Meet the Leadership Team
Dr. Jason Paltzer
Executive Director
Dr. Jason Paltzer is the Executive Director of The Meros Center and a visiting professor at Wisconsin Lutheran College. He is a member of the Global Flourishing Study research team.
Dr. Paltzer is passionate about connecting faith, public health, and research to help communities flourish. His leadership at the Meros Center fosters collaboration and innovation, empowering ministries to build sustainable, evidence-based health solutions. Under his guidance, the Meros Center has grown into a hub for collaborative research, training, and strategic partnerships, ensuring that faith-based health initiatives are both effective and scalable. He received his Master of Public Health from University of Minnesota and PhD in Population Health Sciences from the University of Wisconsin. He is also a certified staff minister.
Dr. Paltzer founded and directed the Lutheran Health & Development program in Zambia from 2003-2009 and directed the Lutheran Health Alliance of Kingdom Workers. He has served as an assistant professor of public health at Grand Canyon University and Baylor University and adjunct faculty at several Christian universities, teaching epidemiology, research methods, and global health. He has a personal interest in studying church- and community-based strategies for reducing substance abuse disorders.
Jason lives in Phoenix, AZ with Amanda and his two children.
“To know and to be known – we all desire to know love and to be in loving relationships with others. In emptying Himself on our behalf, Christ allowed us to know true love and be loved unconditionally. I love how the research process allows us to be collaboratively curious and bridge local wisdom with divine revelation to see this great love story in action.”
LinkedIn: Jason Paltzer | LinkedIn
Notable Publications:
Childhood predictors of health limitations in life across 22 countries: a cross-national and cross-sectional analysis. BMC Glob Public Health. 2025 Aug 13;3(1):70. doi: 10.1186/s44263-025-00188-0. PubMed PMID: 40804701; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC12351978.
“I love seeing how God brings people together around a shared purpose to learn something new or try something different. To see people from different walks of life, different cultures, and different perspectives share curiosity and work toward a shared community health ministry goal while also having fun together doing it, is something that never loses its shine.”
LinkedIn: Alicia Cortright | LinkedIn
Notable Publications:
Alicia Cortright
Program Director
Alicia Cortright joined the Meros Center in 2022 and currently serves as our Project Director. She focuses on supporting our research assistants and students, ensuring our projects and teams are well-resourced, and developing and maintaining partnerships. She especially enjoys bridging the gap that can often exist between research and practical application, and is motivated to develop training content and resources that help communities carry out their work to the fullest and share their ministry stories more broadly.
Alicia is grateful for the opportunity to play a part in pulling together and supporting our multicultural and multidisciplinary project teams. Her first several years of global community health work were spent as public health administrator for the Central Africa Medical Mission’s Lutheran Mobile Clinic in Malawi followed by many years as the South Sudan Field Manager for Kingdom Workers. She was also blessed to develop a varied set of public health skills in infectious disease epidemiology, maternal and child health education, and community-academic partnership research in the US and Canada. Add those experiences with being married to a pastor and God has positioned her well to connect with our diverse academic, community, health care, and church partners.
Alicia holds a bachelor’s degree in medical microbiology & immunology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a master’s of public health in epidemiology from the University of Minnesota- Twin Cities. She volunteers her time with her congregation’s food rescue program, children’s ministry, English-learning program, and creating her signature salads for potlucks. She also serves on the advisory boards for Grand Canyon University’s Public Health programs (USA) and Youth and Women Advocacy Network (South Sudan).
She and her husband Geoff live in Vancouver, Canada, with their three children.
Dr. Jennifer Hatzfeld
Regional Director
Dr. Jennifer Hatzfeld currently volunteers full-time as the Regional Network Director for the Meros Center. She appreciates being able to focus on the Christian impact on health and communities and what that means in different locations around the world.
Jennifer retired in 2022 as a Colonel from the U.S. Air Force after twenty-seven years, first serving as a clinical nurse and then managing population health efforts before getting a PhD in Nursing from Johns Hopkins University in 2009. She also has master’s degrees in Adult and Higher Education as well as Community Health Nursing.
