Muna AbuSulyman a Thought Leader in the Arab world, has had immense experience in the field of development, women empowerment, and poverty alleviation. She was appointed by the UNDP as the first Saudi Arabian woman to become a Goodwill Ambassador, as well as UNICEF’s Goodwill Ambassador and Regional Expert for the UN World Humanitarian Summit. In addition, Muna built the Alwaleed Bin Talal Foundation from the ground up and served as the Secretary General and Executive Director. Muna’s role as co-host of the Arab world’s #1 talk show has served as a public platform to discuss social issues. She served as a Fouonder/advisor/board member for several socially driven establishments, such as partnering on Niya, 3S, CovidPass, and Arab Digital Reform Institute.

Michael Aguhar is the Program Director at Crossroads Fund in Chicago. He is passionate about donor organizing and collective liberation. Previously, Michael was the Executive Director of the Alliance of Filipinos for Immigrant Rights and Empowerment (AFIRE), an organization rooted in the Filipinx/a/o community working on issues of social, racial, and economic justice. In 2016, he worked alongside Filipinx, Black, Latinx, and Polish workers to pass the Illinois Domestic Workers Bill of Rights. He earned his Bachelor of Science in Psychology from the University of Texas at Austin and Juris Doctorate from the University of Houston Law Center.

A humanitarian by heart, Dania is a social entrepreneur, strategist by trade and a design thinker whose life has always been aligned to the causes she believes in. Whether it's about empowering the youth, developing socially impactful products or helping impact driven businesses thrive; Dania's aim through the past ten years of her career has been a consistent one; to be a driver of social change and innovation. She is the co-founder of Deeds, a development consultancy that helps design and execute initiatives that addresses community needs, and often uses the power of technology to harness the same. Some of her most successful products at Deeds includes Khadoum, a civic tech app that is the first virtual hub for good-doers in the region and, EduVestment; a digital platform (in the making) that helps bridge the gap between students seeking scholarships and investors that eventually helps the youth unleash their potential through education.

Naif ALObaid has had 17 years a diverse career in development, philanthropy, education and program management, such as a program to provide micro financing loans to persons with disabilities, vocational training programs for persons with disabilities, acquiring mobile clinics to detect breast cancer, a center for research on Autism, a mental health survey and the establishment of clinics to treat children with learning and other disabilities. He is currently the Senior External Relations and Projects Officer at the United Nations Relief and Work Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East “UNRWA”, prior to that he was the Executive Director of the Shefa Fund, Senior consultant for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundations on Saudi Arabia and Yemen, and a mentor at two local NGO’s that incubates and supports social entrepreneurs. Naif also worked at the Public Education Evaluation Commission in several different capacities, managing the project to build the framework for evaluating public and private schools in Saudi, engaging the commissions stakeholders and becoming an Assistant Vice governor. In addition to his previous role as a CEO for Education for Employment Saudi Arabia, Naif also spends a substantial amount of time working with refugees in Europe, and in developing a school in one of the slums in Nairobi, Kenya.  

Naif holds certificates in Psychological First Aid, Foundations for Global Health Responders, Public Health in Humanitarian Crisis, a Bachelor of Arts in Management with a minor in International Relations from Webster University in Geneva, a Nonprofit Management Executive Certificate from Georgetown university and an MBA with concentration in International Trade from Johnson and Wales University in Rhode Island, USA.

Adriana Alejandro-Osorio serves as a Major Gifts Officer at UNICEF-USA. She drives supporter engagement and awareness, increasing connectedness to UNICEF’s mission to put Children First and ensure all children are safe, protected and empowered through fundraising, advocacy and education in her region. She also serves as a member of the Commission on Judicial Selection in Minnesota. Prior to her work at UNICEF-USA, she served as the Director of Partnerships and Engagement at Global Impact, as the President and Founder at Alejandro Consulting Group, and Senior Consultant at Booz Allen Hamilton. Dr. Alejandro-Osorio received her B.Sc. degree in Chemistry from the Universidad de Puerto Rico, Rio Piedras and her Ph.D. degree in Biomolecular Chemistry from the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

Eleanor Allen is the CEO of Water For People, a nonprofit whose mission is to develop sustainable water and sanitation services globally. Eleanor is a social entrepreneur recognized by the Schwab Foundation, a TEDx speaker, and an influential Women of Water. She serves on the board of Parametrix and the University of Colorado. Eleanor is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and a distinguished alumna of the University of California at Berkeley.

Her passions include STEM and JEDI (justice/diversity/equity/inclusion). She has lived/worked all over the world. Eleanor enjoys ultra-cycling, hiking, and traveling with her husband and two boys.

Kate Anderson is the founder of Unbounded Associates, a Washington, DC-based consulting firm that supports governments, donors, UN agencies, NGOs, and researchers to equitably increase their impact in education. Previously, Kate was an associate fellow at the Brookings Institution, where her research focused on early childhood development, 21st century skills, assessment, and global citizenship. She holds a M.P.P. from Georgetown University and a B.A. in Psychology from Pepperdine University.

Alexis has been an activist since she was a college student. Driven by the disparities in educational opportunity she encountered growing up in Wisconsin, she co-founded Youth Reclaiming Our Communities (Youth ROC), mobilizing students across the state to press for education finance reform. Since then, she hasn’t stopped working toward a vision of a more inclusive and more equitable society. She has dedicated her career to community organizing, coalition building, public policy, and strategic planning, exemplified by her work on issues of racial and gender equity and the politics of power and privilege.

Prior to her tenure as State Voices’ Chief Executive Officer, Alexis served as the deputy director of the Funders’ Committee for Civic Participation, a philanthropic affinity group dedicated to enhancing democratic participation in all aspects of civic life. Before joining FCCP in 2016, Alexis served as the senior director of programs for State Voices, leading efforts to support and expand the work of our national network of state tables in promoting civic engagement, civic access, and civic representation. She came to the national office of State Voices after serving for three and a half years as executive director of Wisconsin Voices, where she worked to expand and defend voting rights in the state.

Alexis graduated with honors from Alverno College with a degree in History and Political Science, and is completing a Master of Arts from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Alexis serves on the boards of the Alliance for Youth Organizing and the Analyst Institute. When not at work, she can be found trying out new recipes for family and friends and traveling with her husband, Derek.

Hilda M. Arellano was the Director of the Scholars in the Nation’s Service Initiative (SINSI) at Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School from 2014 to 2016 following her retirement from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).  Her last assignment for USAID was as the Senior Development Advisor at the Foreign Service Institute.  In August 2013 Ms. Arellano returned from Afghanistan where she served at U.S. Embassy Kabul as the Coordinating Director for Development and Economic Affairs.  Before joining Embassy Kabul, she served as Counselor at USAID in Washington DC, and prior to that as Mission Director in Egypt, Iraq, Peru, Regional Center - Budapest, and Ecuador. Ms. Arellano joined USAID in 1987 was posted to Guatemala, Bolivia and Ecuador. Before joining USAID, Ms. Arellano lived and worked in Latin America for 17 years. In 1971 Ms. Arellano joined the United Nations Volunteer Program in Peru and Bolivia.  She subsequently worked with rural development programs funded by the OAS, World Bank, and UNDP, among others.  A graduate of Cornell University with a BA in Political Science, Ms. Arellano has a Master of Arts in Political Science from the University of Texas at Austin and Masters of Arts in Teaching from Antioch College.

Supriya Baily is an activist, a scholar, and an educator. Her work, spanning thirty years, began as a teenager in India as a community organizer and leader. Currently, she is an Associate Professor of Education at George Mason University, focusing social justice issues in education, the marginalization of girls and women in educational policy and practice, and the role of teacher education to address educational inequity. Prior to joining academia, she spent a decade working for development and social justice organizations cementing her lifelong interest to better understand the processes of agency and voice that promote grassroots transformation in marginalized communities. She serves also as the Co-Director for the Center for International Education and is currently the Vice President of the Comparative and International Education Society (CIES), where she formerly served as Treasurer. She has co-edited four books, published numerous articles and book chapters, and has secured nearly $2m in collaborative grant partnerships.

Jeannine Balfour leads implementation of the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation’s foster youth initiative. Previously, she served for five years as Program Officer in Minneapolis, Minnesota with the McKnight Foundation in the Children and Families program where she was responsible for a diverse portfolio including Homeless and Runaway Youth, Fatherhood, Family Economic Success, Out of School Time and Multiservice. Balfour also worked as Associate Community Liaison at the Northwest Area Foundation in St. Paul, Minnesota where she helped develop and implement urban and regional community partnerships to reduce poverty. She spent several years as the HIV Prevention Coordinator for the Louisiana Office of Public Health HIV/AIDS Program in New Orleans, Louisiana; she was program manager for Population Services International of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania; and English language instructor in Banjul, The Gambia. She received her Master in International Public Health from Tulane University.

Gilda A. Barabino is President of Olin College of Engineering, which develops students as engineers who design their own paths forward. It is ranked among the top three undergraduate engineering programs nationally. Dr. Barabino is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and the National Academy of Medicine. She serves on the Scientific Advisory Board of the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub. She is a noted investigator in the areas of sickle cell disease, cellular and tissue engineering, and the role of race/ethnicity and gender in science and engineering.

Dr. Barabino received her B.S. from Xavier University and Ph.D. from Rice University

Sharon Bissell is a feminist grantmaker and human rights strategist. Through her work with Mexican civil society organizations and for twenty years at the Mexico office of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Sharon has helped facilitate access to millions of dollars for Mexican human rights, migration, and feminist organizations. She became involved in the Mexican pro-choice movement in the 1990s and in philanthropy in 2001. Her work helped to increase recognition of young people’s sexual rights, advance abortion rights, and shift attention toward the need for women-centered reproductive health care at the hands of traditional indigenous and formally trained midwives. Her human rights work has focused on improved criminal investigations, enforced disappearances and femicide, access to justice, and the historic criminal justice reform process.

