Karen Aldridge-Eason

Karen Aldridge-Eason is the Foundation Liaison for the State of Michigan on loan from the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation. Aldridge-Eason works with the governor, Executive Office staff, state officials, foundations and non-profits to increase strategic partnerships between state government and foundations aimed at improving public policy. The Governor’s Office of Foundation Liaison (OFL), established in 2003 marked the nation’s first formal state/philanthropic partnership.

Since its inception, the Governor’s Office of Foundation Liaison has worked with more than 50 foundations and 16 state departments. Aldridge-Eason earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Education from the University of Michigan and received a Master’s of Public Administration from Western Michigan University. She currently serves on the Boards of Trustees of Ascension Michigan Health Systems; Altarum Institute, a non-profit health systems research and consulting organization; and Tapology, Inc., a Flint-based dance program for youth.

Karen and her husband, Greg Eason, reside in Flint, Michigan.

Fred J. Ali

Fred Ali is the President and Chief Executive Officer of the Weingart Foundation, a private foundation that supports nonprofit organizations in more effectively addressing the needs of low-income and underserved individuals and communities in Southern California. Prior to his appointment to the Foundation in 1999, Fred held senior leadership positions with non-profit organizations, educational institutions, and government agencies.

Fred serves on the Board of Grantmakers for Effective Organizations, and the Board of the Los Angeles Mayor’s Fund. He also chairs the Board of the Center on Philanthropy and Public Policy, University of Southern California. He is a senior Fellow at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs.

Judy Belk

As president and CEO, Judy Belk leads The California Wellness Foundation in pursuing its mission to improve the health of the people of California. In her role, she uses her vision and her voice to help Cal Wellness “level the playing field” so that everyone has access to good-paying jobs, safe neighborhoods and quality health care services.

Belk is a seasoned leader with more than 25 years of senior management experience in the philanthropic, government, nonprofit and corporate sectors. Before joining Cal Wellness in April of 2014, she served as senior vice president of Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors, a position she held since 2002. Previously, Belk served as vice president of global public affairs at Levi Strauss & Co., reporting directly to the chairman and CEO, with responsibilities for both the company’s and the foundation’s leadership in the global fight against AIDS, as well as their economic development, environmental and antiracism initiatives. She also developed and led the company’s philanthropic efforts in postapartheid South Africa.

She is a frequent writer and speaker on organizational ethics, race and social change, and her work has been recognized with several state and national awards. Her pieces have aired on National Public Radio and appeared in The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post.

Throughout her career, Belk has been a strong advocate in promoting diversity, inclusion and equity both within and outside of the philanthropic sector. She has been a passionate voice in raising awareness of the needs of women and girls, as well as communities of color.

She currently serves on the board of the Surdna Foundation, a national New York-based family foundation. Past board service includes Southern California Grantmakers, National Center on Family Philanthropy, the Ms. Foundation for Women, the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California and the Berkeley Repertory Theatre.

Belk received her undergraduate degree from Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, and her master’s degree in public administration from California State University, East Bay, where she was recognized as the 1999 Distinguished Alumnus of the Year. In 2000 and 2013, she participated in residencies at Hedgebrook, a retreat for female writers in the state of Washington.

Belk has lived and worked in California for her entire professional career. A current resident of Los Angeles, she is a native of Alexandria, Virginia, where, in 2013, she was inducted into the Alexandria African American Hall of Fame. She is married to Roger Peeks, M.D., who currently serves as medical director of Valley Community Clinic in North Hollywood. They have two young adult children: Casey Peeks and Ryan Peeks. Casey is a 2010 graduate of Marlborough School, a 2014 graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, and is completing her second year as a kindergarten teacher for Teach for America in St. Louis, Missouri. Ryan received a doctorate in history from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and is now a naval historian for the U.S. Navy.

Antony Bugg-Levine

Antony Bugg-Levine is the CEO of Nonprofit Finance Fund, a national nonprofit and financial intermediary that unlocks the potential of mission-driven organizations through tailored investment, strategic advice, and transformational ideas. In this role, he oversees more than $225 million of investment capital and a national consulting practice, and works with a range of philanthropic, private sector and government partners to develop and implement innovative approaches to financing social change. Bugg-Levine writes and speaks on the evolution of the social sector and the emergence of the global impact investing industry. He is the co-author of Impact Investing: Transforming How We Make Money While Making a Difference (Wiley, 2011).

As a Managing Director at the Rockefeller Foundation, Bugg-Levine designed and led the initiative, Harnessing the Power of Impact Investing. He is the founding board chair of the Global Impact Investing Network and convened the 2007 meeting that coined the phrase “impact investing.”

Previously, Bugg-Levine was the country director for Kenya and Uganda for TechnoServe, a nongovernmental organization that develops and implements business solutions to rural poverty. Earlier in his career, as a consultant with McKinsey, he advised Fortune 100 clients in the financial services and health care sectors, and helped develop new frameworks for incorporating social dynamics into corporate strategy. He is an associate adjunct professor in the Social Enterprise Program at the Columbia Business School. He lives in New Jersey with his wife, Ahadi.

Don Chen

Don Chen leads the Equitable Development team, supporting urban development strategies to reduce poverty, expand economic opportunities, and advance sustainability in cities and regions in the US and developing countries—with a focus on shaping the delivery systems for affordable housing, community improvement, infrastructure, and city and regional planning.

Don joined the foundation in 2008 as a program officer and assumed the role of director in 2015. Previously, he was the founder and CEO of Smart Growth America, where he led efforts to create the National Vacant Properties Campaign and Transportation for America and managed a merger with the Growth Management Leadership Alliance. He has authored many pieces on land use, transportation, social equity, and environmental policy, includingGrowing Cooler: The Academic Evidence on Urban Development and Climate Change (2008, co-author) and “The Science of Smart Growth,” which appeared in the December 2000 issue of Scientific American.

Don has also served on the boards of the Funders’ Network for Smart Growth and Livable Communities, West Harlem Environmental Action, the Environmental Leadership Program, and Grist magazine. He holds a master’s degree from the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies and a bachelor’s degree in political science from Yale University.

Pamela David

Pam David is the Executive Director of the Walter & Elise Haas Fund, a locally-focused family foundation working to build a healthy, just, and vibrant society in which people feel connected to and responsible for our community. The Fund uses an equity lens for its work in the arts, economic security, public education, and American Jewish life. Pam has also led efforts to build more effective relationships between philanthropy and government, strengthen community organizations’ capacity for civic engagement and social change, and address generational and leadership issues in the nonprofit sector.

Prior to taking the helm of the foundation in 2002, Pam held a variety of leadership roles in local government, including heading up the San Francisco Mayor’s Office of Community Development, managing the City’s federal Enterprise Community program, and coordinating the City’s welfare reform planning efforts after passage of the 1996 federal legislation. During her 12-year tenure serving three mayors, Pam played an instrumental role in building resources for community-based economic development in low income neighborhoods, and addressing capacity and sustainability issues for many of San Francisco’s key community-based organizations.

Pam has served on numerous advisory and nonprofit boards, local, statewide, and national. Currently, she is a board member of California’s Campaign for College Opportunity, and just termed off the board of the National LGBTQ Task Force. Pam is also one of three non-governmental representatives on the HOPE SF executive council, an ambitious long-term initiative to improve the lives of San Franciscans living in the city’s most distressed public housing. She sits on the advisory boards of Oakland and San Francisco’s new mayoral offices of strategic partnerships, and serves on the advisory boards of the Alliance for Girls, Futures without Violence, Enterprise Northern California, Horizons Foundation, and Openhouse, among others.

