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.

Ellen serves as the CEO of the END Fund, working to see an end to the suffering caused by five neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) affecting 1.7 billion people.

Ellen holds graduate degrees in International Health from the Harvard School of Public Health and in Development Studies from the London School of Economics.

Ellen currently serves on the boards of the Global Institute for Disease Elimination, Uniting to Combat NTDs, Legatum Institute, the World Economic Forum’s Global Health security Advisory Board, and Panorama Global.

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.

Kehinde Ajayi is an economist in the World Bank’s Africa Gender Innovation Lab, where she leads research initiatives on women’s economic empowerment, youth employment, and social protection. She was previously an Assistant Professor of Economics at Boston University, a Faculty Research Fellow of the National Bureau of Economic Research, and a Fulbright Fellow. Kehinde holds a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of California, Berkeley and a B.A. in Economics from Stanford University.

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.

Marth Bailey is a Professor in the Department of Economics at the University of California-Los Angeles. She is also a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, CEPR, CESifo, and IZA.

Her research focuses on issues in labor economics, demography and health in the United States, within the long-run perspective of economic history. Her work has examined the implications of the diffusion of modern contraception for women’s childbearing, career decisions, and the convergence in the gender gap. Most recently, her projects focus on the 1960s, including evaluations of the shorter and longer-term consequences of War on Poverty programs, including a co-edited book, Legacies of the War on Poverty.

Martha serves as an editor at the Journal of Labor Economics and on the editorial boards at the American Economic Review and the Journal of Economic Literature. She is also an elected member of the executive committees of the American Economic Association, Society of Labor Economists, and on the Board of Trustees at the Economic History Association.

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.

Lisa Bohmer leads the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation’s Global Early Childhood Development Initiative, working in concert with government, other funders and grantee partners to improve caregiver well-being and early childhood development outcomes in Kenya, Mozambique, Tanzania and the United States. Bohmer has more than 30 years of experience with programs, research and grantmaking in the areas of early childhood, HIV and AIDS, maternal and child health, reproductive rights and the empowerment of women and girls. Prior to joining the Foundation, Bohmer was director of program partnerships with the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation. Past positions also include HIV/AIDS director for UNICEF in Ethiopia, senior advisor to the president of the Nike Foundation, program director at the Pacific Institute for Women’s Health, and Ipas’ regional representative for East and Southern Africa. Her background also includes five years living and working in Ethiopia and consultancies with numerous organizations including UNFPA, the International Center for Research on Women, South Los Angeles Health Projects and the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services. Bohmer recently served as chair of the Coalition for Children Affected by AIDS, on the Executive Group for the Early Childhood Development Action Network (ECDAN) and on the board of directors for Funders Concerned About AIDS. Bohmer has a master’s degree in public health from UCLA.

Melissa Boteach, Vice President for Income Security and Child Care/Early Learning, oversees NWLC’s advocacy, policy, and public education strategies to ensure that all women and families have the income and supports they need to thrive. Prior to joining NWLC, Melissa spent nearly a decade at Center for American Progress (CAP), where she founded and led the Poverty to Prosperity Program, growing it from a team of 1 to 17, establishing projects to center the voices of low-income families; leading the team’s message and narrative change work, overseeing intersectional advocacy campaigns, and developing bold ideas to cut poverty & expand opportunity that resulted in new legislation, executive actions, and other progress. Melissa also served as policy editor on The Shriver Report, a book and multimedia platform by Maria Shriver and Center for American Progress on the 1 in 3 U.S. women on the financial brink, and solutions to help them push back. Previously, she worked at The Jewish Council for Public Affairs (JCPA), where she led interfaith antipoverty campaigns. She has testified before Congress and frequently serves as a media spokesperson on issues relating to economic opportunity. A Harry Truman and George J. Mitchell Scholar, Melissa has a Master’s of Public Policy from The George Washington University, a master’s of Equality Studies from University College Dublin where she studied women in social movements, and bachelor’s degrees from University of Maryland in government and Spanish.