Sharon is skilled at bridging – and helping others bridge – political and sectoral cultures, from private to public, US to Latin American, literal to literary, and grassroots to international. She is a founding strategist for the 2020 creation of Mexico’s social justice fund, Acento: Acción Local and of the Repository of Documentation on Disappearances in Mexico. She is Board Secretary at Fondo Semillas, Mexico’s feminist fund, and former Board Chair of Funders for Reproductive Equity. She lives in Mexico City, is bilingual, bicultural, and binational US-Mx, holds an MA in postcolonial literature, post-graduate courses in human rights and reproductive health, and is a candidate for an MFA in creative writing at Antioch University Los Angeles.

In her role as Head of Global Programmes in the LEGO Foundation, Sarah provides strategic oversight to the Foundation’s efforts to promote learning through play for children aged birth to twelve through parenting interventions, early childhood center-based approaches, formal education and humanitarian settings.

Prior to joining the Foundation, Sarah led program quality efforts for ChildFund International, as Vice President for Program Development, and for CARE USA as the Director for Basic & Girls’ Education. She also has experience managing programs and partnerships in Africa and Asia centered around education and Early Childhood Development for Save the Children and the Aga Khan Foundation. Her professional accomplishments include developing a global monitoring and evaluation system tracking half a million children around the world, managing a $70M partnership focused on girls’ education and leadership, and starting a pre-school in Mozambique. She has served on several expert panels focused on education and gender, and has been a Steering Group Vice Chairperson for the Inter-Agency Network for Education in Emergencies.

Rachel Cantave, PhD is a cultural anthropologist and an Assistant Professor of International Affairs at Skidmore College. She holds a Ph.D. in Anthropology from American University, M.A. in Public Anthropology, and B.A. from NYU. She teaches courses on cultural theory, race, religion, and identity politics in Latin America and the Caribbean. She is published in the Journal of Religious Studies, History and Society, and the upcoming edited volume, Embodying Black Religions in Africa and its Diasporas: Memory, Movement, and Belonging through the Body. She is also co-founder of TheEbonyTower.com and co-producer of the documentary film Chèche Lavi (Looking for Life).

Elena Chávez Quezada is Vice President of Programs at the San Francisco Foundation (SFF). In this role, Elena works to ensure that the Program Division advances SFF’s equity agenda through internal collaboration, centering grantees, and engaging key community partners. Prior to this role, Elena was Senior Director of the People Pathway at SFF. She previously oversaw the economic security portfolio at the Walter and Elise Haas Fund, and was a senior program officer at Tipping Point Community. Elena is also Head of Investments at the Chavez Family Foundation (CFF), where she supports her brother in the launch and grantmaking of a new foundation focused on the intersection of immigration, education, and entrepreneurship. Prior to her roles in philanthropy, she managed the California expansion of Single Stop USA and worked on research and policy at the Aspen Institute’s Financial Security Program.

Elena is involved in various local and national organizations/efforts, including Closing the Women’s Wealth Gap Initiative, Immigrants Rising, Concrete Rose Foundation, and Campaign for College Opportunity. She is also an appointee to the San Francisco Guaranteed Income Advisory Council. Elena received a bachelor’s degree from Harvard University and a master’s degree in public policy from the Harvard Kennedy School, and lives in San Francisco with her husband and two sons.

Stacey Choe is Director at Asia Philanthropy Circle (APC), a non-profit initiative that convenes Asian philanthropists to learn, collaborate and catalyse new social interventions.  At APC she launched regional and in-country projects, including collective impact funds targeting early childhood nutrition and community building, research projects that she co-wrote on the philanthropy ecosystem, and programmes targeting pressing issues like rising radicalism, ageing in society and education gaps.  Stacey has a strong background in the philanthropic sector, having served as the Membership Services Director at the Asian Venture Philanthropy Network (AVPN) for 4 years before her last role as Director of Policy Engagement.

Prior to joining AVPN, she had 8 years of experience in marketing communications, market research and strategy in both corporate and government sectors in China, Italy and Singapore.

Stacey holds an MA in Social Anthropology of Development from SOAS, University of London, and a BA in Political Science and English Literature from the National University of Singapore.

Colombian entrepreneur and leader with purpose, with 25 years of international experience in sustainability in business, civil society, and academia. After a successful career with multinational corporations, in 2012 Correa co-founded Sistema B, a movement to promote B Corps - businesses that use the power of markets to solve social and environmental problems. 2019 Fellow Advanced Leadership Initiative, Harvard University. Named one of the 30 most influential intellectuals in Latin America in 2017 by EsGlobal. Jury, 2016 Global Rolex Award. Correa serves as a member of the Board for Colbún and Córpora (Chile), HQAI (Switzerland), Fundación Bancolombia and Fundación Gaia (Colombia).

Stephanie Cosner, Ph.D. serves as Dean of the College of Social Sciences, Policy, and Practice at Simmons University. She is a Professor in the School of Social Work and serves as Chair of Online Graduate Strategy. Dr. Cosner joined Simmons in 2018 from Boston College, where she served as Assistant Dean, Chair of Social Innovation and Leadership, and Director of the Center for Social Innovation. She has more than 70 published works, including Innovation from Within with Oxford. Dr. Berzin graduated cum laude from Cornell University, earned her M.S. from Columbia University, and her Ph.D. from University of California, Berkeley.

Mary Crock (BA (Hons) LLB (Hons) PhD (Melbourne University)) is Professor of Public Law at Sydney Law School at The University of Sydney.  She has worked in the area of immigration and refugee law since 1985. An Accredited Specialist listed in Best Lawyers in Australia in Immigration Law, she maintains interests in practice alongside academic research. She has authored 14 books and over 70 book chapters and refereed articles, with a strong research focus on vulnerable migrants and comparative law and practice. Work with Professor Jacqueline Bhabha on unaccompanied children (Seeking Asylum Alone (Australia 2006) (comparative report 2007)) was funded in part by the MacArthur Foundation. With Professor Ron McCallum, she was involved in 2012-2014 reforms of the UN human rights treaty system. A co-authored 2017 monograph examined disability prevalence amongst refugees, research she presented to the UN in 2015 and 2018. Her latest books concern refugee children (2018, 2020).

Ellen DeVoe is a nationally recognized expert in trauma and families. She is interested in developing and disseminating community-driven and culturally responsive prevention and intervention programs to mitigate the impact of violence exposure on families and children. Her work has been supported by the National Institute of Mental Health, Centers for Disease Control, and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. For more than a decade, DeVoe has directed the Strong Families Strong Forces program, an intervention research project funded by the Department of Defense focused on developing a parenting program to support military parents with very young children throughout cycles of deployment and reintegration.

At BUSSW, DeVoe served as director of Trauma & Violence specialization and the inaugural director of the PhD Program in Social Work. At the national level, DeVoe is a member of the consensus study team for the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, Strengthening the Military Family Readiness System for a Changing American Society. In 2019, DeVoe contributed to two policy briefs for the American Professional Society on the Abuse of Children, Center for Child Policy. She also was an invited member of two Council of Social Work Education’s Curriculum Task Forces on Military Social Work and Trauma-Informed Care.

Indivar Dutta-Gupta is co-executive director at the Georgetown Center on Poverty & Inequality where he leads work to develop and advance ideas for reducing domestic poverty and economic inequality, with particular attention to gender and racial equity. Indivar also serves on the National Academy of Social Insurance’s board of directors and as an advisor for the Aspen Institute’s Benefits21 Initiative, Liberation in a Generation, and The Policy Academies. He has previously worked at the Center for American Progress, U.S. House of Representatives Ways and Means Committee, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, and Freedman Consulting, LLC.

Flavia Faugeres is currently attending the Advanced Leadership Initiative at Harvard University, an academic program focused on social impact for experienced leaders. Flavia is the founder of Learntofly, a start-up web-based platform providing global reach for youth to access mentors, facilitate meaningful connections, and utilize social emotional development tools for personal and professional growth.

Prior to Learntofly, Flavia was the CEO for Brazil and the executive vice president of BRF Global, one of the world’s largest producers of poultry and pork products. Previously she served as Global Chief Marketing of Burger King Corporation, senior partner of N-Ideias, a marketing consultancy, Global Vice President of insights and research at AB-Inbev, and in market research at Unilever. In her business career, she has been an advocate for food safety, quality and access, and for increased leadership opportunities for women.

Michael has worked for the Van Leer Group since 2007. Prior to his current role as CEO, he served as the Executive Director of the Bernard van Leer Foundation from 2014–2019.

Before this he held several other positions within the Foundation including programme director, programme manager and programme officer. Before Van Leer, Michael spent most of his career serving grassroots and non-profit organisations in Latin America, Africa and Eastern Europe working with homeless and displaced children and families. Early in his career he also spent time as a business analyst at McKinsey & Company.

He has degrees from Wesleyan and Princeton Universities, was honoured as a Thomas J. Watson fellow and was a member of the World Economic Forum Global Agenda Council on Behaviour. Michael loves to write, swim, bike, take photographs and make music with his daughter.

Kevin Kahakula’akea John Fong is a nationally recognized and respected cultural translator, facilitator, and speaker in transformative justice, leadership development and organizational design. His mission is to clarify purpose, align principles, and integrate systems to cultivate healthy and equitable communities.

Prior to founding Elemental Partners, Kevin was the Founder and Director of the Clinical HIV Program and Teen Clinic at Asian Health Services in Oakland, CA. Kevin was a Kellogg Fellow from 1994-1997.

Kevin is a faculty member of the UCSF Center for Health Professions and the University of Michigan New Leadership Academy. A graduate of the University of California, Kevin resides in San Francisco.

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Marina Fragata Chicaro is Manager, Applied Knowledge Department, whose portfolio focuses on implementing and scaling innovative and evidence-based models, policies, and practices to address early childhood development challenges in Brazil.