Pam has a B.A. in Psychology and Education from Pitzer College, and an M.A. in Educational Psychology from Stanford University. She is a graduate of Leadership San Francisco, and has received numerous awards, including the SPUR Public Managerial award, Bank of American’s Local Hero award, Enterprise’s Philanthropic Leadership award, the United Way’s Outstanding Agency Relations Volunteer Award, the Alice B. Toklas Democratic Club’s Community Service Award, Horizon Foundation’s Cornerstone Award, and Openhouse’s Founders award.

Dr. John E. Deasy

Dr. John E. Deasy, who led improvements that propelled student achievement and high school graduation rates to historic levels in the nation’s second-largest school district, consults for The Broad Center for the Management of School Systems as a superintendent-in-residence. In this role, John provides executive coaching to Center alumni leading urban public school systems as well as facilitates professional development sessions for The Broad Academy. Most recently, Deasy was superintendent of the Los Angeles Unified School District, where he championed a “youth first” agenda credited with reversing the district’s school-to-prison pipeline, raising achievement and helping more students graduate ready for college and the workplace. Deasy previously served as superintendent in Prince George’s County Public Schools in Maryland, Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District in California and Coventry Public Schools in Rhode Island. He was named Superintendent of the Year in 2001 by the Rhode Island School Superintendents’ Association. A former high school principal, Deasy focused school improvement efforts on child-centered, outcomes-based practices, including alternative assessment, school-to-work transition programs and interdisciplinary instruction.

William Eggers

William (Bill) Eggers is one of the country’s best known authorities on government reform. An author, columnist, and popular speaker for two decades, he has built a significant following among public sector thought leaders in the U.S., Canada and overseas. Eggers has advised dozens of cities, states and foreign countries and trained hundreds of public officials on government restructuring. He is a sought after speaker, giving close to 100 speeches each year. His most recent book, If We Can Put a Man on the Moon: Getting Big Things Done in Government, was published by Harvard Business Press in the fall of 2009.

Currently as the global director for Deloitte Research and executive director of Deloitte’s Public Leadership Institute, he is responsible for research and thought leadership for Deloitte’s Public Sector practice.

Eggers is a former appointee to the U.S. Office of Management and Budget’s Performance Measurement Advisory Commission and the former Project Director for the Texas Performance Review/e-Texas initiative. He was involved in two performance reviews, in which he identified over $2.5 billion worth of savings and non-tax revenues for the state. More than 60 percent of the recommendations in the reviews were enacted into law. Eggers also served as a Commissioner for the Texas Incentive and Productivity Commission and a designee on the Texas Council on Competitive Government.

Eggers is a former senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research and the former director of Government Reform at the Reason Foundation. Earlier, Eggers assisted reformers in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union with the transition to market economies. Eggers graduated magna cum laude from the University of California at San Diego.

Efrain Escobedo

Efrain Escobedo is the vice president in charge of civic engagement, multi-sector collaboration and public policy at California Community Foundation, responsible for promoting collaboration and advocacy efforts across the nonprofit, public and private sectors to address community problems. Escobedo is recognized nationally and locally as an active leader and expert in Latino civic engagement and election policy. He has worked extensively with academia, civic and community organizations, as well as with elected officials in developing research, strategies and program to increase voter participation.

Prior to joining CFF, Escobedo was the manager of governmental and legislative affairs for the Registrar of Voters in Los Angeles County, the largest election jurisdiction in the nation with more than 4.5 million registered votes. There, he worked with elected officials to enact numerous initiatives aimed at making the voting process easier for Angelenos, including the electronic delivery of sample ballots and the authorization of online voter registration. Escobedo also served as senior director of civic engagement for the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials (NALEO) Educational Fund, where he led the development of innovative voter contact strategies and technologies that have helped to engage more than one million young, newly registered and infrequent Latino American voters across the country. Escobedo earned his bachelor’s degree in American studies and ethnicity from the University of Southern California and is a recent graduate of the Los Angeles County Executive Leadership Program.

Matt Foreman

Matt Foreman is senior director of Gay and Immigrant Rights Programs at the Evelyn and Walter Haas, Jr. Fund in San Francisco. The Haas, Jr. Fund has been the largest non-gay foundation funder of the movement for gay and lesbian equality, making over $72 million in grants since 2000. It was the first foundation – gay or straight – to support marriage equality. The Fund is also a leading supporter of immigrant rights, both nationally and in California, investing over $47 million since 2005. Before coming to the Fund in 2008, Matt led a national, a statewide and a local gay organization – the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force (2003 – 2008), the Empire State Pride Agenda (1997-2003), and the New York City Gay & Lesbian Anti-Violence Project (1990-1996).  A graduate of NYU School of Law, Matt is a founder of Heritage of Pride, the organizers of New York City’s annual LGBT pride events, and a former member of the New York City Human Rights Commission. He and his partner of 24 years, Francisco De Leon, were married in California in 2008.

Kristen Grimm

Kristen Grimm, founder and president of Spitfire Strategies, helps nonprofits and foundations develop successful strategies to create lasting social change. Recent accomplishments include a winning campaign effort to restore the ecosystems in the Gulf of Mexico for the Walton Family, coordinated state efforts to ensure children have quality health care coverage for the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, message guidance to support grantees working to improve education throughout the U.S for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and, creation of a food oasis program in Georgia for the Arthur M Blank Foundation. She has worked internationally for the Ford Foundation’s global south human rights grantees, Climateworks’ network partners in China and Europe, and on conservation issues in Mexico for Packard and Walton. Other clients include the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Open Society Foundations, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Heinz Endowments, Skoll Global Threats, and the Surdna Foundation, among others. Kristen has authored numerous publications including: Want Influence? Eliminate Blind Spots, a guide to help organizations persuade audiences to create positive social change. She also created the communication strategy planning tool, Smart Chart 3.0, and Planning to Win, which helps organizations craft winning campaign strategies. She is a frequent speaker on communications and strategy. She sits on the boards of Grist, Mothers Out Front, All One City and the Alaska Wilderness League.

Taryn Higashi

Taryn Higashi is the Executive Director of Unbound Philanthropy. From 1997 to 2008, Taryn worked at the Ford Foundation, where she managed the migrant and refugee rights portfolio and served as Deputy Director of the human rights unit from 2001- 2008. Prior to joining the Ford Foundation, Taryn was a Program Officer at The New York Community Trust, where she coordinated the Fund for New Citizens. She has also worked as a staff attorney and program coordinator for Safe Horizons in New York City, and as an associate at the law firm O’Melveny & Myers. From 1999 to 2008, Taryn served as a Board member of Grantmakers Concerned with Immigrants and Refugees, where she was Co-Chair from 1999-2005. Taryn is a co-recipient, with Geri Mannion of the Carnegie Corporation of New York, of the Robert V. Scrivner Award for Creative Grantmaking from the Council on Foundations. She has also received a 40th Anniversary Community Change Champion Award from the Center for Community Change, a Human Rights Visionary Award from the Border Network for Human Rights, an award from the National Immigration Law Center for her work to advance immigrants’ rights, and a Standing Up for Justice award from the National Korean American Service and Education Consortium (NAKASEC). Taryn currently serves on the advisory board of the International Migration Initiative of the Open Society Foundations and on the board of the International Refugee Assistance Project (formerly the Iraqi Refugee Assistance Project). Taryn is a graduate of George Washington University Law School and received her bachelor’s degree from the University of California at San Diego. She resides in New York City with her husband and son.