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.

Judge Zoe Bush was appointed to the Superior Court of the District of Columbia in 1994 by President William Jefferson Clinton. She was born and raised in Little Rock, Arkansas. She graduated with Honors from Wellesley College in 1976 and received her law degree from Harvard Law School in 1979. Immediately after law school, Judge Bush moved to Washington, D.C. to serve as a law clerk to the Honorable James F. Merow of the United States Court of Federal Claims. The following year, she was a law clerk to the late Honorable Phillip N. Nichols of the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. In 1981, she joined the Office of General Counsel of the Washington Gas Light Company as a rate lawyer, and in 1984, she joined the Office of General Counsel of the Potomac Electric Power Company (PEPCO). After ten years of litigation, Judge Bush was appointed as an Administrative Judge on the Board of Contact Appeals for the District of Columbia, later becoming Chief Administrative Judge. Judge Bush has served in the Criminal, Civil and Domestic Violence Divisions of the Superior Court as well as in the Family Court. She has served as the Presiding Judge of the Family Court. Judge Bush has been active in bar activities and community service, and is the proud mother of a daughter.

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.

Lanyan Chen has a PhD in Sociology from the University of British Columbia and a Master’s in Communications from Simon Fraser University. She publishes in both English and Chinese and brings a perspective of feminist political economy to her areas of research. Her authored books, journal articles, contributed chapters, and other publications deal with gender issues and inequality. She is the author of Gender and Chinese Development: Towards an equitable society and her leading articles appeared in China Quarterly, Gender and Development, and Feminist Economics. While her published research has mostly focused on China, she is increasingly doing research on these issues in Canada and other countries using comparative perspectives. Her recent research under academic journals review covers issues of empowering Indigenous women, the development of the Anishinabek Nation’s Child Well-Being Law, and health policy in Canada. She has also been extensively involved as a co-applicant over the past few years in a SSHRC-funded project to establish a coordinated rights-based, culturally aware and gender equality approach to combating sex trafficking in Northeastern Ontario, and another SSHRC-funded project to evaluate the role of philanthropy in response to social inequalities and environmental protection. She is the applicant/chief investigator of a SSHRC-funded project on Promoting Reconciliation through Collaboration on a Forum for Regional Development. She received a Nipissing University Research Achievement Award in 2015.

As a researcher, she takes her role seriously in spreading knowledge and working with people to think of a way forward. This approach reflects her experiences with several United Nations appointments including the UNIFEM Gender Advisor for Northeast Asia based in Beijing from 1998 to 2003, a position where she was able to create change through projects, campaigns and mobilization of people and communities. She has had numerous appointments as a Gender Expert, working on the design, implementation, and evaluation of large-scale projects and programs in support of compliance to international human rights norms and standards. She also initiated situational analyses by way of surveys and field visits, interviews and focus groups, and led training workshops on participatory, action-oriented methodology (PAR), gender analysis, human rights commitments, gender statistics, social assessment, and survey design for projects.

Dr. Trenita Childers is a sociologist and health researcher at the American Institutes for Research. Her work focuses primarily on health equity, social determinants of health, and communicating health information to broad audiences. Dr. Childers also examines how structural barriers – such as discriminatory policies and practices – worsen inequality. In her book, In Someone Else’s County: Anti-Haitian Racism and Citizenship in the Dominican Republic, Dr. Childers uses ethnography to connect race, labor, and immigration. She has extensive expertise conducting community engaged research, especially among marginalized populations including racial and ethnic minorities and immigrant communities. Dr. Childers’ research has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, and the U.S. Fulbright Program. She is a Davidson College graduate with a PhD in sociology from Duke University.

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).