Marina spent more than 10 years working to address Brazilian social challenges, adversities, and equity in the public, private and non-profit sectors, and with international organizations in the health, social assistance, and early childhood development sectors at the federal, state and municipal levels.

Marina holds a degree in Law, and a Masters degree in management of international cooperation entities for development and social interventions at the Universidad de Oviedo, Spain (AECID fellow).

Meredith has extensive experience in the social impact sector and community development. She has worked with the Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC), Citibank Global Community Relations and is currently the Director of Alignment and Impact Investing with the Max M. and Marjorie S. Fisher Foundation. In 2014, Meredith was selected for the inaugural class of the WK Kellogg Foundation Community Leadership Network. Meredith received a B.A. from Michigan State University, and an M.S. in Management and Urban Policy from the New School University in New York. She has also served as adjunct faculty for graduate level courses in Nonprofit Management at Seton Hall University and the New School.

Lisa George is the Global Head of the Macquarie Group Foundation, responsible for strategy and management of the Foundation globally. The Foundation is Macquarie Group’s philanthropic arm and is one of the largest corporate benefactors in Australia.

Macquarie staff engagement in their local communities is the founding principle of the Foundation. Since inception in 1985, the Foundation has donated more than $410 million to charities around the world.  The Foundation also believes in the importance of capacity building and innovation within the sector to increase its effectiveness.

Lisa joined the Macquarie Group Foundation in 2010. Prior to this role she worked for Social Ventures Australia in the consulting arm providing strategic support to non-profit organisations. She is currently on the Board of Philanthropy Australia, an Alternate Director at For Purpose Investment Partners, and Chair of the Harvard Club of Australia Non-profit Fellowship, which awards 2 scholarships annually to Australian non-profit CEOs to study at Harvard Business School. Lisa holds a Master of Public Policy from Harvard University.

Jesús joined FII in 2010 as Executive Director of Boston, where he grew FII to include 800 families across the city. He assumed the position of CEO in 2017. Prior to joining FII, Jesús worked for the Hyde Square Task Force (HSTF), where he served as Deputy Director and worked on the Youth First project that helped lay the groundwork for a proposed $250 million urban development project. In 2008, the HSTF team organized and designed a youth-led comprehensive Civics curriculum in Boston Public Schools, currently being piloted in three high schools with the hope that it becomes a mandatory requirement for all BPS graduates in two years.

Jesús has held numerous Board leadership positions across New England and currently sits on the Board of English for New Bostonians. He is also a co-founder of the Community Fellows Program at the Institute for Nonprofit Management and Leadership affiliated with Tufts University’s Jonathan M. Tisch College of Citizenship and Public Service. In 2016, the Boston-based Barr Foundation awarded Jesús a Barr Fellowship for his contributions to the city and his potential to drive positive change.

Allyson Maynard-Gibson QC is a justice leader and change agent, who continues to work in the public and private sectors. Especially post COVID-19, she advocates that innovation, including use of technology, is essential to promote and effect equity and equality.

Bradford C. Grant is a Full Professor of Architecture in the Department of Architecture of the College of Engineering and Architecture at Howard University, Washington DC. He has been in leadership roles at Hampton and Howard Universities as Chairperson, Director, Associate Dean and Interim Dean. As a registered architect and a distinguished educator he has extensive experience in community design, contemplative practices through drawing in design education and environmental justice in architecture. His community design work, research on the role of African American architects and his teachings on “Drawing as Meditation” has earned him the Virginia Downtown Development Association Award, the American Institute of Architects (AIA) Education Honor Award, the AIA Institute Honor for Collaborative Achievement and the Center for Contemplative Mind in Society’s Contemplative Practice fellowship.

Grant has served as past president of the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture, Humanities DC, and the Center for Contemplative Mind in Society. He is currently president of the board of the Healthy Building Network and is the co-founder of the “Directory of African American Architects”, the first comprehensive survey, analysis and report on the numbers and role of the African American Architect. He is appointed as the inaugural “Instagram Artist in Residence” at the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery.

Grant completed his graduate degree at the University of California Berkeley and the undergraduate degree from California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo.

Maria Guajardo is committed to raising the next generation of global leaders as a Professor of Leadership Studies at Soka University, Tokyo. Previously she served as Dean and Vice-President, with the distinction of being the first female and non-Japanese to serve in these positions. Her research connects leadership development, global citizenship education, and social change. Her work in diversity, equity, and inclusion has taken her from Malaysia to Mumbai, and from Singapore to South Africa. Her portfolio includes national and local policy work, leading national youth development initiatives, and advancing educational initiatives for children living in poverty. Maria, a clinical psychologist, author, and mother, has degrees from Harvard University and the University of Denver. 

Zarlasht Halaimzai is the Director and co-founder of Refugee Trauma Initiative (RTI) – an organisation committed to resourcing refugees, aid workers and organisations with skills and tools to deal with stress, insecurity and trauma. A former refugee herself, Zarlasht has been advocate for refugee rights and over the last 12 years, she has developed programmes that promote resilience in vulnerable populations in several countries including Pakistan, Afghanistan, Turkey, Syria, United Kingdom and Greece. Zarlasht has trained in Childhood and Adolescent Counselling and Psychotherapy at Cambridge University and is currently pursuing a Master’s Degree in Mindfulness Based Cognitive Behavioural Therapy at Oxford University. She is multilingual and was selected as a Kathryn Davis Peace Fellow to study Arabic at Middlebury College in 2016. Zarlasht has written for several publications including the Guardian, Washington Post, the Good Journal, Huffington Post and the New Statesman. Her work has been profiled by the Psychologist Magazine, NPR and Grazia, and she was the recipient of 2017 Future Shapers Award from Marie Claire Magazine.

In 2018, she was selected from 20,000 applicants to be one of twenty inaugural Fellows of the Obama Foundation.

Linda C. Halgunseth is an associate professor in the Department of Human Development and Family Sciences at the University of Connecticut and associate editor for Journal of Research on Adolescence. Her research focuses on sociocultural influences on parenting, culturally sensitive parenting measurement, and family engagement with diverse families. Dr. Halgunseth holds and has held many leadership positions in national associations such as Society for Research in Child Development (SRCD) and Society for Research on Adolescence (SRA), such as Past Chair of the SRCD Latinx Caucus and Chair of SRA Membership Committee. She received the Early Career Award in Teaching Excellence from AAUP and the Early Career Award in Research from the SRCD Latinx Caucus. Dr. Halgunseth received a BA in psychology and Spanish at the University of Texas at Austin, and a MS and PhD in human development and family studies from the University of Missouri. She is also very active in serving the community as a member on the board of trustees of the Connecticut Community Foundation.  

Mike’s work is focused on sustainable and regionalized food systems. He is the C.S. Mott Professor of Sustainable Agriculture and Senior Fellow, Center for Regional Food Systems (CRFS) at Michigan State University. He has a Ph.D. in Human Nutrition. Prior to his 2003 move to MSU he spent nineteen years on the Rutgers University faculty in Nutritional Sciences where he co-founded the New Jersey Urban Ecology Program and the Rutgers Student Organic Farm. At MSU he was founding Director of the Center for Regional Food Systems. In his seventeen years at MSU Mike has published and engaged with communities on a range of topics regarding health, sustainable food systems, urban agriculture, and regional/local food systems. He was a governor-appointed member of the Michigan Food Policy Council. Mike was a consultant on sustainability for the 2015 U.S. Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee report. He was an Oxford Martin Visiting Fellow at Oxford University in 2019.

Carly Hare (Pawnee/Yankton) strives to live a commitment to advancing equity and community engagement through her professional and personal life. Carly is a proud daughter, sister, auntie, partner, mother, ally, friend, and equity advocate. Carly’s Pawnee name is <i kita u hoo <i ]a hiks which translates into "kind leader of men."

Carly has spent her professional career navigating the intersections of philanthropy, identity and equity. Carly has served as the Coalition Catalyst/National Director of CHANGE Philanthropy since 2015. Carly lead Native Americans in Philanthropy as its Executive Director from 2010-2015. Carly held the position of the Director of Development for the Native American Rights Fund, 2009-2010 and Director of Programs for The Community Foundation Serving Boulder County 2009-2004.

Carly is currently serving the boards of the following organizations: Common Counsel Foundation, the Highlander Research and Education Center, Impact on Education/Boulder Valley School District Foundation and Equity in the Center. Carly has served on planning committees and presented at over 50 conferences and convenings advocating for philanthropic equity. 

Dr. Debra Harry is Numu/Kooyooe Tukadu from Pyramid Lake, Nevada. Dr. Harry serves as an Associate Professor in Indigenous Studies for the Department of Gender, Race, and Identity at the University of Nevada, Reno. Dr. Debra Harry’s research analyzes the linkages between biotechnology, intellectual property and globalization in relation to Indigenous Peoples’ rights. Dr. Harry has authored numerous articles related to the protection of Indigenous Peoples’ biodiversity and traditional knowledge including “Biocolonialism and Indigenous Knowledge in United Nations Discourse,” (2011) 20 Griffith Law Review, “Indigenous Peoples and Gene Disputes” 84 Chicago-Kent Law Review (2009). She also contributed a chapter titled, “Acts of Self-Determination and Self-Defense: Indigenous Peoples Responses to Biocolonialism,” as a contribution to a book entitled “Rights and Liberties in the Biotech Age,” (edited by Sheldon Krimsky and Peter Shorett) 2005. In 1994, Dr. Harry received a three-year national Kellogg Foundation National Leadership Fellowship and studied the field of human genetic research and its implications for Indigenous peoples. Dr. Harry earned her Doctor of Philosophy in the Faculty of Education at the University of Auckland under the supervision of renowned Maori scholar, Dr. Linda Tuhiwai Smith.