Elwood Hopkins

Elwood Hopkins is an urban planner. He holds degrees in city and regional planning from Harvard University, where he graduated magna cum laude, and the UCLA Graduate School of Public Policy and Social Research. He is Founder and Managing Director of Emerging Markets, Inc., a consulting firm that helps supermarket chains and financial institutions open stores and branch locations in low-income neighborhoods. Clients include Bank of America, Wells Fargo, JPMorgan Chase, Citibank, Capital One, US Bank, Union Bank, as well as Kroger, Northgate Gonzalez, Numero Uno Markets, Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Markets, and Unified Grocers.

Elwood has served as a Research Scientist at the New York University Urban Research Center and has conducted extensive fieldwork in Bombay, Calcutta, Delhi, Bangkok, Beijing, Shanghai, Jakarta, Tokyo, Istanbul, Cairo, Nairobi, Lagos, Rio de Janeiro, and Mexico City. He has been an Advisor to the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), Habitat (UNCHS), Organization of American States, and the World Bank. He was a contributor to the World Summit on Cities, UN Social Summit, and the UN Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED).

Domestically, he has served as Executive Director of Los Angeles Urban Funders, a foundation consortium established after the 1992 riots that targeted low-income neighborhoods for twelve years. He was a participant in the Harvard Executive Session on Philanthropy, and the Aspen Institute Roundtable on Comprehensive Community Building. He has won numerous awards, including the Robert McNeely Trailblazer Award and Champions for Families Award; and he has been named a Benjamin Trustman Fellow, New York Government Fellow, and a Senior Fellow at UCLA. He is the author of Collaborative Philanthropies (Rowman and Littlefield, 2005) and the forthcoming Market–Oriented Philanthropy.

Frederick Isasi

Frederick Isasi J.D., MPH, serves at the director of the Health Division at the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices (NGA Center), where he oversees all operations of the Division, including work related to: health care service delivery and payment reform; Medicaid reform and cost containment; state employee and retiree health benefits; maternal and child health; public health; prescription drug abuse prevention; health information exchange and analytics; behavioral health and the social determinants of health; and health insurance coverage issues such as insurance market reforms and health insurance exchange planning and operations.

Prior to working at the NGA Center, Frederick served as the Vice President of Health Policy at The Advisory Board Company, where he founded the health policy division and served as a strategic advisor to hospitals, health systems and provider organizations throughout the nation. Much of this work focused on transforming the quality and efficiency of healthcare with a particular focus on risk-based payments, accountable care, population health, quality measurement, patient engagement, payment bundling, and data and analytic systems.

Prior to the Advisory Board, Frederick served for five years as the Senior Legislative Counsel for Healthcare to U.S. Senator Jeff Bingaman, working on both the Finance Committee and Health Education Labor and Pension (HELP) Committee. During his time in the Senate, Frederick authored numerous health care laws related to Medicare, Medicaid, the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), Health Information Technology, health care work force, oral health care, public health, and the Food and Drug Administration. He also worked extensively on the Affordable Care Act including the development of new health insurance exchanges and insurance market reforms.

Prior to his work in the Senate, Frederick was in private practice as a health policy attorney in Washington, D.C., where he advised hospitals and health systems across the country as well as state governors and Medicaid programs. He also has worked as a policy advisor to community health centers and as a biomedical researcher.

Frederick graduated with a JD from Duke University Law School in 2003, where he was staff editor for the Duke Journal of Gender Law and Policy and the Pamela B. Gann Scholar. He received his Masters in Public Health from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1999, where he was inducted into the Delta Omega national public health honor society as well as the Frank Porter Graham graduate and professional honorary society. He received his Bachelors of Science from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1994 in cellular biology and Spanish where he was a Powers Knapp Scholar. Frederick also has published research on the adherence of HIV positive patients to anti-retroviral treatments.

Cristina Jiménez

Cristina Jiménez is co-founder and Managing Director of the United We Dream Network. The largest immigrant youth-led network in the country. Originally from Ecuador, Cristina came to the U.S. with her family at the age of 13, attending high school and college as an undocumented student. She was part of United We Dream’s campaign team that led to the historic victory of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program in 2012 that protects over one million young immigrants from deportation and the recent administrative changes (DAPA) that protect up to 5 million people from deportation.

Cristina is one of Forbes’s 2014 “30 under 30 in Law and Policy,” and was named one of “21 immigration reform power players” and one of 5 non-profit leaders who will influence public policy by the Chronicle of Philanthropy. She co-founded the New York State Youth Leadership Council, the Dream Mentorship Program at Queens College, was an immigration policy analyst for the Drum Major Institute for Public Policy and an immigrant rights organizer at Make the Road New York. Cristina holds a Masters degree in Public Administration & Public Policy from the School of Public of Affairs at Baruch College, CUNY and graduated Cum Laude with a B.A. in Political Science and Business from Queens College, CUNY.

Anthony Iton

Anthony B. Iton is Senior Vice President of Healthy Communities at The California Endowment, the state’s largest, private health foundation.  His primary focus is on the foundation’s 10-year Building Healthy Communities: California Living 2.0 initiative; the goal of which is to create communities where children are healthy, safe and ready to learn.

Prior to his appointment at The Endowment, Iton served as both the director and County Health Officer for the Alameda County Public Health Department.  In that role, he oversaw the creation of an innovative public health practice designed to eliminate health disparities by tackling the root causes of poor health that limit quality of life and lifespan in many of California’s low-income communities.

For three years, Iton also served as director of Health and Human Services and School Medical Advisor for the City of Stamford, Connecticut.  Concurrent to that, he also served as a physician in internal medicine for Stamford Hospital’s HIV Clinic.  In addition, Iton served for five years as a primary care physician for the San Francisco Department of Public Health.

Iton’s varied career also includes past service as a staff attorney and Health Policy analyst for the West Coast regional office of Consumer’s Union, the publisher of Consumer Reports magazine.

Published in numerous public health and medical publications, Iton is a regular public health lecturer and keynote speaker at conferences across the nation. He earned his B.S. in Neurophysiology, with honors, from McGill University, his J.D. at the University of California, Berkeley’s Boalt Hall School of Law, and his medical degree from Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

Cynthia Kennard

Cinny Kennard serves as the Executive Director of the Annenberg Foundation. She has held executive leadership positions in the nonprofit sector for almost two decades, in organizations ranging from start-ups to established national brands including Pew Research Center, Smithsonian Institution and National Public Radio. Her experience includes strategic planning, organizational development, creating and building partnerships, fundraising, managing budgets, and creating and launching nonprofits. Cinny has also been a leader in the communication field with award-winning work in nearly every facet of the media including radio, television and digital.

