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Merith’s commitment to health equity and justice began through her love of language and Latin American visual culture. She spent several years growing youth-led programs with type 1 diabetes communities across Latin America and the Caribbean. Through this formative grassroots organizing combined with a Master’s degree at LSHTM she was motivated to co-found the 100 Campaign in 2012, aimed at re-framing the narrative around insulin access as a human rights issue and reducing the barriers to access. Since 2014, Merith has been responsible for guiding UAEM’s student-driven activism and working to radically shift the way we research and develop medicines to center people not profit, an issue that has been brought more sharply into focus since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. In March 2020, she launched the Free the Vaccine for COVID-19 campaign in conjunction with the Center for Artistic Activism and UAEM. Merith is motivated about fighting for a more just world where no one is sick because they are poor, or is poor because they are sick. She is currently focused on growing the access to medicines movement though partnership building in new and increasingly creative and surprising ways as well as expanding the pipeline of young underrepresented leaders. 

She also serves on the Technical Advisory Committee of the ACCISS study addressing the Challenges and Constraints of the Insulin Sources and Supply and speaks French, Spanish and Portuguese. She has lived on 4 continents and in 8 countries.