senior Program Officer on the K-12 education team at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. She was previously a Partner at TNTP, a non-profit education consultancy, and a Deputy Chief at D.C. Public Schools. Pras also taught English in public schools in Japan and Switzerland.

Prior to her career in education, Pras worked in Law Enforcement in London, England for seven years. Pras now lives in Washington, D.C. with her husband and a 13-year old husky named Tock..