Prior to joining the Annenberg Foundation in January 2015, Cinny was the Senior Vice President in charge of Programming at the Smithsonian Institution. In that role, she created partnerships with the Smithsonian involving national and international partners for educational and media initiatives; managed the programming relationships in the joint venture between the Smithsonian and Showtime/CBS known as the Smithsonian Networks; and brought President Obama for a first-ever interview on Smithsonian Channel. Before Smithsonian, Cinny worked in a key leadership role at the Annenberg Retreat at Sunnylands bringing President Obama and Chinese President Xi Jin Ping to Sunnylands for the Shirtsleeve Summit. Cinny was the first Managing Director of National Public Radio’s West Coast Production Center – NPR West – in Culver City and prior to that a Domestic and International Television Correspondent for CBS News as the bureau chief in Moscow and a Correspondent in London and Los Angeles.

She is a Senior Fellow at the Center on Communication Leadership and Policy at the USC Annenberg School for Communications and Journalism; serves on the editorial advisory board of Global Post and on the DuPont Columbia University Jury; and is a longtime member of the Trusteeship of the International Women’s Forum.

Benjamin Kennedy

Benjamin Kennedy joined The Kresge Foundation in 2009 and currently serves as Director of the American Cities Project.

In addition to grantmaking, he originates and structures program-related investments that support and advance Kresge’s strategic goals.

“Vibrant, livable and densely populated cities are essential to achieving economically sustainable and equitable patterns of global development,” Benjamin said. “Our work in Detroit advances this ideal in tangible and meaningful ways.”

Prior to joining Kresge, Benjamin was with JPMorgan Chase in Johannesburg, South Africa, as an associate on the firm’s mergers and acquisitions team.

He also worked as an economic and political analyst within IHS Global Insight’s sub-Saharan Africa country intelligence group. His responsibilities included sovereign credit risk analysis, policy research and macroeconomic forecasting.

Benjamin earned a master’s in business administration from the Harvard Business School and a bachelor’s in economics from Morehouse College in Atlanta.

Larry Kramer

Larry Kramer became president of The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation in Menlo Park, California, in September 2012.

Before joining the Foundation, Mr. Kramer served from 2004 to 2012 as Richard E. Lang Professor of Law and Dean of Stanford Law School. During his tenure, he spearheaded significant educational reforms, pioneering a new model of multidisciplinary legal studies, enlarging the clinical education program, revamping to foster a public service ethos, and developing the international law program to support a growing emphasis on globalization in legal practice. His teaching and scholarly interests include American legal history, constitutional law, federalism, separation of powers, the federal courts, conflict of laws, and civil procedure.

At the start of his career, Mr. Kramer served as law clerk to U.S. Court of Appeals Judge Henry J. Friendly of the Second Circuit and U.S. Supreme Court Justice William J. Brennan Jr.

Following his clerkships, Mr. Kramer served as professor of law at the University of Chicago and University of Michigan law schools. He joined the faculty of New York University School of Law in 1994, where he served as Associate Dean for Research and Academics and Russell D. Niles Professor of Law until leaving for Stanford in 2004. Until joining Stanford, he also served as a special consultant for Mayer, Brown, Rowe & Maw LLP.

Mr. Kramer is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a member of the American Philosophical Society and the American Law Institute. He serves on the boards of a number of nonprofit organizations, including ClimateWorks Foundation, the National Constitution Center, and Independent Sector.

Mr. Kramer received an A.B. in Psychology and Religious Studies from Brown University, graduating magna cum laude in 1980, and a J.D. from the University of Chicago Law School, magna cum laude, in 1984. He is the author of numerous articles and books, including The People Themselves: Popular Constitutionalism and Judicial Review.

Carol Larson

Carol S. Larson is President and CEO of the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, a position she has held since January 2004. Carol was appointed a vice president of the Foundation in 2000 and served as its director of programs from 1995 through 1999. She is responsible for the overall management of the Foundation and its grantmaking activities. The Foundation awards approximately $300 million in grants domestically and internationally in the program areas of Conservation and Science; Population and Reproductive Health; and Children, Families, and Communities. Prior to joining the Foundation, Carol was a partner in a Los Angeles, California law firm specializing in civil litigation. She also worked in the nonprofit sector on behalf of persons with developmental disabilities. Carol currently serves on the boards of the ClimateWorks Foundation and the American Leadership Forum — Silicon Valley. Previously, she was a board member of the Council on Foundations where she served as board chair from 2010 to 2012. She is also a prior board member of Northern California Grantmakers and Grantmakers for Children, Youth and Families. Carol received her undergraduate degree from Stanford University and her law degree from Yale Law School. Upon graduation, she served as a law clerk to the Honorable Warren J. Ferguson, United States District Court, Central District of California. Carol is the mother of two grown daughters.

Peter Long

Peter V. Long, Ph.D., is the president and CEO of Blue Shield of California Foundation. In addition to his philanthropic background, Dr. Long has extensive experience working on health policy issues at the state, national, and global levels. Prior to serving in leadership roles at the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation and The California Endowment, Dr. Long was executive director of the Indian Health Center of Santa Clara Valley, and earlier, a legislative analyst for the Progressive Primary Health Care Network in Cape Town, South Africa during the country’s transition to democracy.

Outside of his role as CEO, Dr. Long is actively involved in multiple healthcare and professional organizations, serving on the Board of Directors for Grantmakers in Health and Grantmakers for Effective Organizations, and the Governance Board of the Institute for Clinical and Economic Review. He was one of the lead organizers of the Philanthropy-Joining Forces Impact Pledge, which raised more than $200 million for veterans and military families and is a member of the National Academy of Medicine’s Leadership Consortium for Value & Science-Driven Health Care. In addition, he practices as an adjunct professor at the University of California, Los Angeles Fielding School of Public Health.

Dr. Long received a bachelor of arts degree from Harvard University; a master’s in health policy from The Johns Hopkins University School of Hygiene and Public Health; and his doctorate in health services from the University of California, Los Angeles.

Monica Lozano

Monica Lozano is Chairman of the newly established Latinos and Society Policy Program at the Aspen Institute. Lozano has an impressive record of accomplishment in Hispanic media that began in 1985 when she joined La Opinión, the country’s leading Spanish-language daily newspaper. She was named Publisher and CEO of La Opinión in 2004 and in 2010 she became CEO of it’s parent company, ImpreMedia. She led the transformation of the company into a multi-media content provider that today reaches over 20 million Latinos through its various platforms and is a leading provider of information important to the Hispanic community. Monica stepped down as CEO in June 2014 but remains Chairman of the Board of US Hispanic Media, Inc. the parent company of ImpreMedia, LLC. In addition to her work with the Aspen Institute, Lozano is Chair of the University of California Board of Regents and the Weingart Foundation, and serves as on the board of the Rockefeller Foundation, Bank of America and the Walt Disney Company.

David Lubell

David Lubell is the founder and Executive Director of Welcoming America, a burgeoning immigrant welcoming movement that is quickly expanding across the globe. As a social entrepreneur David inspires people to build a different kind of community — one that embraces immigrants and fosters opportunity for all. Welcoming America, established in 2009, works in over 85 cities and towns across the country, supporting nonprofits and local governments to transform their communities into inclusive places where everyone thrives.

David began his career as an Advocacy and Organizing Director of Latino Memphis. He later founded and became Executive Director of the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition (TIRRC). At TIRRC David helped found Welcoming Tennessee, the model for what is now Welcoming America.