As a researcher in the Air Force, Jennifer focused on military healthcare topics including trauma and stress, as well as the prevention and management of chronic diseases. She also managed federal research portfolios for the Department of Defense and served as the Executive Director of the TriService Nursing Research Program. In her final years in the Air Force, Jennifer was assigned as the Director of Healthcare Operations and the Senior Medical Advisor to the Surgeon General.
After retirement, Jennifer began volunteering with the Meros Center in 2023, focusing on establishing regional networks that can better support researchers, academics, and practitioners to integrate faith and health into evidence-based health ministries.
Jennifer grew up as a missionary kid, born in Bolivia and then moving to the Philippines for high school, which gives her a true appreciation for different cultural values. She has been married to her husband, William, for 30 years and they have two grown daughters. They enjoy being able to work and serve together with the Meros Center, and currently live in Uganda, establishing a network that supports Christian Health Ministries in Africa.
“I am amazed at the diversity and vibrancy of the global Church, and love getting a glimpse of how we are all working together as the body of Christ. The fact that I get to use my passion for research in a ministry setting is an extra blessing for me.”
LinkedIn: Jennifer Hatzfeld | LinkedIn
Notable Publications:
“To experience God’s amazing world while following Jesus is the way God intended it to be.”
William Hatzfeld
Regional Operations Manager
William Hatzfeld currently volunteers full-time as the Regional Network Operations Manager for the Meros Center. He appreciates serving the global Christian health ministry and their impact on faith, health and communities.
William served 27 years in the United States Air Force in various roles and assignments in Texas, California, Maryland, Italy, Korea, Kuwait, and Turkey before retiring in as a Colonel in 2020. Much of William’s experiences, training and education focused on global operations, foreign partnerships, strategic planning, and team leading/team building. William holds a Bacholar’s degree in Political Science from California State University, Fullerton, a Master’s degree in Human Relations from the University of Oklahoma, and a Master’s degree in Strategic Intelligence from the Joint Military Intelligence College in 2007. Additionally, he completed certificate programs in Perspectives (2015) and English as a Foreign Language (2020). William has over 20 years of Bible class instruction and designed new teaching materials for middle school youth as a Christian Sunday school teacher.
William began volunteering with the Meros Center in 2023, focusing on establishing regional networks that can better support researchers, academics, and practitioners to integrate faith and health into evidence-based health ministries. He also serves on the Board of Directors of the Kandl Foundation, a private non-profit providing monetary grants to people in need.
William is a sports fan and can talk about sports all day! “Knowing sports has helped me relate to all the other aspects of life I have encountered. It also serves as a great icebreaker when meeting new people from different places. Sports are universal, timeless, and beautiful and filled with hope and faith. Once I became a Christian, at age 23, I was happy to see sports mentioned in the New Testament too. Thankfully Jennifer, my wonderful wife of 30 years, and our two daughters are sports fans also. Go Dodgers/Lakers/Rams/Kings!”
Rodd Rosenthal
Operations Director
Rodd Rosenthal joined The Meros Center in 2022 because he is passionate about supporting efforts to bring Jesus to the marginalized. By efficiently stewarding the systems, processes, and resources donated to Meros he allows the research and training efforts to thrive and creates a path for his team members’ success.
Focused on systems, processes and engineering, Rodd has successfully supported and grown business operations for multiple companies and partners. He served in operations roles including the VP of Operations at an Engineering consulting firm where he supported over 200 companies. He built systems and structures to support the needs of manufacturing, service, and engineering firms with care for their employees and customers. Prior to this role, he built support organizations for manufacturing companies and provided information technology leadership and infrastructure support.
Rodd holds a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and a Master’s Degree in Engineering Management from the Milwaukee School of Engineering. He serves his church and neighborhood with his mechanical, engineering, and broad handyman skills.
Rodd and his wife Kara live in Colgate, Wisconsin, and have two children.
“I joined Meros to give back to my global community because of all the blessings I have received. I believe combining faith and health research can grow God’s kingdom and open new ways to share Jesus and His love. I have always been drawn to support roles where I can help others make a difference. I pray, by supporting the Meros family, I play my part in the fulfillment of the Meros mission.”
LinkedIn: Rodd Rosenthal | LinkedIn
The Meros Center is blessed to work with a global network of Researchers, Scholars, Pastors and Christians too many to list here. We invite you to start your ministry with us.
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