Our Team
With extensive experience in supporting locally-led development across the globe, our staff and board are uniquely qualified to activate power inside communities through World Connect's co-investment model and drive progress in education, health, economic opportunity, and environment.
Ruth Canesha Chamangwana
Ruth brings an array of experience in community-led development, focusing on the design and management of initiatives in health, education, economic opportunities, and environmental sustainability. She began her career as a CorpsAfrica Volunteer in Salima District, Malawi, where she applied asset-based community development and human centered design approaches to facilitate locally led projects. In 2017, Ruth was selected as a fellow of the Young African Leaders Initiative Regional Leadership Center, an opportunity that further strengthened her commitment to advancing inclusive development and promoting women's participation in decision-making processes. Ruth holds a master’s degree in development policy, specializing in sustainable development, from the Korea Development Institute School of Public Policy and Management, and a Bachelor of Science from the University of Malawi, Chancellor College.
Asaba Gahima Emmanuel
Prior to joining World Connect, Asaba worked in local government for the Rulindo and Gicumbi Districts in Rwanda. As the Executive Secretary, he managed the day-to-day coordination of activities between residents and development partners, including overseeing the implementation of policy decisions and monitoring project performance. Asaba also mobilized community members for civic participation and coordinated activities for the National Commission for Unity and Reconciliation. His experience in youth development includes the development and implementation of the National Youth Council's strategy on youth, sports, and culture, including the monitoring of the strategy's activities. Asaba earned a Bachelor of Public Administration at Kampala International University in Uganda.
Patrick Higdon
Patrick is responsible for overall program quality and integrity and guides World Connect's program strategy, team, and key partnerships. He is also World Connect's charity representative in the United Kingdom. In this role, he supports the World Connect UK Board of Trustees in growing the organization's reach and revenues in the UK and European markets. Patrick holds a bachelor's degree in anthropology and development from the University of Tennessee and an M.A. in Latin American and Caribbean studies from New York University.
Zione James
Zione is a dedicated advocate for community development, passionately advancing grassroots initiatives through strategic, community-driven efforts. Before joining Mudzi Connect, Zione served as a youth officer intern in the civil service for two years, collaborating with local and international partners to deliver education, health, and economic empowerment programs for women and in- and out-of-school youth. As a respected role model, Zione also championed girls' education and campaigns to end child marriage in Machinga, raising awareness of harmful cultural practices and providing mentorship and career guidance to young people. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in media for development from the University of Malawi.
Simeon Kambalame
Simeon is a development professional with expertise in leading donor-funded projects (UNAIDS, GIZ, USAID) that empower youth, women, and communities. With experience in media management as Acting Head of Programs (TV and Radio) at Timveni Child and Youth Media Organization, he combines development acumen with media savvy. Simeon is also skilled in resource mobilization, having contributed to securing key projects like the Digital Opportunity Trust's Going Beyond Project.
Rhoda K. Kanyesigye
Born and raised in a rural community in Eastern Africa, Rhoda aspires to see community livelihoods transformed by those mostly affected by the challenges. She is a development professional with nearly two decades of supporting locally-led development and has been involved with World Connect in different capacities since 2012. Before opening and leading World Connect Rwanda in 2022, Rhoda worked for Send a Cow (now Ripple Effect), supporting fundraising and business development for its programs in Rwanda and Burundi. She also worked for the U.S. Peace Corps in Rwanda where spent seven years managing the small grants program, supporting Rwandan communities and Peace Corps Volunteers to implement local development initiatives with funding support from the U.S. Peace Corps. Rhoda has also worked for the government of Rwanda in different organizations and roles. She holds a bachelor's degree in development economics from Makerere University and a Master of Business Administration in project management from Mount Kenya University.
Jonathan Kasekera
Throughout his career, Jonathan has successfully managed diverse portfolios to support projects. His experience spans the full cycle of grants management, project management accounting, business financial reporting, payroll administration, procurement processes, fixed assets management, liquidity management, and vendor relations. Jonathan possesses extensive expertise in designing and implementing collaborative financial models, such as developing accounting process flows, establishing accounting, payment, and procurement systems, and providing training and capacity-building for junior finance staff and project partners.
