Tsega Habte
Founder, President and CEO
Community Fulfillment Foundation
The activities and accomplishments of Tsega Habte, an Eritrean American former clinical research pharmacist working through her non-profit, Community Fulfillment Foundation (established in 2021), are prime examples of what it means to give back to the community.
Habte aided in the vaccination of thousands of people in partnership with the Kedren Community Medical Center of South-Central Los Angeles, where she’s lovingly called “Mama Tsega.” In April 2020, the Ministry of Health in Eritrea formed a COVID-19 task force to coordinate relief efforts for Eritreans affected across the globe. The ministry tapped local Eritrean professionals, including Habte, to be point people in Los Angeles. Habte, as a representative of the local Eritrean community, along with Ethiopian community partners, secured volunteers to staff their first event and translate critical medical information from English to Tigrinya and Amharic. Nine months and three successful clinics later, Habte’s partnership with Kedren has produced a model for vaccination outreach: targeted pop-up clinics hosted in familiar spaces and promoted and staffed by familiar faces using culturally relevant methods.
Habte locked in a commitment from Kedren to host a clinic at Kedren targeting L.A.’s East African community. To provide aid around the topic of mental health, Habte reached out to Dr. Thema Bryant-Davis, president elect of the American Psychological Association, to offer professional support to the community via Zoom. This served as a life-saving effort for monolingual East African communities in Los Angeles, who, without this in-language and culturally relevant care, might not have gotten vaccinated.
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