Sheldon H. Danziger is the President of the Russell Sage Foundation which supports social science research “for the improvement of social and living conditions in the United States.” He is also the Henry J. Meyer Distinguished University Professor Emeritus of Public Policy at the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy, University of Michigan. Previously, he was Director of the National Poverty Center at the University of Michigan and of the Institute for Research on Poverty at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.  He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a John Kenneth Galbraith Fellow of the American Academy of Political and Social Science and was a John Simon Guggenheim Foundation Fellow. He received his BA from Columbia University and his Ph.D. in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

From 1989 through 2013, Danziger directed the Research and Training Program on Poverty and Public Policy at the University of Michigan, a training and mentorship program for developing the careers of emerging scholars from underrepresented groups.

Maria Smith Dautruche (she/her/hers) is proud to be from Mount Vernon, NY – an inner-ring suburb of New York City in Westchester County (land connected to the Munsee Lenape people). She organized Westchester County’s first observance of National Day of Racial Healing on January 19, 2021 and served a productive term on the County’s African American Advisory Board from 2018-2020.

Professionally, Maria currently serves as a Senior Advisor to the President and CEO of the National Urban League. Prior to this role, she was on staff at the historic civil rights and urban advocacy organization as Vice President, Partnerships & Advancement. In addition to fundraising during her time on staff, Maria was the organization’s Steward within the W.K. Kellogg Foundation Racial Equity Anchor Collaborative for five years. In January 2020, Maria completed Rx for Racial Healing Co-Facilitator Training led by Dr. Gail Christopher’s Ntianu Center for Healing and Nature.

Maria is a member of the recently launched The Rooted Collaborative™ - a global community focused on the holistic evolution and advancement of female leaders of color in the social impact sector. She serves on the boards of Data for Black Lives and Awesome Foundation NYC. Maria is a PURPOSE Productions Leading Organizer and coordinates the New York Youth Justice Initiative – a coalition of philanthropists and donors who seek to improve outcomes for court-involved youth in New York City. Maria is currently an Elias Foundation Activist Fellow and was an Independent Sector NGen Fellow in 2018 and a 92Y Women in Power Fellow in 2017. While an undergrad at the University of Pittsburgh, Maria co-founded New Voices for Reproductive Justice – a powerful organizing force for the health and well-being of Black women and girls, women of color and LGBTQ+ people of color at the local, state (PA and OH) and national levels.

Joost is a Professor of Economics at the Utrecht University School of Economics and the director of the Utrecht Centre for Global Challenges (UGlobe). He previously worked as a Senior Economist at the World Bank and managed its Strategic Impact Evaluation Fund (SIEF). He was part of the management team at Porticus, supporting the global philanthropy transition toward a focus on contributing to systemic change. Joost also held academic positions at the University of Quebec at Montreal (UQAM) and Harvard University. He holds a PhD in Economics from Brown University. Joost's current research agenda is focused on addressing two global challenges: ensuring disadvantaged children have the same (early) education opportunities as everyone else, and promoting environmental sustainability. It has been published in leading journals such as Science and the Journal of Development Economics. Joost is a passionate ambassador for transdisciplinary research, working collaboratively with societal partners to address the globe’s most pressing challenges.

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.

Deirdre Drake is Executive Vice-President and Chief People Officer for UScellular Corporation, a position she has held since April 2014. As EVP and CPO, Deirdre leads the Human Resources and Communications organizations and is responsible for delivering integrated human capital solutions that enable UScellular to achieve its strategic objectives.

Deirdre was born and raised in Flint, MI. She received her bachelor’s degree in Business Administration from Central Michigan University and her MBA from St. Joseph’s University.

Deirdre’s career in human resources prior to joining UScellular included senior leadership roles with ARAMARK Corporation as well as BMO/Harris Bank. Earlier in her career, she worked with Marathon Oil Company and Kraft General Foods.

Deirdre has several civic affiliations and personal accomplishments. She delivered the winter commencement address and received an honorary doctorate from Central Michigan University in 2018. She is a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority, and a lifetime member of the National Black MBA Association. She serves on the boards of the American Red Cross of Greater Chicago and the Chicago Public Library Foundation. Deirdre also dedicates time and treasure to UCAN, NAAAHR, By the Hand Club For Kids and Impact Grants Chicago.