David’s award-winning concept has gained recognition nationally and internationally. The White House honored Welcoming America and ten of its leaders as White House Welcoming America Champions of Change for their innovations in immigrant integration. In 2014 the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations (UNAOC) and BMW Group distinguished Welcoming America as a recipient of their Intercultural Innovation Award, honoring its work in promoting intercultural understanding. The World Economic Forum named David a 2015 Young Global Leader among 186 honorees from 63 countries and all sectors of society.

A Wesleyan University graduate, David received a MPA from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government and a Certificate in non-profit management from Georgetown University. David enjoys a welcoming life residing in Decatur, Georgia with his wife and their two children.

Geri Mannion

As director of the Corporation’s Strengthening U.S. Democracy Program, Geri Mannion brings a wealth of experience about the role of philanthropy in challenging, improving, and deepening the civic dialogue. She has directed the division since 1998, after staffing the Corporation’s program of Special Projects for almost 10 years. Previously, the Corporation’s grantmaking in civic participation was a subprogram in Special Projects. While the Corporation continues to support projects that focus on improving voter engagement among those least likely to vote, the Strengthening U.S. Democracy Program focuses primarily on immigrant civic integration. Separately, Ms. Mannion continues to direct the Corporation’s Special Opportunities Fund, which is housed within the Office of the President. The fund allows the Corporation to respond to proposals that are important but not related to the foundation’s primary foci. These projects are few and often one-time-only grants.

Active in professional organizations that work to advance and strengthen the philanthropic and nonprofit world, Ms. Mannion is a former co-chair of the Funders’ Committee for Civic Participation, an affinity group of funders that encourages foundations to fund voter registration, voting rights, civic education, and campaign finance reform. She remains an active participant in this organization. She is also a member of the board of Grantmakers Concerned with Immigrants and Refugees. In 2009, Ms. Mannion, together with her colleague Taryn Higashi, received the Robert W. Scrivner Award for Creative Grantmaking, one of philanthropy’s highest honors, for founding the Four Freedoms Fund, a funder collaborative housed at NEO Philanthropy, that works to increase capacity in immigrant communities at the state level. In 2010, she was named as one of the nonprofit sector’s top 50 leaders by the Non-Profit Times. Since 2014, Ms. Mannion has chaired the Council on Foundations’ Scrivner Selection Committee.

Geri Mannion holds a BA in English and an MA in political science, both from Fordham University.

Faith Mitchell

Faith Mitchell is President and CEO of Grantmakers In Health (GIH). Previously she served as Vice president for Program and Strategy at the organization. Before joining GIH, Dr. Mitchell was Senior Program Officer at the Institute of Medicine (IOM) where she was responsible for the health disparities portfolio. Dr. Mitchell spent 12 years at the National Academies, both at the IOM and as a Center Director in the Division of Social and Behavioral Sciences and Education. She has also held leadership positions at the U.S. Department of State, The San Francisco Foundation, and The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.

Throughout her career, Dr. Mitchell has worked on the application of social science to domestic and international public policy, health policy, and programs. She has written numerous blog posts on health-related topics, coauthored the article, Philanthropy And Disparities: Progress, Challenges, And Unfinished Business, and coedited several reports, including Examining the Health Disparities Research Plan of the National Institutes of Health: Unfinished Business; Multiple Origins, Uncertain Destinies: Hispanics and the American Future; Hispanics and the Future of America; Terrorism: Perspectives from the Behavioral and Social Sciences; Discouraging Terrorism: Some Implications of 9/11; America Becoming: Racial Trends and Their Consequences; Governance and Opportunity in Metropolitan America; and Premature Death in the New Independent States.

Dr. Mitchell holds a doctorate in medical anthropology from the University of California, Berkeley.

David Morse

David Morse is Chief Communications Officer for The Atlantic Philanthropies. He is based in the New York office.

His responsibilities include developing and managing communication strategy for the organisation. Mr. Morse counsels senior leadership on a broad range of strategic external communications, media and other issues; oversees programme and legacy communication initiatives and the website.

Mr. Morse has had an eclectic career leading public policymaking, advocacy, strategic communications and planning in the nonprofit sector, philanthropy and government. Most recently, he was Senior Fellow and Interim Vice President of Encore.org, a San Francisco-based nonprofit building a movement to promote encore careers for the greater good.

His foundation experience includes serving as Chief Communications Officer for the Pew Charitable Trusts and Vice President for Communications for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

Earlier in his career, Mr. Morse was a “shoe-leather” epidemiologist for the New York State Department of Health; professional staff member for the U.S. Senate Committee on Labor and Human Resources; Director of the President’s Task Force on the Arts and Humanities; Associate Vice President for Policy Planning, Director of Federal Relations and Instructor in higher education and public policy at the University of Pennsylvania.

Mr. Morse earned a B.A. with honors from Hamilton College and a master’s in international relations from the Johns Hopkins University.  He serves on several boards of nonprofit organisations and teaches a course on public policy, advocacy and strategic communications at the University of Southern California.

Christopher Oechsli

Christopher G. Oechsli is President and CEO of The Atlantic Philanthropies and serves on the Board of Directors. His responsibilities include working with the Board to disburse Atlantic’s remaining endowment, completing active grantmaking by 2016 and closing the doors by 2020.

Mr. Oechsli has over 30 years of experience in international business, law, philanthropy and policy development in the United States, Latin America, Asia, Africa and Europe.  Prior to re-joining Atlantic in 2011, he was Associate Fellow and Project Director at the Institute for Policy Studies, a multi-issue think tank based in Washington, D.C. From 2007 to 2009, he served as Counsel to U.S. Senator Russ Feingold.

For 17 years prior to 2007, Mr. Oechsli was a senior staff member at Atlantic and related companies. He previously served as Atlantic’s Population Health Programme Director from 2000 to 2005, during which time he developed and directed Atlantic’s work to strengthen the health systems in Viet Nam and South Africa.  He led the foundation’s development of higher education and rule-of-law initiatives in Viet Nam, South Africa, Australia and the United States; and supported the Founding Chairman’s work in health, education and medical research in the U.S., Australia and Viet Nam. Beginning in 1990, Mr. Oechsli served as a director, counsel or chief executive of operating companies within the General Atlantic Group, an international investment subsidiary of the Atlantic Foundation.

Mr. Oechsli is a graduate of Occidental College in Los Angeles. Following studies in the Chinese language at Georgetown University and graduate studies at Columbia University, he received an M.A. in Foreign Affairs and a J.D. from the University of Virginia.

Manuel Pastor

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

His research focuses on the economic, environmental and social conditions facing low-income urban communities – and the social movements seeking to change those realities. He served as a member of the Commission on Regions appointed by California’s Speaker of the State Assembly. In 2012, Dr. Pastor was awarded the Wally Marks Changemaker of the Year by the Liberty Hill Foundation in recognition of his many research partnerships with social justice organizations. He speaks frequently on issues of demographic change, economic inequality, and community empowerment and has contributed opinion pieces to such outlets as the Los Angeles Times, the San Jose Mercury News, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Sacramento Bee, the Huffington Post, and many others. Dr. Pastor has co-authored many books, including his latest work with Chris Benner, Equity, Growth, and Community: What the Nation Can Learn from America’s Metro Areas (UC Press 2015).

Hilary Pennington

Hilary Pennington is vice president of the Ford Foundation’s Education, Creativity and Free Expression program. She leads the foundation’s work on school reform in the United States and higher education around the world, next-generation media policy and journalism, and support for arts and culture. She also oversees the foundation’s regional programming in four offices based in Africa and the Middle East. Prior to joining Ford, Hilary held leadership positions at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Center for American Progress and Jobs for the Future. She also served on President Bill Clinton’s transition team and as co-chair of his administration’s presidential advisory committee on technology.

