Ricardo Rivero, MD, MPH
Executive Director
Dr. Ricardo Rivero is the Executive Director for the Midwest AIDS Training + Education Center and has worked at the Center since 2003. Before he became MATEC’s Executive Director, he directed the planning and implementation of MATEC programs within Illinois for 11 years. He has worked in HIV/AIDS prevention for over 16 years, with a special interest in HIV/AIDS prevention interventions in Hispanic communities. Prior to his work at MATEC, Dr. Rivero was an HIV Prevention Network Senior Associate with the American Red Cross, where he worked on program development, implementation, and evaluation. Dr. Rivero received his medical degree the University of Los Andes School of Medicine in Merida, Venezuela and his Masters in Public Health from the University of Illinois at Chicago.
Barbara Schechtman
Co-Principal Investigator
Barbara Schechtman is the former Executive Director/Project Director of the Midwest AIDS Training and Education Center and has worked at the Center since its inception in 1988. During her tenure, Ms. Schechtman held several leadership roles representing MATEC, including President of the National Association of AETCs, and member of the ADAP Medical Issues Advisory group for the Illinois Department of Public Health and of the National Expert Panel on Preconceptional Care and Family Planning for Women with HIV. She is currently the Vice President of the Pediatric AIDS Chicago Prevention Initiative (PACPI) and is on the Board of the Midwest Access Project. She also continues to serve as a consultant, through a contract with the Public Health Institute and MATEC, to the Chicago Department of Public Health on quality management issues. She is the former Associate Executive Director of Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin (1978-1988). Ms. Schechtman received her undergraduate degree at the University of Illinois in Women’s Studies and her MPH in Population Planning at the University of Michigan.
Nathan Linsk, PhD
Co-Principal Investigator, Co-Founder
Nathan L. Linsk, Ph. D. Professor of Social Work in Family Medicine at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and Emeritus Professor, Jane Addams College of Social Work. Linsk founded the Midwest AIDS Training and Education Center in 1988 and currently is co-Investigator; previously he helped found and was Principal Investigator of the Great Lakes Addictions Technology Transfer Center. His research areas include HIV, long term care, family care, older adults and HIV, medication adherence issues and health professional training. Dr. Linsk has helped developed social work educational programs, case management programs and para-social work training for orphans and vulnerable children in several countries including the US, Romania, Ethiopia, and Tanzania. He has led two HIV Twinning Center projects partnering the Jane Addams College of Social Work and the Institute of Social Work in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania and Addis Ababa University School of Social Work to develop competencies for para-professionals to provide basic social services to vulnerable children and adults who are HIV affected. Dr. Linsk is founding co-Editor of the Journal of HIV/AIDS and Social Services, 2001-2014. He has been an active Advisory Committee member for the National Association of Social Workforce SPECTRUM mental health and HIV project and currently also serves on the steering committee of the Global Social Service Workforce Alliance.
Renslow Sherer, MD
Co-Medical Director & Co-Investigator
In addition to his role as Clinical Consultant at MATEC, Dr. Sherer is the Director of the International HIV Training Center, Section of Infectious Diseases at University of Chicago’s Department of Medicine.
Since 1982, Dr. Sherer has been a primary caregiver for persons with HIV disease in Chicago and is a recognized leader in HIV prevention, care, research, training, and health policy. He has extensive experience and expertise in HIV primary care, adherence to anti-retroviral therapy (ART) and in model care programs for women and children, people with chemical dependency, and the medically indigent. He has been active in HIV clinical research and in the design and implementation of clinical trials, in HIV prevention programs, and in local and federal policy on HIV disease. He has numerous national and international publications on the clinical and social impact of the HIV pandemic. With Ron Sable, he founded the first HIV clinic at Cook County Hospital in 1982, and then led the clinical team which designed the CORE Center, a model ambulatory facility for HIV and related infectious diseases which opened in Chicago in October, 1998.
He is a member of the US HHS HIV/AIDS Treatment Guideline Panel and the ART Guideline Panel in China. In September, 2003 he became the Director of HIV/STI/TB for Project HOPE and he joined the faculty of the Section of Infectious Diseases at the University of Chicago. Since then, he has led health worker trainings in China, North Africa, the Western Balkans, and the Americas, he has implemented micro-credit and health education programs for orphans and families with HIV in sub-Saharan Africa and the Americas, and he has led HIV prevention and stigma reduction programs around the world.