Deirdre is single and has no children. She dedicates her family time to her sisters, niece and nephew.

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.

Sarah EchoHawk, a citizen of the Pawnee Nation of Oklahoma, has been working on behalf of Native people for over 20 years. She has been the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the American Indian Science and Engineering Society (AISES) since 2013. Prior to joining in AISES, Ms. EchoHawk was the Executive Vice President of First Nations Development Institute, a national nonprofit organization with a focus on economic development for American Indians. Ms. EchoHawk also served as the interim CEO for the organization’s subsidiary, First Nations Oweesta Corporation, during its management transition in 2010.

Before joining First Nations Development Institute, she spent several years working for the American Indian College Fund raising support for tribal colleges and universities. During her tenure there, she served in many areas including operations, program management, communications, foundation relations, and individual giving. Ms. EchoHawk was an adjunct professor of Native American Studies at Metro State University of Denver for nine years where in addition to teaching introductory Native American studies courses, she also taught Native American Politics and co-taught Native Americans and Law with her father, John Echohawk, who co-founded the Native American Rights Fund (NARF) in 1970.

Ms. EchoHawk serves on multiple boards. She is currently the Vice Chair for Native Americans in Philanthropy, the Chair for the Native Ways Federation, and the Chair for Red Feather Development Group. She is also a member of the ad hoc committee at the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine for a project addressing the underrepresentation of women of color in tech. Additionally, Ms. EchoHawk is a member of the advisory board for the American Indian Policy Institute at the University of Arizona, Collaborative Advisory Board for Women of Color in Computing Research, Champions Board for the National Girls Collaborative, and is a former board member for the Oregon Native American Business and Entrepreneurial Network (ONABEN). She is the PI/Co-PI on multiple National Science Foundation grant projects and previously served as an Ambassador for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Minorities in Energy Initiative.

Ms. EchoHawk has a Master of Nonprofit Management (MNM) degree from Regis University and an undergraduate degree in Political Science and Native American Studies from Metro State University of Denver. She attended law school at the University of Colorado and completed additional graduate coursework in applied communications at the University of Denver.

Carolina Eterovic founded and served as partner, executive director, and president of Mujeres Empresarias, a pioneering organization that works to promote and strengthen diversity and inclusion for women in the Chilean workforce. Since its inception, Mujeres Empresarias has trained more than 20,000 women for senior management roles, has supported the formation of women-founded companies through incubation, capital raising, and acceleration, and has partnered with development agencies including the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank, and the Kaufman Foundation. Carolina is a board member of CorreosChile, the Chilean national postal service, and a past director of MCapital, a syndicate of angel investors supporting women-founded ventures.

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.

Dr. Jelani M. Favors is an associate professor of history at Clayton State University. He has received major fellowships in support of his research that includes an appointment as a Humanities Writ Large Fellow at Duke University in 2013, and he was an inaugural recipient of the Mellon HBCU Fellowship at the John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute at Duke in 2009.

In 2019, Dr. Favors released his first book entitled Shelter in a Time of Storm: How Black Colleges Fostered Generations of Leadership and Activism, which was published by the University of North Carolina Press. Shelter in a Time of Storm was the recipient of the 2020 Stone Book Award presented annually by the Museum of African American History in Boston. It also won the 2020 Lillian Smith Book Award given yearly by the Southern Regional Council and the University of Georgia Libraries and it was one of five finalists for the 2020 Pauli Murray Book Prize presented by the African American Intellectual History Society. Dr. Favors’ research and commentary have appeared in several media outlets, including CNN, C-SPAN, MSNBC, The Washington Post, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, The Chronicle of Higher Education, and The Conversation. Dr. Favors is a native of Winston-Salem, NC and he currently resides in Atlanta, Georgia.