Frank Charles Kasonga
Frank oversees the community development efforts of local NGOs supported by Mudzi Connect funding that has improved the health, education, and economic opportunity for more than 600,000 Malawians to date. Frank is a published author with 23+ years hands-on experience in project design, proposal development and review, organizational development, capacity building and training, grants administration, governance, program and people management, financial tracking, and monitoring and evaluation. Frank holds a master’s degree in transformative community development from Mzuzu University, a Bachelor of Science in social science, and a .aw certificate from the Staff Development Institute. Frank is a leader by nature, a team player, excellent writer, and charismatic trainer. He is widely regarded as a leader in promoting locally-led development and a frequent speaker on the topic.
Christine Lackowski
Christine brings extensive experience in nonprofit leadership, financial management, and organizational operations to her role at World Connect. Prior to joining the organization, she served as Chief Operating Officer at Project Sunshine, where she oversaw strategic operations and program implementation. Christine also worked as a Client Manager at BTQ Financial, supporting nonprofit clients in finance and accounting, and began her career in the financial services industry. She holds a Master of Public Administration from Baruch College, an MBA from Pace University, and a BA in international business from the University of Georgia. Christine is committed to advancing mission-driven work through strong operational strategy and financial stewardship.
Amber Lucero-Dwyer
Amber believes that global development is most effective, and dignified, when conducted at the local level. Before joining World Connect in 2025, she spent 12 years on the African continent working for the U.S. Agency for International Development in Rwanda and the U.S. Peace Corps in Malawi in various capacities including communications, programming, and leadership. Prior to this, she had a career in art museums in Cincinnati, Ohio, and San Diego, California, and also served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in El Salvador. In her spare time, Amber is an avid runner and film snob — and she is the biggest fan of the Olympics that you will ever meet.
Lisa Meadowcroft
Lisa aspires to live by the African proverb: "If you want to go fast, go alone; if you want to go far, go together." She has served for more than two decades in senior resource mobilization, communications, and management positions at international humanitarian and development organizations including the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative, Amref Health Africa and the International Rescue Committee. Lisa is also a cat lover, an avid traveler, and an Argentine tango enthusiast.
Bertha Mukhuna
Dedicated and results-oriented, Bertha is committed to advancing World Connect's mission of unlocking the potential of local communities to solve their own challenges and thrive. She plays a key role in supporting the design, implementation, and monitoring of community-led development projects across Malawi. Passionate about grassroots impact, Bertha works closely with local organizations, leaders, and communities to ensure that projects are not only successfully delivered, but are also sustainable and responsive to real community needs. Before joining Mudzi Connect, Bertha served as a CorpsAfrica Volunteer in a rural community in Dedza District, Malawi. With a strong background in project management, she brings expertise in community mobilization, capacity building, and partnership development, having successfully managed projects in education, health, and economic empowerment. She holds a bachelor's degree in education languages from the University of Malawi and a certificate in programme management from the University of Cape Town.
Pamela Nathenson
As World Connect's Global Executive Director since 2012, Pamela is responsible for charting the organization's direction, ensuring achievement of programmatic and operational objectives, and nurturing a community of staff, board, and implementing partners who are aligned in our shared mission to activate locally-led development. Pamela brings 25+ years experience in building social impact organizations and designing and implementing public health programming, resulting in millions of healthier and saved lives. Prior to joining World Connect, she was the first hire at the Fund for Public Health in New York City, a nonprofit organization established by the Bloomberg Administration to expand the work of the New York City Health Department. As Director of Program and Resource Development, Pamela worked closely with leading Health Department scientists to position innovative initiatives for funding, pursue new business opportunities, and develop new partnerships while defining and implementing organizational direction for a fledgling city-affiliated nonprofit. During her eight years with the Fund, Pamela helped raise more than $250 million in public and private sector funds. Prior to this, Pamela served as the Director of Programs at the REACH Community Health Foundation, the charitable giving arm of Northern Berkshire Health Systems in Massachusetts.
Pamela earned a bachelor's degree in the philosophy of medicine from Boston University's University Professors Program and a Master of Public Health with a concentration in international health from Boston University's School of Public Health. Pamela has three daughters, one husband, a menagerie of pets, and attributes her lifelong mission of improving health and advancing social justice to the example set by her father, a public hospital physician in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where Pamela grew up.