Daniel Heimpel is an award-winning journalist and child welfare expert. As the the founder and president of Fostering Media Connections, Heimpel acts as publisher of the non-profit journalism organization’s two publications: The Imprint and Fostering Families Today magazine. He has both written and produced stories about children, youth and families for Newsweek, The San Francisco Chronicle, CNN and the Oprah Winfrey Network among many others. He is also a pioneer in journalism education, with his Journalism for Social Change class having reached hundreds of graduate students at U.C. Berkeley, USC and UPenn, and thousands globally as a massive open online course offered through edX.

Brittany brings deep expertise in due diligence and organizational design to her work at IAF. She first joined the firm as a graduate fellow in 2017, helping to shape the overall strategic direction, and is now an Investment Associate with a particular interest in unlocking asset ownership for communities of color. Prior to joining IAF, she worked as a management consultant in the strategy practice at KPMG, focusing on mergers and acquisitions for large corporate clients, and on financial process improvement for clients at Accenture. She received her M.B.A. from the Chicago Booth School of Business and her B.S. in Business Administration from Hampton University.

As the Vice President, Impact at MaRS DD in Toronto, Allyson has assisted hundreds of social ventures to become economically sustainable and increase their social impact. She led Social Innovation Generation which created a culture of social innovation in Canada. She developed and now supports the Centre for Impact Investing; Solutions Lab; and (formerly) Studio Y. Currently Allyson is working to engage corporate Canada in solving our most complex challenges. She is on faculty at the University of Waterloo (Social Entrepreneurship & CSR) and SingularityU Canada (Impact). She was also the Thinker in Residence developing the “purpose economy” in Australia.

As the International Center for Research on Women (ICRW)’s President and CEO, Sarah Degnan Kambou leads a global research institute dedicated to gender equity, social inclusion and shared prosperity. She is an expert on sexual and reproductive health, HIV/AIDS and adolescent health and livelihoods. With 35+ years of experience in Asia, Eastern Europe and sub-Saharan Africa, Sarah has advised multilaterals, leading corporations and governments seeking to advance the status of women and girls.

Sarah holds a doctorate in international health policy and a master’s in public health from Boston University, and a bachelor’s in French from the University of Connecticut.

Ambassador Dr. Mwaba P. Kasese Bota is a 2020 Advanced Leadership Initiative Fellow Harvard.  

She served as Zambia’s Ambassador to the United Nations and held various positions including chairing the Global Bureau of Land-Locked Developing Countries and Vice President of the UNICEF Executive Board. She co-facilitated the 2016 high-level meeting on HIV/AIDS: and chaired the 49th Commission on Population and Development. She co-chaired the resolution on ending child, early, and forced marriages. A medical doctor and epidemiologist, Mwaba is a recognized expert on social development and public health.  

She previously worked for the USAID and UNICEF in Lusaka Zambia.

Rehmah Kasule is the Founder of CEDA International in Uganda and USA, and a Senior Fellow of Harvard Advanced Leadership Initiative. She is a civil society champion, social innovator, and a prolific serial entrepreneur who started her first business, Century Marketing, at 26 years. In 2007, she shifted from building brands to shifting mind-sets and founded a non-profit organization that is purposefully building a generation of ethical and values-based leaders and entrepreneurs who are economically independent, socially responsible, and politically active. Her work is a catalyst in re-framing people’s thinking to get the agency to take charge of their lives and confidently lead change in their communities. Rehmah has skilled, mentored, and empowered 168,000+ youth and women leaders and entrepreneurs across Africa, including refugee camps, rural and slum areas. Her work was recognized by President Barack Obama in 2010 and has won several international awards, including Fortune/Goldman Sachs Global Women Leaders Award in 2014 and the Islamic Development Bank Women in Peace and Development Prize. Rehmah is a Let Girls Learn Global Ambassador and was named one of the Most Influential African Women in government and civil society in 2016. Amanda Ellis, an International Gender Specialist, described Rehmah as “an African Light House,” guiding the future generation. 

Rehmah is passionate about gender equality, inclusive development, racial justice, diversity, social inclusion, and connectedness. With a 25-year solid track record as a gender and youth empowerment expert, she has mobilized cross-sector strategic partnerships with private, public, civil society, and international organizations. Rehmah has successfully designed and led large-scale impact and innovative projects for girls’ education, peacebuilding, women leadership, youth workforce development, and small and medium enterprises management. She has delivered private sector development, strategic planning, policy, and gender mainstreaming consultancy for the United Nations, African Development Bank, International Trade Centre, and European Investment Bank.

Rehmah is an author of the book “From Gomba to the White House,” speaks on high-level global dialogues, and has held leadership positions on multiple boards. A graduate of Peace, Conflict, and International Development from the University of Bradford, Rehmah is a Vital Voices Fellow, Synergos Senior Fellow, KAICIID International Fellow, and an Aspen Global Leaders Fellow. In 2019, during the yearlong fellowship at Harvard University, she innovated the PLUS+AFRICA Linkubator. This social venture is focused on the ‘future of work’ by creating employment pathways for youth and working with governments to strengthen the education-to-work and entrepreneurship eco-systems in Africa. 

Rehmah was born a village girl, but she refused to become a village woman. From a young age, she questioned the discrimination and injustices caused by the gender, religious, racial, and patriarchal cultural norms that impede girls and women from fulfilling their potentials. She strongly believes that education breaks intergenerational cycles of poverty and she is committed to providing opportunities to change life trajectories - one girl at a time.

Natalie is Deputy Director at the Asia Philanthropy Circle, a platform for Asia-based philanthropists to learn, exchange and collaborate on projects in the region. Based in Singapore, her focus is on the growth of strategic philanthropy in Myanmar, Vietnam and Malaysia with a personal passion for projects in the areas of climate change and equity in education. Prior to joining APC, Natalie worked with a small consultancy delivering capacity-building to social impact organisations. In this role, she led cross-sector collaborations between multiple stakeholders including corporate foundations and social responsibility teams, grantmaking institutions, government statutory boards, nonprofit organisations, and social enterprises.

Previously, she was involved with a grantmaking organisation investing in education and library initiatives in rural areas of Myanmar and Cambodia. In the private sector, Natalie has worked in investment banking at Deutsche Bank, equity research at Morgan Stanley, and private equity consulting at Kurt Salmon Associates. She has a degree in Chemical Engineering from Princeton University.

She has lived in Singapore for 12 years with her husband and four active children.

Henriette leads the Gender and Economic Inclusion Group at the International Finance Corporation (IFC), a member of the World Bank Group. She serves as an advocate for equality issues in the private sector and works with IFC’s clients to include both women and men as entrepreneurs, employees, consumers, community stakeholders and leaders. She leads a global team that is engaged in co-creating gender-smart private sector solutions through research, investments, advice and peer learning platforms. Before joining IFC in September 2013, Henriette was the CEO of the Cherie Blair Foundation for Women. Earlier in her career, Henriette was the UN representative in the Middle East Quartet team advising Tony Blair in Jerusalem. She also worked for the Office of the UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process (UNSCO).

Romy is the Managing Director of the Guerrilla Foundation that supports social movements and activists working in Europe to address the root causes of systemic injustices. She is excited about participatory grantmaking and other ways of enhancing the participation of those doing the work in philanthropic decision- and strategy-making. Romy is a mother and yogi and loves long walks in the forest. She studied translocal organizing processes within the anti-mining movement and holds a PhD in Business Society-Management from the Rotterdam School of Management. Romy has also worked in the field of social entrepreneurship education where she developed and ran one of the first global MOOCs for social entrepreneurs.

Hali Lee has spent her career doing her best to democratize and diversify the field and practice of philanthropy. She is a Co-Founder of the Donors of Color Network, the first ever national project that is researching, engaging and networking high net wealth donors of color across race, ethnicity and life experience. She was a member of the co-design team that birthed Philanthropy Together in 2020, built to scale and strengthen the burgeoning collective giving movement nationally.

Hali is the founder of the Asian Women Giving Circle, which raises resources for Asian American women using the arts to bring about social change in their NYC communities. In fifteen years, the Circle has made grants of over one million dollars in support of eighty amazing projects. Currently, Hali participates in several philanthropy-sector initiatives, including the Impact Driven Philanthropy Collaborative at the Raikes Foundation, the Momentum Fund, and the decennial Deloitte/ Monitor Institute Philanthropy 2020.

Hali was born in Seoul, South Korea and grew up in Kansas City. She graduated from Princeton University, studied Buddhism at Mahidol University in Bangkok, Thailand, and received a Masters in Social Work from New York University. Hali has worked in many capacities and served on many boards, often combining a love of learning, the arts and equitable social change.

Hali lives in Brooklyn, NY along with her dear husband, three college-age children, two cats and a big dog. In her free time, Hali loves to travel, read, play tennis and keep rooftop honeybees.

Christina Lewis’ work sits at the intersection of technology, philanthropy, entrepreneurship and Black lives. She is the Founder of All Star Code, a computer science education nonprofit focused on young men of color. She is also a Co-Founder of Give Blck, a comprehensive database of Black nonprofit organizations and Treasurer of her family grant-making entity, The Reginald F. Lewis Foundation. An award-winning journalist, she is the author of “Lonely at the Top,” a Kindle Single. From 2005-2010 she was a staff writer for The Wall Street Journal. She began her career on the night cops beat in Stamford, Conn. She lives in New York with her husband and three children.

Federico Navarrete Linares, PhD in Mesoamerican Studies, Full Professor at Instituto de Investigaciones Históricas, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México.

He does research on the history of the Native peoples of the Americas and their relations with European and Africans, and the way they have adapted to the process of colonization and State building. He is internationally recognized as a pathbreaking researcher and writer on the Mesoamerican visual histories and their relation with oral and ritual traditions, as well as their adaptation to the Colonial context and their appropriation of European scriptural and pictorical practices. He has published articles on that subject in the United States, Mexico, Brazil and Germany. He has published and lectured extensively on the military conquest of Mexico and the indispensable role played by the Indigenous conquistadors. He also works on racism and discrimination in contemporary Latin America. Some of his recent books are Who really conquered Mexico? (2019), Mexica histories (2018), Alphabet of Mexican Racism (2017), Racist Mexico (2016). He also publishes historical novels, such as El códice perdido (2017).