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.

Wayne L. Firestone is trained as an international lawyer and devotes his career to innovative nonprofit leadership, social entrepreneurship, playwriting and thought leadership. Firestone has held national and international organizational leadership positions including: Executive Director of the America-Israel Friendship League; CEO of the International Lifeline Fund, which sparks catalytic market sensitive change in clean water and cooking in sub-Sahara Africa and Haiti; President of the Genesis Generation Challenge to promote young adult initiatives that measurably improve the world; and President and CEO of Hillel International which operates on over 500 university campuses around the world. Firestone is an active community leader serving as a board member for the National Association of Urban Debate Leagues and a participant in the Aspen Institute’s Inclusive America Project. He founded Plays2Gather- a community driven performing arts network inspired by Jewish stories to celebrate diversity and educate about “the other.” He is a member of the Dramatists Guild of America.

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.

Jessica Fulton is the Vice President at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies. An expert on issues at the intersection of race and economic policy, Jessica’s work focuses on identifying and promoting policies to advance the socioeconomic status of the Black community. In her current role, she oversees the Joint Center’s research, policy, and operations teams, and identifies opportunities to advance the organization's mission through strategic planning and management.

Before joining the Joint Center, she served as External Relations Director at the Washington Center for Equitable Growth, where she worked with scholars to advance policymaker understanding of the connection between economic inequality and economic growth. She has also held positions in local research and advocacy at the DC Fiscal Policy Institute and the Chicago Urban League. Jessica is a member of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc., and serves on the Board of The Black Swan Academy and the Advisory Board of the Sadie Collective. She earned a Bachelor's Degree in Economics from the University of Chicago and a Master's Degree in Economic Policy Analysis from the Kellstadt Graduate School of Business at Depaul University.

C’Ardiss “CC” Gardner Gleser is an advocate for social impact and social justice work.

CC began her career as a project manager in the tech and engineering sector with GE Healthcare. However, most of her career she has served in several renowned nonprofit organizations focused on equity and changing educational outcomes for underserved children, such as the Technology Access Foundation (TAF). TAF is a national model of integrating STEM education in underrepresented communities and elevating the impact of teachers of color.

CC transitioned from the nonprofit sector and is now entrenched in the philanthropic sector. CC is the first Director of Programs and Strategic Initiatives at Satterberg Foundation, whose mission focuses on promoting a just society and sustainable environment. She currently serves as a leader on the boards of Andrus Family Fund, Charlotte Martin Foundation, and Philanthropy Northwest.

CC is extremely involved in her community, both locally and nationally. She is very involved in her community, both locally and nationally. She previously served as the National President of the Yale Black Alumni Association and on Yale’s Board of Governors. She was also a Brainerd Fellow and a partner with Social Venture Partners Seattle where she co-chaired the Social Venture Teen Philanthropy Program. CC is a graduate of the 2017 Association of Black Foundation Executives (ABFE) Connecting Leaders Fellowship.

Most exciting, CC founded Black Ivy Manor, which provides funding and other opportunities for Black scholars, artists, and social justice advocates the space to develop their crafts and voices, while supporting movement in community and cultivating relationships with one another.

CC earned her Bachelor's degree in African American Studies from Yale University, and an M.Ed. in Education Administration from Seattle University. She currently resides in the Detroit area with her husband and three children.

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.

Mike Green is Co-founder and Chief Strategist at the National Institute for Inclusive Competitiveness, where he works with HBCU leaders, foundations, governments and private sector corporations on economic strategies that prioritize increasing the productivity of America’s most vulnerable populations. From propulsion engineering systems to media innovation and entrepreneurship, to pioneering and codifying the strategy of "Inclusive Competitiveness" as co-founder of ScaleUp Partners, Mike’s experience is in paving new pathways for equitable and inclusive prosperity. In 2017, ScaleUp Partners published the book, The Future Economy and Inclusive Competitiveness: How Demographic Trends and Innovation Can Create Prosperity for All Americans.