Andrea Phillips

Andi Phillips is a Vice President in the Goldman Sachs Urban Investment Group and the Head of the GS Social Impact Fund. In addition to launching the first domestic impact investing fund sponsored by a major US financial institution, Ms. Phillips also leads firm’s social impact bond and economic development investing, and developed the Access to Capital program as part of the 10,000 Small Businesses initiative.

Ms. Phillips led the first two social impact bond transactions in the US, helping pioneer the innovative financing structure that directly links positive social outcomes with financial return, leverages private capital to address policy priorities, and increases the efficiency of government spending. She has applied the approach to financing early childhood education in Utah and Chicago and recidivism reduction and job creation in New York and Massachusetts.

Prior to Goldman Sachs, Andi spent 20 years developing small business, workforce and community development programs and provided strategic and operational planning services to a variety of public and private sector clients. Ms. Phillips served as President of Seedco Financial, a Community Development Financial Institution which provides affordable capital to small businesses and non-profits in underserved communities. Prior to that she was Executive Vice President for Programs at Seedco, where she was responsible for strategic planning and program implementation, including several pay for success contracts.

Ms. Phillips holds a BA from Tufts University and a MA in Public Policy from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

Ana Ponce

Ana Ponce is the Chief Executive Officer of Camino Nuevo Charter Academy (CNCA), a network of high performing charter schools serving more than 3300 Pre-K through 12th grade students in the greater MacArthur Park neighborhood near Downtown Los Angeles. CNCA schools are recognized as models for serving predominantly Latino English Language Learners and have won various awards and distinctions including the Title 1 Academic Achievement Award, the California Association of Bilingual Education Seal of Excellence, the California Distinguished Schools award, and the Effective Practice Incentive Community (EPIC) award. Born in Mexico, Ana is committed to providing high quality educational options for immigrant families in the neighborhood where she grew up.

An alumnus of Teach for America, she spent 3 years in the classroom before becoming one of the founding teachers and administrators at The Accelerated School, the first independent charter school in South Los Angeles. Under her instructional leadership, The Accelerated School was named elementary school of the year by Time Magazine in 2001. Ms. Ponce earned her undergraduate degree from Middlebury College and a master’s degree in Bilingual-Bicultural Education from Teachers College, Columbia University. She earned her administrative Tier 1 credential and second master’s degree from UCLA through the Principal’s Leadership Institute (PLI) and earned a Doctorate in Educational Leadership from Loyola Marymount University. A veteran of the charter schools movement in California, she serves on the Board of the California Charter Schools Association.

Rip Rapson

Rip Rapson is president and CEO of The Kresge Foundation, a $3.5 billion private, national foundation dedicated to expanding opportunities for vulnerable people in America’s cities.

Since 2006, he has expanded Kresge’s grantmaking and investing tools to improve the economic, social, cultural and environmental conditions of urban life across the nation and in Kresge’s hometown of Detroit. In 2014, the foundation made grant and investment commitments totaling more than $150 million.

A veteran of public policy and philanthropic leadership, Rapson’s experience includes civic administration, private law practice and strategic foundation governance. His work has elevated many public issues including early childhood development, urban revitalization, environmental preservation and arts and cultural support.

He is active in his profession and in his community serving as a board member for ArtPlace America, Living Cities, Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC), Detroit RiverFront Conservancy, Downtown Detroit Partnership and M-1 Rail.

Robert K. Ross

Robert K. Ross, M.D., is president and chief executive officer for The California Endowment, a private, statewide health foundation established in 1996 to address the health needs of Californians. Prior to his appointment in July 2000, Dr. Ross served as director of the Health and Human Services Agency for the County of San Diego from 1993 to 2000.

Dr. Ross has an extensive background in health philanthropy, as a public health administrator, and as a clinician. His service includes: Commissioner, Philadelphia Department of Public Health; medical director for LINK School-Based Clinic Program, Camden, New Jersey; instructor of clinical medicine, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia; and faculty member at San Diego State University’s School of Public Health.

Dr. Ross has been actively involved in community and professional activities at both the local and national level. He is a member of the President’s Advisory Commission on Educational Excellence for African Americans, Co-Chair, Diversity in Philanthropy Coalition, and has served as a member of the California Health Benefit Exchange Board, the Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors Board, National Vaccine Advisory Committee, and on the boards of Grantmakers in Health, the National Marrow Donor Program, San Diego United Way and Jackie Robinson YMCA. He is a Diplomate of the American Academy of Pediatrics, served on the President’s Summit for America’s Future and as chairman of the national Boost for Kids Initiative, and was honored by the Council on Foundations as the Distinguished Grantmaker of the Year for 2008. Dr. Ross received his undergraduate, masters in Public Administration and medical degrees from the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.

Darshak Sanghavi

Darshak Sanghavi, MD, recently joined the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation (CMMI) as the director of the Preventive and Population Health Care Models Group. Prior to joining CMMI, he served as a fellow and managing director of the Engelberg Center for Health Care Reform with the Brookings Institution. Dr. Sanghavi also served as the chief of pediatric cardiology at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, where he directed clinical and research programs dedicated to children’s heart defects. An award-winning medical educator, he also has worked in medical settings around the world and published dozens of scientific papers on topics ranging from the molecular biology of cell death to tuberculosis transmission patterns in Peruvian slums. Dr. Sanghavi is a frequent guest on NBC’s Today show and a past commentator for NPR’s All Things Considered. He is a contributing editor to Parents magazine, a health care columnist for Slate, and he often writes about health care for theNew York Times, the Boston Globe, and the Washington Post. His best-seller, A Map of the Child: A Pediatrician’s Tour of the Body, was named a best health book of the year by the Wall Street Journal. He speaks widely on medical issues at national conferences, advises federal and state health departments, and is a former visiting media fellow of the Kaiser Family Foundation and a winner of the Wharton Business Plan Competition. He previously worked for several years as a U.S. Indian Health Service pediatrician on a Navajo reservation. Educated at Harvard College and Johns Hopkins Medical School, Dr. Sanghavi completed his pediatrics residency and cardiology fellowship at Harvard Medical School and Children’s Hospital Boston.

Sonal Shah

Sonal Shah is Professor and the founding Executive Director of the Beeck Center for Social Impact & Innovation at Georgetown University. Sonal is an economist and entrepreneur who has spent her career focused on actionable innovation in the public and private sectors. Most recently, she was the Deputy Assistant to the President and founding Director of the White House Office of Social Innovation and Civic Participation.

She spent seven years at the U.S. Department of Treasury where she was an international economist working on timely development issues, including post-conflict development in Bosnia, Asian financial crisis, and poverty reduction in Africa. She then went to Goldman Sachs and Google while simultaneously co-founded Indicorps, a nonprofit building a new generation of socially conscious global leaders. She is a senior fellow at the Case Foundation and the Center for American Progress. Sonal serves on the following boards, Oxfam, Urban Alliance, GSMA Foundation, Social Finance, Inc. and The Century Foundation and served as the Chair of the G7/G8 taskforce on Impact Investing.