Dr. Lu possesses decades of expertise in maternal and child health policy. He is currently dean of the school of public health at the University of California, Berkeley, and previously a senior associate dean at the Milken Institute School of Public Health at George Washington University. 

Lu served as director of the federal Maternal and Child Health Bureau under the Obama Administration. During his tenure, he transformed key federal programs in maternal and child health, and launched major initiatives to reduce maternal, infant, and child mortality across the nation. He oversaw the launch and expansion of the federal Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting (MIECHV) Program. For his leadership, he was awarded the prestigious U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Hubert H. Humphrey Service to America Award in 2013.

Prior to his public service, Lu was a professor of obstetrics-gynecology and public health at UCLA, where his research focused on racial-ethnic disparities in birth outcomes from a life-course perspective. He co-directed the residency program in obstetrics and gynecology and a training grant in maternal and child health, and received several prestigious awards for his teaching. As a practicing obstetrician for nearly two decades, he has attended more than 1000 births, and has been voted one of the Best Doctors in America since 2005. Lu has served on three National Academy of Medicine Committees, and co-authored the recently released report  Vibrant and Healthy Kids: Aligning Science, Practice, and Policy to Advance Health Equity.  

Lu received his bachelor’s degrees in political science and human biology from Stanford University, master’s degrees in health and medical sciences and public health from UC Berkeley, medical degree from UC San Francisco, and residency training in obstetrics and gynecology from UC Irvine.

Dr. Ifrah Magan currently serves as an Assistant Professor at New York University Silver School of Social Work. A qualitative researcher and social worker, Dr. Magan incorporates storytelling as a method for understanding the lived experiences of refugee and immigrant populations, particularly with regard to faith and culture. Dr. Magan takes an intersectional approach to research in vulnerable communities, focusing particularly on race, religion, gender, and class. She has extensive experience working with Somali, Rohingya, Iraqi, and Syrian refugee populations in the United States. Dr. Magan was also the Qualitative Research Lead on the MacArthur Foundation 100&Change funded partnership with Sesame Workshop and the International Rescue Committee to provide early childhood programming for refugee families in the Middle East. Dr. Magan received a Bachelor of Science degree in Family and Community Services from Michigan State University, where she was a Ronald E. McNair Scholar. She then went on to receive a Master’s degree from the University of Chicago’s School of Social Service Administration where she received the Kathryn Davis Peace Award and served as a Child Advocate for unaccompanied undocumented children through the Young Center at the University of Chicago School of Law. She received her doctorate from University of Illinois at Chicago, Jane Addams College of Social Work, where she received the Abraham Lincoln Fellowship and the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Service Award.

Dr. Magan is fluent in English, Somali, and Arabic.

Dr. Manuel Pastor is a Distinguished Professor of Sociology and American Studies & Ethnicity at the University of Southern California (USC). He currently directs the USC Equity Research Institute (formerly known as Program for Environmental and Regional Equity (PERE) and the Center for the Study of Immigrant Integration (CSII). Pastor is the Turpanjian Chair in Civil Society and Social Change at USC, and holds an economics Ph.D. from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

Pastor’s research has generally focused on issues of the economic, environmental and social conditions facing low-income urban communities – and the social movements seeking to change those realities. Pastor’s most recent books covering those topics include State of Resistance: What California's Dizzying Descent and Remarkable Resurgence Means for America's Future (New Press 2018), and Equity, Growth, and Community: What the Nation Can Learn from America's Metro Areas, co-authored with Chris Benner (UC Press 2015).

Pastor currently serves on California Governor Gavin Newsom’s Council of Economic Advisors and on the California Business and Jobs Recovery Task Force. He previously served on the California Strategic Growth Council, the Commission on Regions appointed by California’s Speaker of the State Assembly, and the Regional Targets Advisory Committee for the California Air Resources Board. In 2012, he received the Liberty Hill Foundation’s Wally Marks Changemaker of the Year award for social justice research partnership, and in 2017, he was awarded the Champion for Equity award from Advancement Project, California.

Twila Martin Kekahbah is an independent contractor. Some of her previous experience includes Director of Tribal Analytic Institute, Community Liaison for the Northwest Area Foundation and Policy Analyst for the National Indian Health Board. Twila has a tribal affiliation with the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians, she served as the chairperson and was the first female to be seated as the head of the Tribal Government for three terms. She holds a Bachelor of Science from University of North Dakota and M.ED; MFA from Pennsylvania State University.

Twila has visited over 34 countries with majority of the visits sponsored by: W.K. Kellogg Leadership Award; the U.S. State Department; the Phelps-Stokes Fund; the Ford Foundation Fellowship; the Rural Development Leadership Network; and Oxfam.

María Regina Martínez Casas has a degree in linguistics with a major in neuro psychology, a MD in Social anthropology and a PhD in Anthropological Sciences with a sociolinguistic orientation.

She is senior Professor in the Research and Higher Studies on Social Anthropology Center in Mexico (Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social). She is member of the Nacional Research System and the Mexican Academy of Sciences.

She coordinated the post graduate program in Indoamerican linguistics, she was vice Director of Higher Studies and Academic Decan in CIESAS.

She has been guest researcher in many national and international institutions such as Cambridge University in the UK, the population laboratory in the Centre de Recherche pour le development in Marseille, France and in Princeton University in the US.

Her academic contributions are focused in linguistic development, cultural validity of linguistic and educative policies, indigenous migration and its consequences in the development of identities, education, discrimination and inequalities in Mexico and Latin America from both qualitative and quantitative perspectives.

She has been doing field work among different indigenous peoples and following the linguistic dynamic among Nahuas, Otomíes, Chinantecos, Puréhpecha, Wiraritari and Mixtec peoples. She coordinated in Mexico the Project on Race and Ethnicity in Latin America and the project about the transborder region Mexico-Guatemala. She has written more than 50 specialized papers and books about these themes.

She has been technical advisor in different academic committees and in the Nacional Evaluation Institute for Education and in the Nacional Committee for Indigenous Peoples.

Dr. Natasha Matic is the Chief Strategy Officer of the King Khalid Foundation (KKF), a leading philanthropic institution in Saudi Arabia working to create equal economic opportunities. For the past 25 years, Natasha worked with organizations globally and provided practical solutions to challenges in philanthropy, corporate sustainability, impact entrepreneurship and social and economic development.

Through her leadership, Natasha spearheaded the Foundation into an era of strategic philanthropy, an era that emphasizes innovation and a systems-change approach to solving inequalities in partnership with businesses, government, and the global philanthropic community. Previously, through her consulting practice, Natasha worked with both for-profit and non-profit organizations to embed ethical, social, and governance (ESG) accountability into their organizational DNA through strategy development and impact-focused solutions. Natasha holds a Ph.D. in Economic and Political Studies from Boston University and a Degree in Business Excellence from the Columbia Business School. She holds an International Law Degree from Belgrade University. Natasha is a Member of AccountAbility’s Sustainability Standards Board, MIT’s Legatum Center for Development and Entrepreneurship Advisory Board, and is the Foundation20 Steering Committee Member.

Dr. Judith McKenzie is an associate professor in the Disability Studies Division at the University of Cape Town in the Department of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences. She convenes the Disability Studies in Education course in the postgraduate diploma in Disability Studies and supervises masters and doctoral students. She was the principal investigator responsible for the successful completion in August 2020 of the Teacher Empowerment for Disability Inclusion (TEDI) project, in collaboration with CBM, co-funded by CBM and the European Union. Currently she is director of the research unit, Including Disability in Education in Africa (IDEA) which aims to promote the inclusion of disability in education at all levels, both formal and informal, in Africa and beyond, to ensure no-one is left behind in the pursuit of equitable quality education and lifelong learning. She has worked in the field of inclusive education for over 20 years at all levels of the education system and has published extensively on this and other topics. She is the mother of a young man with Down Syndrome and has an intense interest and engagement with issues surrounding intellectual disability on both personal and professional levels. She views inclusion as an issue of social justice and equity, within an  intersectional framework that recognises the overlapping systems of discrimination race, class, disability and gender and other identity markers.

Carolyn Miles is currently teaching humanitarianism at Maxwell School of International Affairs at Syracuse University. She is also a member of the newly formed Sustainability Council at Bayer AG, advising the Board on sustainability matters. She served as Chief Executive Officer of Save the Children, an organization that gives children in the United States and around the world a healthy start, the opportunity to learn and protection from harm. Serving over 150M children worldwide, Save the Children committed to driving down the numbers of preventable deaths of children under 5, ensuring every child gets a high-quality basic education and protecting all children from harm.

Miles joined the U.S. organization in 1998, was COO from 2004-2011, and became President and CEO in September 2011, retiring in January 2020. Under her senior leadership, the organization more than doubled the number of children it reached with nutrition, health, education and other programs. Resources were over $830M in 2019. Miles' signature issues include gender equality, hunger, learning outcomes, and ending preventable child deaths.

Prior to Save the Children, she worked in the private sector in Hong Kong for American Express and as an entrepreneur. While in Asia, she confronted the deprivation of the region’s children, which motivated her to dedicate her life to their welfare.

In addition to her current service on the UVA Darden School of Business Board, she served as the Co-Chair of the US Global Leadership Coalition (USGLC) and Chair of InterAction, the largest coalition of US-based NGOs. In 2015, Miles was named one of the 50 World's Greatest Leaders by Fortune magazine and inducted into the CT Women’s Hall of Fame. In 2017 she received the Distinguished Alumna Award from the Maxine Platzer Lynn Women’s Center at the University of Virginia. In 2019, Miles received the Jonathan M. Daniels Humanitarian Award from Virginia Military Institute.  Miles is married with 3 children.