Lidia Oxí
Lidia Oxí joined World Connect in 2024 to lead grantmaking in Guatemala and build a Fundación Guate Conecta as a locally-led development hub that supports local leaders to drive progress. Lidia previously served as Co-Executive Director of MAIA, the only Maya-serving organization of its size led and designed by indigenous women. Lidia is a fellow of the Vital Voices Engage Program, Gratitude Network, Global Governance Forum and MIT Solve. She is committed to social justice, access to education, gender equity, and indigenous rights. Lidia is part of the board of directors for Women Justice Initiatives, Mujeres Liderando Guatemala, MAIA, and a member of the global councils of One Young World Indigenous Council and Community Centric Fundraising.
Lidia is passionate about education, sustainable development, human rights, and gender equality, and the Honnold Foundation and Guatemala.com have highlighted her advocacy efforts. Lidia's national and international experience and fluency in four languages (Kaqchikel, Spanish, English and Chinese Mandarin) allow her to build strategic partnerships to reduce inequality and proactively advocate for indigenous communities.
Natacha Scott-Weiss
An expert on refugee issues and on development impact analysis with a special focus on gender, Natacha has been the Partner Liaison for World Connect since 2017. In the 90s, she worked as a senior advocate for Refugees International in Africa, both in West Africa and the Great Lakes region, and served on their board from 2004 to 2021, including as Board Co-Chair. Natacha's three decades of experience include numerous missions throughout Africa and the Americas. Her work in Sierra Leone was credited in the New York Times, and she was interviewed by CNN, ABC and Fox News. In 2001, Natacha founded and was the President of American Friends of the Bambi Homes Colombia, a foundation for abandoned children in Colombia. In 2007, Natacha helped form Surgeons Overseas, an organization assisting surgical capacity in Sierra Leone, Nigeria and Ghana. She sits on Refugee International’s emeritus board, the advisory board of Bata Children’s Program, and the advisory board of The Reckoning Project, an NGO focused on recording war crimes in Ukraine. Swiss and Canadian, Natacha has two children and resides in Brooklyn, New York.
Alli Tolbert
Alli began collaborating with World Connect in 2014, bridging rural Ecuadorian communities with World Connect's co-investment opportunities. For more than a decade, she has supported diverse rural communities in Ecuador with their local projects for improved health, economy, and environmental protection. Alli is also an equine therapist with a focus on supporting women and teenage girls recovering from trauma. She earned a Bachelor of Arts in international studies and Spanish, and is soon to complete a Master of Social Work. Alli believes in holistic approaches to creating resilient communities for the health of people, animals, and the environment. She is committed to exploring how international collaborations can reflect decolonial, equitable dynamics for greater liberation and well-being.
Nina Watkins
Nina is an urban planner, artist, and nonprofit leader with more than two decades of experience at the intersection of philanthropy, social justice, and community-led development. Before joining World Connect, she held senior roles at the Open Society Foundations, where she focused on global youth initiatives, and at Esperanza, an alternative-to-incarceration program for young people in New York City. A lifelong New Yorker, Nina is also a working potter and collaborates with other makers and artists across NYC. She holds a bachelor's degree in sculpture from Bard College and a master's in urban planning from Hunter College.
George Biddle is a humanitarian and development expert with over three decades of experience in crisis response, peace-building, and conflict mitigation. He is currently the chairman of World Connect.
From 2000 to 2015, Biddle was the executive vice president of the International Rescue Committee (IRC), a leading humanitarian organization that responds to conflict and natural disasters across the globe. He served as the IRC's acting president from May to July 2002. Previously, he served as the vice president of the International Crisis Group. Biddle was also president of the Institute for Central American Studies, an organization he founded in 1989 to assist post-cold war Central America in its transition from violent conflict to peace and democracy.
Biddle has testified before Congress and presented at the UN Security Council and the European Parliament, is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and currently serves as a board member of the IRC as well as several other nonprofits. He received his AB from Harvard and MA from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.
Stephanie Cabot is half French, half American, and grew up in London, Paris, and New England. She attended Harvard, where she studied history, and first worked in New York and London with JP Morgan. Her career as an agent began at WME in London, where she spent nine years and ran the office for the last five, before relocating to the U.S. and to The Gernert Company in NYC, where she worked for fifteen years. Stephanie joined SLA in the Spring of 2020. Her interests are a reflection of her own reading tastes which have always been wide and far ranging. She represents authors from all over the world and is drawn to the international narratives whether told in story, memoir, or essays as well as literary fiction reflecting diverse, global voices, speculative fiction, upmarket commercial fiction, crime, and thrillers.