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. 

Daquanna Harrison is the founder of Elevation Educational Consulting Group which works on projects within curriculum, trainings, technical assistance, SME, and program implementation. Daquanna is known as an expert in Adult Education, DEI, and leadership development. She is a sought-out keynote speaker, trainer, and grant reviewer.

President of MAACCE Board of Directors and on NBCDI's T.E.A.C.H and XPRIZE advisory boards.

An alumna of Howard, American, and Duke Universities, and the University of Baltimore’s Equity and Inclusion Program and of IEL’s Education Policy Fellowship Program. Proudly from the Gullah Islands of SC, she resides in Prince George’s MD where she was recognized as 40U40: Excellence in Education.

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.

Lauren Haskins is vice president of membership and partnerships at Philanthropy Southwest. Her career in community relations, communications, and client service has been dedicated to serving vulnerable populations, including: as the communications director for a large anti-human trafficking organization; as an executive at a communications firm serving national nonprofits and foundations; and in direct service at the largest homeless service provider in New York. She attended social work graduate school at Columbia University and graduated summa cum laude from Vanderbilt University as a recipient of the Dean's Award for Outstanding Scholarship. She is a member of Native Americans in Philanthropy.

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 Executive Director of the Chicago State Foundation, Hilmon has lead accountability for advancing the interests and welfare of Chicago State University through partnership development, stewardship of university assets and identification and solicitation of financial support from individuals, corporations and foundations.

Previously, Hilmon served as Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer for the Chicago Urban League (CUL), overseeing fund development, outcomes-driven programs and design and implementation of cross-functional initiatives, including CUL’s Race and Equity Initiative, and Centennial Campaign. Hilmon hired and led the fund development team responsible for delivering the most successful annual fundraising campaigns in the civil rights organization’s 101-year history.

A graduate of the University of Michigan, Hilmon is the Essence® best-selling author of the novels, 5 Dimes (Penguin/NAL; 2003) and Divalicious (Penguin/NAL; 2004), and the anthology, Mad Love (AuthorHouse; 2005).

Liz Livingston Howard is a founder and current Executive Director of the Kellogg School Center for Nonprofit Management and a Clinical Professor of Management. She develops and teaches MBA students and nonprofit executives. Ms. Howard serves as the Academic Director for a variety of nonprofit executive education courses and designs custom executive education programs for local, national and global clients.

Previously, she served in a variety of senior development roles including as Assistant Dean for the Kellogg School of Management. Throughout her career, she has been committed to empowering social impact leaders to maximize their individual and organizational success. She is a graduate of Northwestern University and has an MBA from the Kellogg School.

Lee-Sean Huang is a Taiwanese American designer, educator, and podcaster based in New York. He is the co-founder and creative director of Foossa, a community-centered design practice. Foossa's work focuses around social innovation, service design, design thinking, and futurecasting. Lee-Sean has taught courses in design, innovation, and storytelling at New York University, the Parsons School of Design, and the School of Visual Arts. He previously taught at Cornell Tech and the College of Staten Island. He hosts the Design Future Now podcast, which is produced by AIGA, the professional association for design. He also hosts and produces a food and culture podcast called Easy Cook Bear. Lee-Sean earned a bachelors in Government from Harvard and a masters in Interactive Telecommunications from NYU. He currently serves as a board member of the Japan Exchange and Teaching Program Alumni Association of New York (JETAANY).

Tina Hyder is Executive Director of the Refugee Trauma Initiative, an NGO that develops tools and resources to address trauma for refugee families and children and those who work with them. Tina was previously Deputy Director of the Open Society Foundations’ Early Childhood Program, where she helped forge partnerships to promote early childhood policies, research, networks, and programs for marginalised young children and their families. Prior to joining the Open Society Foundations, Tina was the global diversity adviser for Save the Children UK, supporting more than 50 country offices around the world to uphold the rights of children affected by discrimination.