Natalia Molina is a Professor in the Department of American Studies and Ethnicity at the University of Southern California. She is the author of two award-winning books, How Race Is Made in America:  Immigration, Citizenship, and the Historical Power of Racial Scripts and Fit to Be Citizens?: Public Health and Race in Los Angeles, 1879-1940. Her work examines the interconnectedness of racial and ethnic communities through her concept of "racial scripts" which looks at how practices, customs, policies and laws that are directed at one group and are readily available and hence easily applied to other groups. Professor Molina is currently finishing her book, Place-Makers: How Mexican Immigrants Made Home in Los Angeles and beginning research on a new book, The Silent Hands that Shaped the Huntington: A History of Its Mexican Workers.

Professor Molina is a 2020 MacArthur Fellow. She has also been the recipient of major, nationally competitive awards including those from the National Endowment for the Humanities, Ford Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, and Mellon Foundation. She is also the recipient of a university-wide Distinguished Teaching Award.

Graziella Moraes Silva is Associate Professor in Anthropology and Sociology at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva, Swizerland. She is also affiliated to the Graduate Program in Sociology and Anthropology (PPGSA) and to the Interdisciplinary Network for the Study of Inequality (NIED) at Federal University of Rio de Janeiro and the Center for Social Development in Africa, at the University of Johannesburg in South Africa. She is one of the authors of "Getting Respect: Dealing with Stigmatization and Discrimination in the United States, Brazil and Israel" (Princeton University Press 2016), and "Pigmentocracies: Ethnicity, Race, and Color in Latin America" (University of North Carolina Press 2014). Her work has been featured in journals such as Socio-Economic Review, Ethnic and Racial Studies, Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Ethnic Studies, Journal of Latin American Studies among others.

Dr. Eva M. Moya is an Associate Professor in the Department of Social Work at the University of Texas at El Paso. She is a heath disparities researcher and community engaged scholar with an interest in developing policy and education interventions to improve prevention efforts in underserved populations. Her work seeks to design community-based interventions using social determinants and ecological model strategies to address health inequalities in communities of color. She has worked to address the burden of social and health inequalities in the U.S.-Mexico Border for the past 37 years, primarily in a multi and interdisciplinary fashion. Research trajectory includes projects in community-based participatory research, social work macro practice approaches, use of Photovoice method, homelessness, and HPV education technology with Latino populations. She conducts community-engaged scholarship initiatives focused on high impact practices in education, homelessness and interdisciplinary education. Dr. Moya is also experienced in working with faculty and students as well as community partners in the areas of qualitative research, educational interventions and training of community health workers. She has successfully administered federal and binational research projects, collaborated with other scholars and researchers, and produced more than 30 peer-review publications and 13 book chapters. She is a Kellogg Fellow and board member of the Alliance of Leadership Fellows. Eva received the 2020 Othli Award from the Government of Mexico General Consulate in El Paso for leadership and service to Mexican communities in the United States.  

Professor Florence Mtambanengwe is the Executive Director for Research and Innovation at the University of Zimbabwe. She is a Full Professor of Soil Productivity and Agro-systems Development and holds a PhD in Agriculture (Soil Science), from the University of Zimbabwe, Zimbabwe. Her areas of specialization include: participatory action research with emphasis on African smallholder communities; climate change adaptation and its impacts on common natural resource pools, among many socio-ecological issues. Prof. Mtambanengwe takes a leading role in impact-oriented research with particular emphasis on women and is a proponent for racial equity in the agricultural and environmental research and innovation space.

Cecilia Muñoz is a national leader in public policy and public interest technology with nearly three decades of experience in the non-profit sector and 8 years of service on President Obama’s senior team. She joined New America in 2017 as a Vice President, leading initiatives and building a team on public interest technology. She returned to New America as a Senior Advisor in early 2021 after taking leave to lead the domestic and economic policy team at the Biden/Harris Transition.

Previously, she served for eight years on President Obama’s senior staff, first as Director of Intergovernmental Affairs followed by five years as Director of the Domestic Policy Council. Before working in government, she spent 20 years at the National Council of La Raza (now UNIDOS US), the nation’s largest Hispanic policy and advocacy organization. Cecilia is also a Senior Fellow at Results for America, a nonprofit that advances the use of data and evidence in policy making. She received a MacArthur Fellowship in 2000 for her work on immigration and civil rights, and is a trustee of Kresge and MacArthur Foundations. She advises the Open Society and JPB Foundations, and serves on the boards of several nonprofit organizations. In 2020, she published the award-winning More Than Ready: Be Strong and Be You...and Other Lessons for Women of Color on the Rise, which shares insights from her career as well as the careers of other notable women of color. Muñoz, a Detroit native and the daughter of immigrants from Bolivia, is also a wife and mother of two grown daughters. She lives with her husband in Maryland.

Sudha is a nationally regarded organizer, facilitator, strategist, and movement builder focused on democratizing systems of power. Sudha has led systems changing initiatives for social, environmental, and racial justice across sectors, including government, nonprofits, and philanthropy. Through her work she has built expertise in stakeholder engagement, collaborative problem solving, and power building with communities of color, immigrants, and refugees. As CEO of SVP International, Sudha cultivates and expands a global philanthropic network of 3500+ changemakers to catalyze more resources to communities, to share their power and wealth with communities, and to listen to and provide communities what they need most.

Ngware is Senior Research Scientist and heads Africa Population and Health Research Centre’s Education and Youth Empowerment Unit. His research work has led to many innovations, for instance, the introduction of classroom observations using digital cameras and assessing teacher pedagogical knowledge in the region. He has used advanced research methods, including mixed methods and RCTs, to generate policy-relevant evidence as well as translate knowledge for policy uptake.  His leadership in education research and evaluations has witnessed the completion of more than 18 impact evaluations and surveys in sub-Saharan Africa that improved policymakers’ understanding of what is happening in the education sector. He is currently engaged with what is happening inside the classroom, how youth transit to workplaces and impact evaluation of education interventions that aim to improve education systems. Ngware has a Ph.D. in Economics of Education from Egerton University, Kenya, and has over 100 different types of scientific publications.

Renato Noguera is associate professor of the department of education and society (DES), of the Undergraduate Program in Education, Contemporary Contexts and Popular Demands (PPGEduc), and the Undergraduate Program in Philosophy (PPGfil) at the Federal Rural University of Rio de Janeiro ( UFRRJ). Renato is also Researcher at the Laboratory of Afro-Brazilian and Indigenous Studies (Leafro), and Coordinator of the Afroperspective, Knowledge, and Childhood Research Group (Afrosin) that integrates the Research Groups Directory of the National Council for Scientific Research (Cnpq).

Rebecca is a public health researcher leading partnerships for the City Health Dashboard, a project of NYU School of Medicine’s Department of Population Health. Rebecca’s role is to help get data into the hands of those who can make a difference in health and equity at the local level. She works at the intersection of research and policymaking, with a special interest in women’s health and maternal health disparities. Rebecca is skilled at building partnerships across sectors, and has worked in academia, non-profit, government and private sectors. Rebecca is currently a DrPH student at Rutgers University, with a BS in Biochemical Engineering from Rutgers University, and an MPH in Environmental Health Sciences and Toxicology from Columbia University.

Hibaaq Osman is the founder of Karama, a movement to end violence against women, and deliver sustainable, inclusive peace and democracy in Africa and the Middle East. Hibaaq’s work has ranged from reconciliation and peacebuilding in , campaigning for justice and recognition for Korea’s ‘comfort women’, and supporting grassroots women activists to build constituencies and secure their rights in the wake of the revolutions in North Africa and the Middle East. Named one of the world’s 500 Most Influential Muslims, Hibaaq is a board member of the Generation Equality Forum Women, Peace & Security and Humanitarian Action Compact and the UN Alliance of Civilisations' Women's Alliance for Peace, a senior fellow at the James MacGregor Burns Academy of Leadership at Churchill College, University of Cambridge, and member of the Yale African Women’s Leadership Network.

Mavis Owusu-Gyamfi is the Executive Vice President at the African Center for Economic Transformation (ACET). She is a political economist by training, with over 20 years’ international development experience in Africa, Asia and Eastern Caribbean. As a private sector development specialist, she has led multi-sectoral teams across organisations to develop and successfully implement programmes in the social and economic sectors. In 2016, she joined a newly established NGO, the Power of Nutrition, as its Director of Investments, overseeing rapid growth across a dozen African and Asian countries. She holds an MPhil from the University of Sussex.

Heather D. Parish serves as Co-Executive Director for the Pierce Family Foundation, which provides “full mission funding” for nonprofits that serve people experiencing homelessness in Chicago. Prior to joining the foundation in 2013, she worked for 17+ years as an independent consultant to nonprofits and foundations engaged in community development initiatives. She currently serves on the Truth, Racial Healing and Transformation (TRHT) Greater Chicago Leadership Advisory Committee. Heather holds a BA in Applied Mathematics from UC Berkeley, and a Master of Public Policy degree from the Harvard Kennedy School, where she specialized in Housing, Community Development and Urban Economic Development.

Brian Payne is the president and CEO of Central Indiana Community Foundation (CICF) and The Indianapolis Foundation. Since he joined CICF in November 2000, the foundation’s annual grantmaking has more than doubled to over $50 million. CICF’s mission is to mobilize people, ideas and investments to create a community where all individuals have an equitable opportunity to reach their full potential—no matter place, race or identity.

Brian is the founder/artistic director of the Indianapolis Cultural Trail: A Legacy of Gene & Marilyn Glick. The national consulting firm, Project for Public Spaces, chose the Indianapolis Cultural Trail as the best North American example of a big, bold, transformative project that is changing the way we think of cities and city life. The US Department of Transportation awarded the Cultural Trail a $20.5 million TIGER I grant, one of only 51 grants awarded out of 1,400 proposals submitted in a merit-based competitive process.

