Brandy Barnes, MSW (President) was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes in January 1990. She received her Master’s of Social Work with a concentration in Health Settings from UNC Chapel Hill. Mrs. Barnes gained clinical research experience in Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes at the UNC Diabetes Care Center. She also gained experience in nonprofit management from her work as a Marketing Manager with the American Cancer Society and extensive sales and marketing experience from six years spent working in diabetes medication sales as an Executive Sales Professional. Since 2002, she has served as a Member of the North Carolina Diabetes Advisory Council.

John Buse, MD, PhD (Board Member) is a former President of the Medicine & Science Division of the American Diabetes Association (2008). He is also the Chief of the Endocrinology Division of the Department of Medicine at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Dr. Buse is a former Associate Editor of Diabetes Care and Clinical Diabetes. He is also the Vice-Chair of the National Health Institutes’ (NIH’s), largest diabetes study ever, called the ACCORD Trial. He is also an active clinician with a UNC-based diabetes practice in Chapel Hill, NC.

Chetan Kundavaram (Treasurer) received his bachelor's degree in Computer Science from North Carolina State University and his master's degree in Engineering Management from Duke Univeristy.  He currently works as a Business Consultant at Cisco Systems in Morrisville, NC.  His passion for helping people with diabetes is the result of his own experience with family members who are living with the disease.

Rhonda Merwin, PhD (Board Member) is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Duke University Medical Center. She is an expert in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) and specializes in the treatment of disordered eating and body image. She has grant support for her research on the ability to read and respond to visceral cues, antecedents to eating disorder symptomatology among individuals with type 1 diabetes, and the development of a family-based ACT intervention for anorexia nervosa.

Susan Totten, RD, CDE (Board Member) is a registered and licensed dietitian.  She received her Bachelor's Degree in Science from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro majoring in Human Nutrition and minoring in Biology and Psychology.  She completed her ADA Dietetic Internship through North Carolina Central University to become a Registered Dietitian.  Susan has many years experience in the field of public health, where she worked as a nutritionist with the Women, Infants and Children (WIC) Program of North Carolina.  Susan also spent a year in Cincinnati, OH as a Nutrition Fellow in Adolescent Medicine with the Cincinnati Children's Hospital Teen Health Clinic.  Currently she is employed at Duke University Medical Center as a Dietitian Clinician and Certified Diabetes Educator in Duke's Adult Diabetes Education Program.

Wanda Nicholson, MD is an Associate Professor in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.  Dr. Nicholson is a board-certified obstetrician-gynecologist and a perinatal epidemiologist. Through funding from the American Diabetes Association (ADA), Dr. Nicholson has developed a postpartum-specific weight loss intervention, First WIND (Weight-loss Interventions after Delivery), for women at risk for type 2 diabetes which was piloted among urban-based women in Baltimore City. She was previously an investigator with the Johns Hopkins Evidence-Based Practice Center where she was the PI of the task report on Labor and Postpartum Management of Gestational Diabetes, funded through the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. Dr. Nicholson is a member of the ACOG National Committee on Health Care for Underserved Women and the US Preventive Services Task Force.