A social entrepreneur with nearly thirty years of experience, Derek Jentzsch is the founder of BroderickHaight Consulting. For organizations of all sizes, his strategic and tactical guidance on the design, financing, staffing, operations and impact transforms social justice programs in education, health, conservation and economic development around the world. Whether raising small initiatives into competitive powerhouses or guiding the transformation of mid-size and large organizations, he works to equitably transform the lives of millions of children and their families around the world. His favorite clients include Whiz Kids Workshop, Save the Children, Jane Goodall Institute and LYRIC.

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.

Nancy Kendall is professor of educational policy studies, specialized in comparative, international, and global education policy, at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Kendall conducts comparative ethnographic research on the school and life experiences of girls, boys, families, and communities who are structurally marginalized within national and international contexts. Her ethnographic research has examined children’s sense-making and experiences with gender and education, political democratization, sexuality and HIV/AIDS education, climate and environmental change, and college-going. Kendall has conducted extended research in Malawi and the U.S.. Kendall has received research support from Fulbright, Lumina Foundation, NAE/Spencer, Social Science Research Council, and the Wenner-Gren Foundations, among others. She is the author of The Sex Education Debates (University of Chicago Press, 2012), first author of The True Costs of College (Palgrave, 2020), and many peer-reviewed articles in international education and public health journals.

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.

Anita Khashu is the Director of NEO Philanthropy’s Four Freedoms Fund. Founded in 2003, the Four Freedoms Fund (FFF) is a national donor collaborative working toward full integration of immigrants as active participants in our democracy. FFF seeks to ensure this outcome by building and supporting a robust local, state, and national infrastructure of immigrants’ rights organizations and leaders. Prior to joining FFF, Anita worked as a nonprofit lawyer, manager, and philanthropic advisor in the United States, Latin America, and Africa, managing large and complex nonprofit programs, providing direct legal services, conducting research, and providing strategic consulting services to nonprofits and philanthropies. Anita was the founding director of the Vera Institute of Justice’s Center on Immigration, a scholar in residence at the Center for Inter-American Studies and Programs at Autonomous Technological Institute of Mexico (ITAM), and a a staff attorney with the Legal Aid Society of New York in its criminal practice. Anita serves as a founding board member for the Mexico City-based Institute for Women in Migration (Instituto para las Mujeres en la Migración, A.C.) and the Brooklyn Community Bail Fund.

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).

With more than two decades of public affairs experience spanning the White House, think tanks, law firms, and universities, Lindsey Kozberg is an experienced leader of advocacy campaigns in the public, private and nonprofit sectors. A practicing attorney, Kozberg is working with Park & Velayos to help clients navigate the complex web of regulations that affect how property is used and developed. Over the past decade she has led strategic communications and government relations at the nonpartisan RAND Corporation and at Truth Initiative, the public health foundation dedicated to ending tobacco use, and has been an advisor with California Strategies. During the George W. Bush Administration Kozberg was director of public affairs for the U.S. Department of Education and a special assistant to the president at the White House. Kozberg is a graduate of Princeton University and Stanford Law School, and a former instructor at the USC Annenberg School of Journalism and Communications.

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.

Anita Krishnamurthi is a passionate advocate for equitable access to education and science. Trained as a research astronomer with a PhD in Astrophysics from The Ohio State University, Anita moved to a career focused on STEM education and informal learning recognizing its intersection with social mobility and social justice.

She most recently served as the Head of Education and Learning at the Wellcome Trust, a global health philanthropy based in London. Prior to her role at Wellcome, Anita worked in a range of organizations based in Washington, DC that included non-profits, Government and academia. Her roles included serving as Vice President for STEM Policy at the Afterschool Alliance, Program Manager at NASA Headquarters, Lead for Education and Public Outreach in the Astrophysics Division at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Centre, and the John Bahcall Public Policy Fellow at the American Astronomical Society.