Under Brian’s leadership, CICF has made dismantling systemic racism in central Indiana a multi-generational commitment. CICF has been recognized locally and nationally for the boldness of its commitment and the progress of its early actions. 

Brian presently serves on the boards of the Indy Chamber, Visit Indy, and TeenWorks. Locally, he serves as the Board Chair of The District Theatre and the Vice-Chair of the IUPUI Advisory Board. Nationally, he is the board chair of Forward Cities, an organization committed to helping cities build inclusive economic growth.

Brian is a much sought-after speaker nationally and internationally. His themes include equity in opportunity and dismantling systemic racism, neighborhood empowerment, placemaking and gentrification, multi-modal transportation, trails, livability and the power of connectivity. He has been the keynote speaker for the Centre City Congress in Calgary, the City Club of Cleveland, the Texas Trails Active Transportation Conference, Trailnet and Great Rivers Greenways, both in St. Louis, Sportsbackers in Richmond, VA, the Akron/Cleveland Association of Realtors and numerous leadership conferences. He has also spoken at national conferences of the American Planning Association, CEOs for Cities, Forward Cities, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Council of Foundations and the United Way. He has consulted with dozens of cities in the US and Canada on urban trail projects.

Brian is the recipient of the Indianapolis Business Journal’s Michael A. Carroll Leadership Award, Visit Indy’s prestigious Bill McGowan Leadership Award and the Indiana University Public Policy Institute’s John L. Krauss Award for Innovation in Public Policy. He has also been honored as a Civil Rights Champion by the Indiana Civil Rights Commission, the Indiana Citizen Planner of the Year, and has been recognized as one of the world's most powerful Hoosiers. In 2016, Brian was recognized as an Indiana Living Legend by the Indiana Historical Society. 

Shahla Raza is an accomplished documentary filmmaker, journalist, television producer, and humanitarian aid worker from India. In 2016, Shahla established the Yusra Community Center in Istanbul: a volunteer-run and funded safe space for children and women from displaced families seeking refuge in Turkey. Now in its fourth year of operations, Yusra runs a successful school readiness program for kindergartners, a nutrition program for children of all ages, livelihood support and training for women, a family mental-health intervention program and several other programs geared at helping displaced families settle into their new environment. In 2013 she founded the Dhai Akshar Educational Trust in Mumbai, India, which serves over a hundred underprivileged children and their families.

L. Song Richardson is the Dean and Chancellor’s Professor of Law at the University of California, Irvine School of Law with joint appointments in the Department of Criminology, Law and Society and in the Department of Asian American Studies. She received her AB from Harvard College and her JD from Yale Law School. On July 1, 2020, she will become the 14th President of Colorado College.

Her legal career has included partnership at a boutique criminal law firm and work as a state and federal public defender. She was also an Assistant Counsel at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. Immediately upon graduation from law school, Dean Richardson was a Skadden Arps Public Interest Fellow with the National Immigration Law Center in Los Angeles and the Legal Aid Society’s Immigration Unit in Brooklyn, NY.  

A leading expert on implicit racial and gender bias in a variety of contexts, including emerging technologies, Richardson is frequently invited to speak to judges, law firms, district attorney and public defender offices, police departments, universities, bar associations, and private industry across the world about the science of implicit bias and its influence on decisions, perceptions, and judgments. She has consulted with public and private entities seeking to develop practices to address racial and gender disparities within their organizations and practices. She is also a leading expert on race and policing, including numerous articles on police violence. She has worked with police departments seeking to understand and address the impact of race on their policing practices.

Dean Richardson is a member of the American Law Institute, the country’s leading independent organization made up of elected judges, academics, and practitioners, which publishes works to clarify and improve the law. She is also on the Executive Committee of the Association of American Law Schools, an association whose goal is to uphold and advance excellence in legal education, including promoting the core values of excellence in teaching and scholarship, academic freedom, and diversity while seeking to improve the legal profession, to foster justice, and to serve local, national and international communities. In 2020, she was also appointed by Gov. Newsom to the CA Penal Code Revision Committee.

Deepti Rohatgi is the Head of Slack for Good and Public Affairs where she oversees all of Slack's social impact and public affairs. Prior to joining Slack, Deepti led government affairs at Lookout Mobile Security, was a Director of Policy at Yahoo and served as a diplomat and Director of IT and Telecommunications Policy at the U.S. Department of State. She holds a M.S. in Industrial Engineering and a B.A. in Public Policy from Stanford University.

Layla F. Saad is a New York Times and Sunday Times bestselling author, anti-racism educator, international speaker, and podcast host on the topics of race, identity, leadership, personal transformation and social change.

She is the author of the ground-breaking Me and White Supremacy, an anti-racism education workbook that was initially offered for free in an Instagram challenge and in a self-published digital workbook in 2018 (downloaded by 100,000 people in the space of six months). Me and White Supremacy debuted on the New York Times and USA Today bestsellers lists. It is also an Amazon, Wall Street Journal, Indie, and Pacific Northwest bestseller.

Layla is an East African, Arab, British, Black, Muslim woman who was born and grew up in the West, and lives in Middle East. Layla has always sat at a unique intersection of identities from which she is able to draw rich and intriguing perspectives. Her work is driven by her powerful desire to become a good ancestor; to live and work in ways that leave a legacy of healing and liberation for those who will come after she is gone.

Layla has been featured in ELLE, PAPER, BBC News, BBC Radio 4, PBS, Glamour UK, MarieClaire UK, Cosmopolitan UK, Refinery29 UK, The Irish Times, Stylist, goop, NowThis News, Jezebel, Psychology Today, Forbes and many more. Her work has been brought into homes, educational institutions and workplaces around the world that are seeking to create personal and collective change. Layla lives in Doha, Qatar with her husband, Sam, and two children, Maya and Mohamed.

Innovative, results-oriented leader, entrepreneur and coach with 25 years of successful experience in international management and applied research at civil society organizations throughout the Americas. Academic training in public policy, international development, science and engineering. Leadership development, strategy design, fundraising, negotiation, team-building, networking, alliance building and management skills. Experience in housing, microfinance, public policy, migration, environment, agriculture and international development cooperation. Member of WKKF Community Leadership Network, board of directors and advisory committees at local and international organizations. Bicultural and fluent in English and Spanish. 

Juan Salgado, City Colleges of Chicago Chancellor, has focused his career on improving education and economic opportunities for residents in low-income communities. As Chancellor, he oversees Chicago's community college system, serving nearly 70,000 students across seven colleges. Under Chancellor Salgado's leadership, City Colleges of Chicago has focused on removing barriers to college access, strengthening program quality, and enhancing student supports to create pathways to upward mobility. Previously, he served as CEO of Instituto del Progreso Latino, where he worked to empower residents of Chicago’s Southwest Side through education, citizenship, and skill-building programs that led to sustainable employment and economic stability. Salgado was named a MacArthur Fellow in 2015. He is also a member of the board of the Obama Foundation and MacArthur Foundation.

Tembinkosi is a keen researcher and practitioner with a passion for applying foresight driven innovation, systems thinking, and data science to resolve the wicked problems of our time, namely poverty and inequality. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Economics and Geography, a Master of Science degree in Geo-information Systems and is currently a PhD student in Data Science. He has contributed to, and co-authored a number of refereed publication in the following areas: Innovation, Futures Strategy and Computer Science, and has contributed to a book chapter on the development of Innovation Systems in South Africa.

He has over the past 20 years coordinated local and international projects working with partners in these disciplines across Africa, Europe, in Canada, Mexico, and USA. He recently co-facilitated the WK Kellogg Foundation Global Summit on World Food Systems, 2018, in Atlanta, Georgia, USA. He is currently mentoring four start-up companies seeking to apply digital technologies to solve human problems.

Celina Solís is a developer of alternative solutions leading to meaningful social and environmental changes. She is very passionate about serving as a bridge between historically marginalized populations and decision-makers in the fields of equitable food access, climate-smart agriculture, as well as maternal and child wellness equity. Celina is a recipient of the Latin American and Caribbean Social Leadership Scholarship awarded by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation. She is a Ph.D. candidate in Integrated Studies in Land and Food Systems at the University of British Columbia in Canada. Celina has more than 12 years of experience working for the equitable futures of women, small farmers and Indigenous people especially in the Mayan communities of Mexico.

Founder & CEO of Elevate, a non-profit organization dedicated to giving gifted young women who have been forced from their homes by conflict or climate change the opportunity of a first-class, STEM-focused education and employment with one of our Fortune 500 partner companies. We work with academic and corporate partners who share our belief in equality, diversity and purpose. Previously, worked at I.D.E.A on Wall Street. Director for Latin America and Sub-Saharan Africa at Institutional Investor. Council on Foreign Relations Member. Young Global Leader with the World Economic Forum and former Advisory Board Member. 2017 Yale Greenberg World Fellow. Former UNHCR Innovation Council Board member. Former Advisory Board member of the Humanitarian Innovation Project at the University of Oxford’s Refugee Studies Centre. Figurative Sculptor.

Dr. Marc Spencer has devoted his 30+ year career to organizations that promote educational and economic opportunities to young people and communities. Marc’s leadership is defined by a commitment to social justice and equity, paired with an entrepreneurial spirit and drive. In 2017, Marc became CEO and Board President of Summer Search, a $23MM youth development organization that has sites in five U.S. cities and serves 3700 students in pursuit of achieving higher education and career aspirations. Prior to Summer Search, Marc served for a decade as CEO of Juma Ventures, a nonprofit social enterprise that strives to break the cycle of poverty by paving the way to work, education, and financial capability for under-resourced youth. He is credited with scaling Juma to nine U.S. cities and building 20+ businesses that created 1000s of jobs. In 2019, Marc merged Recharge, a social networking group of Black Professionals, with the Coalition of Black Excellence and became co-CEO on a voluntary basis.

