Meet the Team
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Surgery is not a specialty. It is a foundational part of healthcare.
SOTA — Surgery, Obstetrics, Trauma, and Anesthesia — addresses a significant portion of the global disease burden, yet billions of people around the world cannot access it when they need it. SOTA Convoys (SOTAC), working alongside its partners, helps bring essential surgical care to people who are too poor, too remote, or too debilitated to access it themselves.
The gap is significant and often overlooked. Across the world, two-thirds of the population lacks access to safe surgical care. Nearly one-fifth of the global disease burden can be treated through surgical procedures, yet more people die from lack of surgical care than from AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria combined. In many regions, especially in rural areas, patients must travel long distances to reach care — if it exists at all.
The result is what are often called surgical deserts: places where geography, infrastructure, and limited resources make access to care nearly impossible.
SOTAC is built around a simple but powerful idea: bring the operating theatre to the patient.
Rather than requiring patients to travel to centralized hospitals, SOTAC deploys mobile surgical units that can operate safely in remote or underserved regions. But mobility alone is not enough. Surgical care depends on systems: infrastructure, coordination, staffing, licensing, supply chains, and post-operative follow-up.
SOTAC focuses on bringing those systems together. Working in partnership with ministries of health, local hospitals, NGOs, and medical professionals, SOTAC helps align the many moving parts required to deliver safe, professional, and sustainable care. No one organization can do this alone, and SOTAC is designed with that reality in mind.
Five billion people have no access to surgical care. We’re on a mission to change that.
A SOTA Convoy is a self-sufficient, mobile surgical system designed for low-resource environments. Each convoy includes a fully equipped operating theatre, pharmacy and storage capacity, and living and working space for staff. When deployed, the units connect to create a temporary but fully functional clinical environment, including areas for pre- and post-operative care.
The system is designed to be rapidly deployable, energy independent, and clinically sound. In a short period of time, a SOTA Convoy can transform an open space into a working surgical site — a place where patients can be seen, treated, and cared for safely.
Partnership is at the core of SOTAC’s work. Every deployment is built alongside national and regional health authorities, local medical teams, and established healthcare organizations. Local partners play a critical role in identifying patients, ensuring continuity of care, managing licensing and regulatory requirements, and integrating surgical camps into existing systems.
This approach ensures that care is not only delivered in the moment, but extended and strengthened over time. It also avoids the short-term, external models that have often struggled to create lasting impact in low-resource settings.
SOTAC has moved from concept to active implementation. In recent work across East Africa, SOTAC has supported multiple surgical camps in partnership with ministries of health and local providers, collaborated with regional hospitals to strengthen referral pathways, and helped introduce mobile surgical care as a viable and scalable model.
At the same time, SOTAC is developing a continuity of care approach, supporting recurring surgical access through ongoing partnerships and local leadership. This work continues to expand through new relationships, additional deployments, and continued refinement of the model.
Co-Founder and Executive Director
Bart Kruijsen, Co-Founder and Executive Director of SOTAC, has vast experience in connecting the dots in complex international environments. With over 80 countries on his list, he is passionate about developing the infrastructure and logistics for advancing SOTA care in remote areas. His professional background in humanitarian travel and mobile field hospitals makes him an expert in getting people and services to the most remote places around the world. He is very excited by the purpose and future plans of SOTAC. Bart holds Master’s degrees in Business Economics from universities in Africa, Europe, and the US, and is based near Amsterdam.
Co-Founder and President
Steve Vryhof, Co-Founder and President of SOTAC, has extensive experience in conceptualizing and starting a variety of educational, entrepreneurial, and philanthropic projects. A former academic, he has traveled extensively and supported humanitarian efforts in several different settings. His two sons, both Emergency physicians and travelers, opened his eyes to the need for basic surgery in the world’s more remote and less developed regions. His background in education, love for travel, and desire to give back, led him to start SOTAC with Bart. Steve holds a PhD in Education from the University of Chicago and is based near Chicago.
Board Member
Felicia Loudon, Board Member, has lived and worked in several countries including Sri Lanka, Oman, Vietnam, and Egypt. Her 20+ years of extensive travel, PR, operations, and event planning experience make her a valuable asset to the SOTAC team.
Director of Operations
Robert-Roel van den Bos, Director of Operations at SOTAC, plays a key role in coordinating the organization’s international activities and operational execution. With a background as an entrepreneur, he developed strong skills in building, organizing, and driving initiatives in dynamic environments.
After transitioning from entrepreneurship, he chose to apply his experience in a more impact-driven context. He became involved with SOTAC after being introduced to the organization by one of its volunteers, who recognized his ability to contribute within the team. Driven by the belief that restoring one life already makes a difference, he combines strategic thinking with practical execution to support SOTAC’s growth and mission.
Board Member
Daniel Vryhof, MD, Board Member, is currently Assistant Professor of Emergency Medicine At Columbia University and Assistant Medical Director at the Milstein Emergency Department in New York City. He has extensive on-the-ground experience in global health including work in South Sudan, Chad, the Central African Republic, Honduras, Ecuador, the Philippines, Haiti, Somaliland, and Ethiopia. He completed Emergency Ultrasound fellowship at Yale University, Emergency Medicine residency at Spectrum Health-Michigan State University, and Medical School at the George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences.
Board Member
Joe Esposito, Board Member, is the founder of the Esposito Financial Group, which is a team of professional advisors in the Private Wealth Management division of UBS Financial Services, Inc. Through his twenty-five year career in the financial services industry, Joe has developed significant experience delivering strategic advice to corporations, non-profits and individuals. He is currently a board member of the Hektoen Institute of Medicine (Chicago, IL) and is the former Vice Chair of the board for Fenwick High School (Oak Park, IL). Joe previously acted as Chair of the Finance and Investment committees for Fenwick High School.