Anita grew up in India and moved to the United States for her PhD before recently moving to the UK. This life experience drives a global perspective and a great interest in engaging with a diverse range of people and issues to advance equity and bring about systemic change. She serves on the Boards of the National Girls Collaborative in the United States and the ENTHUSE Charitable Trust in the UK and is very active in mentoring women at various career stages.

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.

Clara Miller writes and speaks about sustainable finance, impact investing, business models and accounting in the nonprofit and for-profit arenas, and advises projects and individuals working for progress on same. She is President Emerita of the Heron Foundation (2011-2017) and was Founder and President/CEO of Nonprofit Finance Fund (1984-2011).

Miller was named to the Nonprofit Times “Power and Influence Top 50,” seven times (2006-2017), to Inside Philanthropy’s “50 Most Powerful Women in U.S. Philanthropy for 2016 and 2017 and as Social Innovator of the Year by the University of New Hampshire in 2017. In 2015 she was named “Investor of the Year, Small Foundations,” by Institutional Investor Magazine, received the Prince’s Prize (Monaco) for Innovative Philanthropy and the Shining Star Award from Performance Space 122 in New York City. She was awarded a Bellagio Residency by the Rockefeller Foundation in 2010.

Miller was appointed by President Clinton to the U.S. Treasury’s first Community Development Advisory Board for the then-newly-created Community Development Financial Institutions Fund in 1996 and later became Chair. She chaired Opportunity Finance Network's board for six of her nine years as a member and served on the Community Advisory Committee of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York for eight years.

Miller served as a board member of the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (2012-2019) and is now an outside committee member. She is an advisory board member for the U.S. Impact Investing Alliance, the Song Cave and Family Independence Initiative. She is a senior adviser to the Impact Management Project (IMP) and the Open Road Alliance. She became a BridgeSpan Fellow in 2018.

Ms. Miller has been published in Alliance, Financial Times, Medium, The Atlantic Blog, Medium, Stanford Social Innovation Review, Nonprofit Quarterly and Chronicle of Philanthropy. She has spoken recently at Edinburgh International Culture Summit, Arts and Business Northern Ireland, Yale School of Management, Dartmouth's Tuck School, Stanford Graduate School of Business, Columbia Business School, Aspen Ideas Festival, Sciences Po, Oxford Said Business School, Bloomberg L.P., and SoCap.

Marquis Miller is the City of Chicago’s first Chief Diversity Officer. He will work with Candace Moore, Chief Equity Officer, in the Office of Equity and Racial Justice (OERJ) where he will support the City’s strategic human capital activities, diverse vendor initiatives, the Mayor’s Office for People with Disabilities, the Chicago Commission on Human Relations, and the work of the OERJ in policy and systems development.

Prior to joining the City, he was managing principal of The Business Mosaic LLC, and held vice president and business leadership roles at the National Minority Supplier Development Council, SBLI USA Mutual Life Insurance Company, Inc., Chicago State University, the Chicago Urban League, the United Negro College Fund, and The Ohio State University. A thought leader in the fields of organizational leadership, diversity and durability, Marquis is a Certified Diversity Professional (CDP), as recognized by the National Diversity Council.

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.

Director and Professor, Roy Wilkins Center for Human Relations and Social Justice at the Hubert H. Humphrey School of Public Affairs, University of Minnesota. His research has focused on racial earnings inequality, racial disparities in crime, discrimination in home mortgage lending and consumer credit markets, racial and ethnic disproportionality in child welfare systems, faculty underrepresentation in STEM fields, and racial disparities in government contracting. At the University of Minnesota, Myers holds concurrent appointments in the Applied Economics Ph.D. Program and the graduate minor in population studies. He maintains an affiliation with the Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (Beijing, China) where he was in residence in 2008-2009 and was a visiting lecturer at the National Law School of India University (Bangalore, India). He received his Ph.D. in economics from MIT and his undergraduate degree from Morgan State University.

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.