James Shelton

James “Jim” Shelton is 2U’s chief impact officer, overseeing university partner program implementation, research and university relations. Jim holds a bachelor’s degree in computer science from Morehouse College as well as master’s degrees in both business administration and education from Stanford GSB and GSE.

Prior to 2U, Jim served as the Deputy Secretary and COO of the U.S. Department of Education and led a range of management, policy, and program functions in support of educational access and excellence for America’s children, especially those least advantaged. While in government, he also launched and led the President’s My Brother’s Keeper initiative; and served on and led multiple interagency efforts focused on increasing economic opportunity and entrepreneurship and building the enabling technology and R&D infrastructures to accelerate progress.

Earlier in his career, Jim opened the east coast offices of NewSchools Venture Fund and became the program director for education at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, where he managed a $2-3 billion portfolio of non-profit investments.

He has chaired numerous non-profit boards and led domestic and international social sector initiatives ranging from economic development to voter education in emerging democracies.

Jim currently resides in his hometown, Washington, D.C., with his wife and their two sons.

Dalila Wilson-Scott

Dalila Wilson-Scott is Head of Global Philanthropy at JPMorgan Chase & Co. and President of the JPMorgan Chase Foundation. JPMorgan Chase is a global leader in philanthropy with over $220 million annually invested in communities and nonprofit organizations across 40 countries and spanning 6 continents. Wilson-Scott also oversees employee engagement and volunteerism and plays a key role in helping to set the firm’s overall Corporate Responsibility strategy.

As President of the JPMorgan Chase Foundation, she has been an integral part of developing the Foundation’s global philanthropic strategy. Under her leadership, the Foundation has unveiled a giving strategy that delivers greater impact on increasing economic opportunity and mobility and promoting more widely shared prosperity. A key element of the new investment strategy is creating avenues for the firm to bring its full resources and assets to bear alongside its philanthropic dollars.

JPMorgan Chase has made major multi-year, global commitments to increasing workforce readiness, growing small businesses, improving consumer financial health and supporting strong urban economies – including investing in the economic recovery of Detroit. Program launches under her leadership include multi-year commitments to some of the most pressing socioeconomic challenges facing communities today: New Skills at Work – $250 million, 5 year effort marking the largest private sector commitment to closing the skills gap, The Fellowship Initiative expansion – JPMorgan Chase’s proprietary program for young men of color in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago. Financial Solutions Lab – $30 million commitment to sourcing the best technology driven product solutions to common consumer challenges including weathering financial shocks and managing income volatility.

Prior to joining the Office of Corporate Responsibility, she served in the firm’s Corporate Merger Office as an integral member of the task force charged with managing the integration of JPMorgan Chase and Bank One, one of the largest and most significant mergers in the financial services industry. Before this role, she was a Senior Strategic Planning Director focused on evaluating new business initiatives and acquisition opportunities for the retail and commercial banking businesses.

Mrs. Wilson-Scott serves on the boards of GuideStar and Box.org and is also a member of the advisory council for My Brothers Keeper Alliance, the Executives Alliance and the Executive Leadership Council. Mrs. Wilson-Scott holds an M.B.A. in Finance and Management from New York University’s Leonard N. Stern School of Business and a B.A. in Economics from NYU’s College of Arts and Science. She resides in Northern New Jersey with her husband, S. Christopher Scott and their three children.

Evan Wolfson

Evan Wolfson is Founder and President of Freedom to Marry, the campaign to win marriage nationwide. In 1983, Evan wrote his Harvard Law School thesis on gay people and the freedom to marry.  During the 1990s he served as co-counsel in the historic Hawaii marriage case that launched the ongoing global movement for the freedom to marry, and has participated in numerous gay rights and HIV/AIDS cases. He earned a B.A. in history from Yale College in 1978; served as a Peace Corps volunteer in a village in Togo, West Africa; and wrote the book, Why Marriage Matters: America, Equality, and Gay People’s Right to Marry, published by Simon & Schuster in July 2004. Citing his national leadership on marriage and his appearance before the U.S. Supreme Court in Boy Scouts of America v. James Dale, the National Law Journal in 2000 named Evan one of “the 100 most influential lawyers in America.” Newsweek/The Daily Beast dubbed Evan “the godfather of gay marriage” and Time Magazine named him one of “the 100 most influential people in the world.” In 2012, Evan received the Barnard Medal of Distinction alongside President Barack Obama.

Annie Sorich

Annie Sorich is the Vice President, Strategy at the Charter School Growth Fund (CSGF), a non-profit fund working to transform education in the United States by investing in innovative charter school networks that offer outstanding educational options for under-served students. At CSGF, Annie leads internal and
external strategic work and special projects for the CEO. Prior to her current role, Annie spent four years
on the investment management team, leading due diligence and portfolio management efforts across
the U.S. Before joining CSGF, Annie spent five years at Chicago-based Morningstar, Inc. in a wide range of capacities, including working as an equity analyst covering a variety of natural resource and industrial companies and managing operations for multiple database integration projects spanning the globe. Annie graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Oberlin College and received an MBA with Honors from theUniversity of Chicago Booth School of Business.

Carrie Walton Penner

Carrie Walton Penner has been engaged in education research, evaluation, philanthropy and advocacy for more than 20 years. The focus of her activities has been on improving access to high-quality schools for every child, particularly in low-income communities. A graduate of Georgetown University, Carrie holds two master’s degrees from the Stanford University School of Education – one in Administration and Policy Analysis and the second in Program Evaluation.

She serves on the boards of several organizations, including:
The Walton Family Foundation
Charter School Growth Fund
KIPP Foundation
California Charter Schools Association
EdVoice
Innovate Public Schools
Stanford University Graduate School of Education

James Ferris

James Ferris is passionate about leveraging philanthropy to solve public problems. By engaging with government, he says, philanthropic organizations and individuals can influence policy to strengthen the fabric of a community and promote the welfare of its members. “As a result of shared learning from the broad array of philanthropic strategies,” Ferris observes, “we expand our understanding of what is possible in terms of how philanthropy can create meaningful policy and systems change.” His groundbreaking work sheds light on foundation strategies for leveraging their assets, knowledge and networks to influence public policy. This work is being extended to examine new efforts to develop strategic partnerships that bring philanthropists and government together in pursuit of the common good.

Ferris is the founding director of the Center and a professor at USC’s Sol Price School of Public Policy. He also holds the Emery Evans Olson Chair in Nonprofit Entrepreneurship and Public Policy. He, along with Eleanor Brown, won the 2008 Association for Research on Nonprofits and Voluntary Action Award for Outstanding Article in the Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly for their article: “Social Capital and Philanthropy: An Analysis of the Impact of Social Capital on Giving and Volunteering.” In addition to his research, his experience as a member of the editorial board of key journals and an advisor to various national nonprofit groups and international agencies such as the World Bank, Ferris has developed international renown for his expertise in philanthropy and the nonprofit sector. He received his Ph.D. in economics from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and his B.A. from the University of Florida.