Marc’s achievements include fundraising over $100MM for charities, the development of a San Francisco African American independent school, the design and directorship of the nation’s first Upward Bound Visual and Performing Arts program, the creation of a national matched college savings platform for low-income, first generation students, and the creation of a national manufacturing internship program. He has been an adviser at the Aspen Institute and served on numerous boards such as the National Youth Employment Coalition, Social Enterprise Alliance, City of San Francisco Youth Council, Oakland Workforce Investment Board, the Museum of the African Diaspora, Evergreen and Rush Creek Lodge, Culture Shifts Labs, the Commonwealth Club and others. He holds an EdD and an MA in Education from University of San Francisco and a BA in Anthropology from UCLA. Marc’s love of learning inspired him to complete executive certificates in nonprofit business management from Harvard and Stanford.

Sheldon Spotted Elk works at a national non-profit dedicated to safely reduce the amount of children in foster care, he provides technical assistance for Tribal and state courts on child welfare issues. He regularly trains court professionals and presents on Tribal child welfare and Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) issues.

He also currently serves as tribal court of appeals judge in the same jurisdiction that he once represented children in dependency and delinquency issues. Mr. Spotted Elk also teaches a summer law course on Family Law in Indian Country. He has published an article on tribal constitutional reform in the Tribal Law Journal and articles on the ICWA.

Mr. Spotted Elk graduated from University of New Mexico School of Law with a Certificate in Indian Law and received the CALI Award for Economic Development in Indian Country. He received his BSW from University of Utah College of Social Work.

Mr. Spotted Elk is a member of the Northern Cheyenne Tribe from Lame Deer, Montana and has two sons.

Erik serves as Executive Director of Native Americans in Philanthropy, a national organization advocating for stronger and more meaningful investments by the philanthropic sector in tribal communities. Previously, he served as the Executive Director for the Center for Native American Youth at the Aspen Institute. He has held positions at the Center for American Progress on their Poverty to Prosperity team, as Majority Staff Counsel for the U.S. Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, and in the Obama administration as a Policy Advisor at the U.S. Department of Education. Erik began his career in Washington, D.C. at the National Congress of American Indians Policy Research Center.

He holds a J.D. from UCLA School of Law, an M.A. in American Indian Studies from UCLA’s Graduate Division, and a B.A. from Whittier College.

Barbara Stinson assumed leadership of the World Food Prize Foundation in January 2020 having previously served as a co-founder and Senior Partner of the Meridian Institute. Ms. Stinson has more than 30 years of experience in environmental public policy and business management. She has led programs focused on innovative approaches to agricultural development, alternative energy development, ecosystem restoration, air-quality management, natural resource management, and low-level radioactive waste disposal. Since 2011, Ms. Stinson directed the Partnership for Aflatoxin Control in Africa (PACA).

She earned a master’s degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a Bachelor of Arts in environmental conservation from the University of Colorado, Boulder.

Negar is a passionate refugee-rights advocate and has been working as a financial activist raising $32 million for the global grassroots refugee response. The funding covered humanitarian and long-term needs, including advocacy and strategic litigation of more than 1,5 million people across key migration routes.

From 2009 to 2015, Negar worked on 20 international development projects in nine countries with UN agencies, governments, bilateral donors, and NGOs.

She is currently the co-founder and Director of the Global Whole Being Fund (GWBF), an international fund supporting the humanitarian and long-term needs of people on the move (forcibly displaced people). The GWBF focuses on grassroots ecosystems along migration routes applying a holistic approach. The support covers life-saving services such as sea rescue, tent, food, legal, employment, educational services, and housing. Grassroots organizations receive, on average less than 0.4% of humanitarian funding.

The GWBF identifies emerging and innovative grassroots organizations and leaders, namely from the local and refugee communities, and invests in these through grants and capacity development.

Negar also runs her coaching practice ‘Resonance Coaching,’ working with individuals and teams worldwide. She supports individuals and groups in their process of finding meaning and purpose, making career shifts, re-defining their values compass, and living our potential.

Stefanie brings years of transactional experience and a devotion to driving more equitable capital in venture to her work at IAF. She joined the firm in 2015 and is particularly interested in the network effects that propel bootstrapped entrepreneurs—a focus inspired by her father who overcame tremendous challenges as a low-income business owner. Prior to joining IAF, she co-founded Quarterback Impact while also managing fund development for an impact investment evergreen project. In 2014, she led a 6,000-mile road trip across the US to meet and work with entrepreneurs who are focused on making an impact in their local communities. Before the switch to venture, Stefanie served as a Vice President in Citigroup's global banking division. She received her M.B.A. from the Ross School at the University of Michigan and her B.S. in Economics from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.

Urvashi Vaid is an attorney, organizer, and consultant whose leadership has encompassed foundations, academic institutions and social movement organizations. Vaid is President of The Vaid Group LLC, a mission driven consulting and social innovation firm advising nonprofits, individual donors, foundations, and businesses working for equity and justice on organizational development, strategy, program design, resource development and governance. She is founder of the Donors of Color Network, the first philanthropic network connecting individual high net worth people of color to leverage their giving for racial equity.  

Vaid was Director of the Engaging Tradition Project at Columbia Law School’s Center for Gender and Sexuality Law; and Senior Fellow at the Department of Sociology at the Graduate Center of the City of New York (CUNY). She was Executive Director of the Arcus Foundation, Deputy Director of the Governance and Civil Society Unit at the Ford Foundation, and a past Executive Director of the National LGBTQ Task Force, where she also worked as Director of its Policy Institute think tank director and as its communications director.  Vaid worked as Staff Attorney for the ACLU National Prison Project in Washington DC.  

Vaid is an award-winning author of two books: Irresistible Revolution: Confronting Race, Class and The Assumptions of LGBT Politics (Magnus, 2012); Virtual Equality: The Mainstreaming of Gay & Lesbian Liberation (Anchor/Doubleday, 1995); and co-editor of the anthology Creating Change: Public Policy, Sexuality and Civil Rights (St. Martin’s Press, 2000), with historians John D’Emilio and William Turner.  Vaid co-authored (with Ashindi Maxton) The Apparitional Donor: Understanding and Engaging High Net Worth Donors of Color (2017), and co-authored with Hali Lee the forthcoming, Philanthropy Always Sounds Like Someone Else: A Portrait of HNW Donors of Color (2021). She is a board member of the Provincetown Commons and the American Museum of LGBTQ History & Culture.

Judith Santopietro is a Mexican writer in Spanish. Author of the books Palabras de Agua (Conaculta 2010) and Tiawanaku. Poems from the Mother Coqa (Orca Libros, USA), as well as the essay “Migrantes nahuas celebran a Santiago Apóstol: un ejercicio de comunalidad en Nueva York” (Universidad Autónoma de Chiapas, 2017). She holds a Master’s degree from the University of Texas at Austin and has carried out research residencies in the Zongolica and Tecomate mountains (Veracruz), the Institute of Latin American Studies Teresa Lozano Long (Texas), and the University of Leiden (Holanda), as well as in New York and Bolivia.  She directed Iguanazul: literature on indigenous languages (2005-2016), a project to revitalize native languages through oral tradition, literature and arts. Currently, she writes narratives about indigenous migrant communities settled in New York City, and enforced disappearance in Mexico.

A refugee woman who fled Afghanistan and sought asylum from Australia by sea. She spent several months in mandatory immigration detention before being recognized as a refugee. Najeeba has graduated from a Bachelor of Medical Science. Najeeba has a long history of advocating on the rights of refugee women, has extensive community networks and strong relationship with refugee women’s organisations and also established good networks with other stakeholders including academics, the private sector and mainstream service providers. She has been mentoring other young refugee women in effective advocacy. Najeeba has been active in documenting refugee stories and voices through regular community roundtables and consultations and in presenting these concerns and key international advocacy forums. She attended the "train the trainer "training on Gender and Human Rights and since then has been providing training to different groups on gender and the empowerment of women, gender equality, women’s rights and violence against women and leadership. She has extensive international and local advocacy experience in particular working to encourage increased Government focus and donor funding to advance women’s empowerment programs. Najeeba has been the co-founder of refugee led networks including GRN (Global Refugee Led Network ) and APNOR (Asia Pacific Network of Refugees) focusing on refugee leadership and participation and their engagement into policy discussion. Since her advocacy journey Najeeba has been awarded for her work on number of times Human rights medal award, Local Citizen Award, Young Women of the west award and etc. “Leaving your country is one of the most important decisions a human being can be forced to make.”

David Weil is Dean and professor at The Heller School for Social Policy and Management at Brandeis University. Prior to joining the Heller School, he was appointed by President Barack Obama to be the Administrator of the Wage and Hour Division of the U.S. Department of Labor and was the first Senate confirmed head of that agency in a decade. He led the Wage and Hour Division from 2014 to January 2017. Weil is an internationally recognized expert in employment and labor market policy along with regulation, transparency policy, and the impacts of industry restructuring on employment and work outcomes and business performance. He has advised government agencies at the state and federal levels and international organizations on employment, labor, and workplace policies. He co-founded and co-directs the Transparency Policy Project at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. He is the author of more than 125 articles and five books including The Fissured Workplace (Harvard University Press). He has received many awards including the Frances Perkins Intelligence and Courage Award in 2019. Weil received his BS at Cornell University and Master and Ph.D. degrees in Public Policy at Harvard University.

Annette is a system designer and strategist at ChangeLabs, working to advance Systems Transformation approaches and is one of the few experts in systems innovation who is well versed in System Acupuncture®. She has worked with organizations such as UNDP, The Nature Conservancy, USAID, WWF, Vinnova, and is involved in programs transforming food system norms towards regenerative practices, developing systems innovation culture for addressing the SDGs, and promoting distributed innovation in vulnerable communities. Annette also lectures at Stanford University on systems transformation and leadership.

Annette has a background in human centered innovation in the Australian public sector, game design, and cultural studies. Her particular interest in game design led to building gamification and game inspired systems to enhance the design of organizational culture. She is working to expand this field of work for broader application in system design.