The Team
Rod Bloom
Founder & Chairman of the Board
Read Bio
Rod Bloom established the Rohan Bloom Foundation in memory of his son Rohan, who lost his battle to cancer called Ewing’s Sarcoma at the tender age of 14.
Michelle Meiring
Director
Read Bio
Dr Michelle Meiring is a Palliative Care Paediatrician who has worked in this field for over 20 years. She is the founder of Paedspal, an NGO that provides a consultative paediatric palliative care service to public and private hospitals in Cape Town. Michelle has a fulltime Academic post at the University of Cape Town where she heads up the Division of Paediatric Palliative Care overseeing under and postgraduate training and research in PPC. A long-standing child health and palliative care advocate since her “Paeds HIV-days”, Dr Meiring is on the advocacy portfolio for the SA Children’s Palliative care network known as PatchSA. She is also involved at provincial, national and hospital levels in policy-making for Paediatric Palliative Care in South Africa. Michelle is a mom of 2, an artist & a keen crafter.
Martin Nortier
Treasurer
Read Bio
Martin is a qualified CA with experience in & provides strategic fiscal oversight. He is married to Terika who is a Medical Social Worker, working in Palliative Care. Cyclist.
Terri Marks
Director
Read Bio
Terri, a qualified lawyer, has over a decade of experience networking & fundraising for NGO work across South Africa. She has been working alongside Rod, our founder, serving the Rohan Bloom Foundation since its inception. Terri is also a mom of 2, a wife and a sports fan
Kim Bloom
Director
Read Bio
Kim is a proud mother to Kiran aged 19, Carys aged 16 and Rohan. She is an attorney specialising in legal costs. Outside of her legal career, Kim enjoys exercising and spending meaningful time with family.
Wandile Nzuza
Director
Read Bio
Wandile is an English and History teacher at a boys’ school in Cape Town. A lover of literature, dabbling in a variety of works ranging from Chinua Achebe and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie to Joseph Conrad, he tries to maintain a balanced worldview. He looks to history to understand the present, to see how to make the environment around him a better place and to help its inhabitants to realise their full potential. Education, and now palliative care, has been but one way in which to live out that dream.
When he is not teaching, he is at karaoke, walking in a forest or cycling around the city.
Ben van Stormbroek
Director
Read Bio
Ben is a dedicated paediatrician committed to caring for children and their families. His key interests include clinical paediatrics, community child health, medical education, and strengthening the primary healthcare platform.
Ben is a husband, a dad to 3 girls, a surfer, runner & an apiarist.
Beverley Sebastian
CEO
Read Bio
Beverley brings over two decades of health sector leadership, strategic management, and public health expertise to the Rohan Bloom Foundation, with a background spanning private healthcare, non-profit organisations, and resource-constrained environments. Beverley focuses on supporting organisations to build long-term sustainability and resilience and is also the CEO of Paedspal.
Over the course of her career, she has led national health initiatives, managed public-private partnerships, and strengthened health systems. Notably, as National Executive Director of Africa’s first hospice in Zimbabwe, she led the team that worked alongside the Ministry of Health and Childcare to decentralise palliative care, secure legislation for nurse-prescribed morphine, and integrate care from the point of diagnosis. Beverley holds a Master of Public Health from the University of the Western Cape, as well as undergraduate and honours degrees in Anthropology and Psychology from Rhodes University. Beverley is Mom to Oliver and a keen open water swimmer.
Shirley Emms
Marketing and Fundraising Manager
Read Bio
Shirley leads our brand strategy and donor engagement, with over eight years of expertise in marketing and campaign development. Her commitment to the foundation is profoundly personal; having experienced the loss of her own child in 2024, Shirley brings a lived understanding and deep empathy to the mission of paediatric palliative care.
She is a firm believer in the power of storytelling to mobilise communities, ensuring that every family feels seen and supported during their most difficult moments.
Shirley is a wife, mom, photographer & committed to fitness.
Colette Owens
Administrator
Read Bio
Colette originally trained as an Occupational Therapist and practised for 8 years in South Africa and the UK. She brings a decade of administrative and project management expertise to the team. With a background spanning the NGO, healthcare and religious sectors, she is the behind-the-scenes of many of our operations. When she isn’t managing our logistics Colette is the CEO of The Gospel Coalition Africa and wife and mom of two adult children.