Rashad Robinson

Rashad serves as Executive Director of ColorOfChange, the nation’s largest online civil rights organization. Under Rashad’s leadership, ColorOfChange has grown its membership to over one million people nationwide. In 2015, Fast Company named ColorOfChange the 6th Most Innovative Company in the world, “for creating a civil rights group for the 21st century.” Since 2005, ColorOfChange has been a leading force in holding government and corporations accountable to Black people and advancing visionary solutions for building a just society. For the past four years, Rashad has greatly expanded the scope and impact of the organization, and continued to build a member-driven movement around the issues that matter most to Black folks. From fighting for justice for Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Renisha McBride and Trayvon Martin, to battling attempts to suppress the Black vote, to helping shape the successful strategy in the fight to protect a free and open Internet, ColorOfChange has been at the forefront of the most critical civil rights issues of this century. Under Rashad’s leadership, ColorOfChange developed and led the national campaign against the right-wing policy shop, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). After exposing ALEC’s involvement in passing discriminatory voter ID and harmful Stand Your Ground laws, ColorOfChange pushed over 90 corporations to end their financial support of ALEC. As a result, ALEC disbanded the the Public Safety and Elections task force — the committee responsible for drafting those harmful laws. Leveraging his strategic expertise in culture change and large-scale messaging projects in Hollywood, Rashad has led ColorOfChange’s work to change the systemic practices in news, entertainment and reality television production that result in widespread inaccurate and dehumanizing portrayals of Black people. A thought leader in civil rights, social change, and technology-driven activism, Rashad has appeared in hundreds of news stories, interviews, and political discussions in media outlets such as ABC, BET, CNN, MSNBC, OWN, the New York Times, Fast Company and NPR. His op-eds have appeared in the New York Times, the LA Times, Newsday and Huffington Post, among others. For the past five years, the Washington Post’s “ The Root” has named Rashad to “ The Root 100,” a list of influential African Americans under 45. In 2015, Ebony magazine named Rashad a breakthrough leader in the fight for justice. Rashad is also the proud recipient of the ADCOLOR Advocate Award and the Transforming America Award from Demos. Prior to his work at ColorOfChange, Rashad served as Senior Director of Media Programs at the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD), where he led the organization’s programmatic and advocacy work to transform the representation of LGBT people in the media. At GLAAD, Rashad developed and executed the organization’s strategic direction in developing research-based messaging to shift public opinion, helping to fuel the major political shift around LGBT rights in America. Previously, Rashad held leadership roles at the Right to Vote Campaign and FairVote.

Ebony Lee

Ebony Lee is a Senior Program Officer on the College Ready – State, District, Networks team at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, focused on national and state charter policy and increasing the proliferation of high quality charters. She transitioned to this role after previously serving on the Policy and Advocacy team. Prior to joining the Foundation, she was Chief of Staff in the Office of Innovation and Improvement at the US Department of Education. She has also worked in external relations and outreach for the US Department of Justice and the American Cancer Society and managed several grassroots campaigns. She is originally from Cleveland, Ohio, and attended Brown University.

Robynn Steffen

Robynn Steffen is a senior manager at Omidyar Network, a philanthropic investment firm dedicated to harnessing the power of markets to create opportunities for people to improve their lives. Since it was established in 2004, Omidyar Network has committed more than $850 million in for-profit investments and non-profit grants. Drawing on that extensive experience, Steffen works to accelerate the growth and effectiveness of the global impact investing industry. Prior to joining Omidyar Network in September 2015, Steffen led the White House’s efforts to promote emerging market impact investments to accelerate the Administration’s global development goals. Before joining the Obama Administration in 2009, Steffen worked in India and South Africa to leverage markets to improve the lives of disadvantaged communities; in the trenches of a start-up non-profit accelerating global access to medicines, first as Executive Director, then serving on the inaugural Board; and forging multi-sector partnerships as Deputy Chair of the Clinton Global Initiative Education Working Group.Steffen earned a BA and MA from Yale University and a JD from Yale Law School.

Faizal Karmali

Faizal Karmali leads the Rockefeller Foundation’s strategic work on network engagement, helping teams build and harness the people, organizations, and solutions necessary to catalyze innovation and progress around complex global problems. In addition, he oversees strategic partnerships and programming related to the Foundation’s Bellagio Center in Italy – a space known for enabling cross-sectoral, international discourse to advance knowledge and action around critical social challenges. With a true portfolio career, anchored by his international and social impact orientation, Faizal has developed an inherent NETWORK mindset – always seeing the world as a complex of elements that influence one another and which can accelerate change when connected at the right times and in the right places.

The first decade of his career was with the Aga Khan Development Network (AKDN) and included postings in Asia, Europe, and East Africa, including time with the Department of Diplomatic Affairs at the Secretariat of His Highness the Aga Khan. His time with the AKDN increasingly involved a focus on government relations and engaging the public sector with the AKDN’s social and economic investments including those in education, finance, aviation, energy, and media. Prior to joining the Foundation, Faizal co-founded an award-winning social enterprise that built software for Canada’s energy sector. Faizal holds a bachelor’s degree in environmental engineering from the University of Western Ontario, andtwo master’s degrees, one in international education from the University of Toronto and the other in business administration from INSEAD.

Suzanne Immerman

Suzanne Immerman has spent more than 20 years in the independent and public sector, spanning corporate and family philanthropy, federal government service and nonprofit program development. She has always focused on how to maximize private investment for public good.

Suzanne most recently served as a Senior Advisor to Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, where she created a new function for public-private partnerships as the U.S. Department of Education’s first Director of Strategic Partnerships. In this role, Suzanne led the Department’s private sector collaboration, encouraging and facilitating alignment, coordination and partnerships between the philanthropic and business community and the Department of Education’s cradle-to-career reform agenda. Her portfolio included such signature Presidential initiatives as the Investing in Innovation Fund, the Promise Neighborhoods initiative and My Brother’s Keeper.

Prior to government service, Suzanne served as the Deputy Director of the September 11thFund, a $530 million national foundation established in response to the terrorist attacks, and Director of the Wolfensohn Family Foundation, established by Former World Bank President James Wolfensohn. For several years, Suzanne worked in the corporate sector as a Senior Consultant to the Verizon Foundation on its education portfolio and the Manager of Public Affairs for NBC, overseeing the network’s national corporate philanthropy. Suzanne cut her teeth in public-private partnerships at PENCIL running New York City’s Principal For A Day Program, created to inspire private sector support for public education. A graduate of Brown University, she began her career as Program Director for New York Cares.

Michael Chodos

Michael Chodos is a serial entrepreneur and experienced operational leader. He has started, advised and accelerated startups, social enterprises and growth-stage companies nationwide and internationally, and is deeply engaged in influencing public policy to boost impact investing, social entrepreneurship and government innovation.
Currently, Michael is a Senior Fellow at the Beeck Center for Social Impact & Innovation at Georgetown University, and leads the Center’s impact investing work. He is also the Senior Advisor to the US National Advisory Board on Impact Investing, the US’s arm of the Global Task Force on Impact Investing. Recently, Michael was a Senior Fellow at Encore.org, working to develop social innovation and entrepreneurship strategy and engagement as well as policies and strategic partnerships supporting sustainability of the “encore” social enterprise. Michael is also an active attorney and advisor, representing a diverse range of small business entrepreneurs, private equity investors, technology developers and content creators.
Previously, Michael served as the Associate Administrator for the Office of Entrepreneurial Development in the US Small Business Administration, where he was responsible for overseeing the Agency’s nationwide counseling and training resources and programs, as well as the Agency’s Regional Innovation Clusters program. Michael also served as the Small Business Administration’s Deputy General Counsel and Chief Negotiator, shepherding numerous regulatory, administrative and labor issues to successful outcomes.

Parag Gupta