James Hunt is a Partner and Portfolio Manager at Tocqueville Asset Management, where he serves as Chairman of the Investment Committee and lead portfolio manager for the firm's International and Global strategies.
Prior to Tocqueville, he spent 10 years as an executive in corporate finance at Lehman Brothers and Dillon Read, advising corporations and governments globally on privatizations, mergers and acquisitions and capital raising transactions. James also serves on the board of WaterAid America, a not for profit focused on clean water and sanitation. He earned a BA from Brown University and an MBA from Yale's School of Organization and Management.
Christoph Becker is the driving force behind the reinvention of business-to-business (B2B) marketing. As both CEO and CCO, he has grown gyro into one of the largest, most successful B2B agencies in the world.
Under Becker’s leadership, gyro was named 2019 Global B2B Agency of the Year by the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) as well as B2B Marketing’s Top U.S. B2B Agency 2017-2018. gyro was also named Advertising Age’s 2016 Global B2B Agency of the Year. In 2018, Becker was inducted into the ANA's prestigious B2B Hall of Fame.
Becker has spent nearly 30 years building brands and creative cultures around the globe. Before gyro, he served as Chairman and CCO of FCB New York for eight years, leading the agency’s creative output across the entire client portfolio. A true global citizen, he spent seven years in Mexico City as CCO of Bozell Latin America, where he guided the creative success of eight countries. Prior to Bozell, he worked at TAPSA Madrid and Ogilvy & Mather Madrid.
Becker has spoken at a number of high-profile events such as Cannes Lions, Fortune Brainstorm: Tech, Forbes CMO Summit and Advertising Week. Throughout the course of his career, he has judged nearly every major creative awards show including Cannes Lions, the Effie Awards, Spikes Asia and FIAP. Becker has also served as jury chair at Dubai Lynx.
For the past decade Christoph has been a board member of the International Rescue Committee (rescue.org), a global non-profit organization founded by Albert Einstein.
Clara Bingham is a journalist, author and documentary film producer whose work has focused on social justice and women's issues. Her most recent book is Witness to the Revolution: Radicals, Resisters, Vets, Hippies, and the Year America Lost Its Mind and Found Its Soul (Random House, 2016). Previously, she produced a documentary that exposed the ravages of mountain top removal coal mining in Appalachia. Clara and Laura Leedy Gansler co-wrote Class Action: The Landmark Case that Changed Sexual Harassment Law (Doubleday, 2002), which was adapted into the 2005 feature film North Country (Warner Bros).
Women on the Hill: Challenging the Culture of Congress (Times Books, 1997) chronicles the lives of four female members of the 103rd Congress following the 1992 "Year of the Woman" elections. As a Washington, D.C. correspondent for Newsweek from 1989 to 1993, Clara covered the George H. W. Bush White House leading up to and during the 1992 presidential election. She also worked as a press secretary on the Michael Dukakis 1988 Democratic presidential campaign.
Clara's freelance writing has appeared in publications including The Daily Beast, Ms., Vanity Fair, Vogue, Harper's Bazaar, Talk, Glamour, The Washington Monthly, and United Press International, the wire service for which she wrote as a stringer from Papua New Guinea. Clara graduated from Harvard University with an AB in history and literature.
Courtenay Cabot Venton is an international development economist. By demonstrating the relative returns of social and environmental interventions, she contributes to an evidence base for what works and what doesn't when it comes to reducing poverty worldwide. Courtenay's recent work demonstrates that, by responding proactively to some of the world's most pressing problems, we can not only avert human suffering, but we could also save billions of dollars – dollars that are critically needed to continue to support people's growth out of poverty.
Tamala Chirwa is an International Coach Federation-credentialed Associate Certified Coach specializing in executive .eadership and group and team Coaching. She is a certified DISC practitioner, corporate trainer/leadership consultant. She has an MBA from MANCOSA, an ACCA diploma in financial management and a post-graduate management certificate from University of Cape Town Graduate School of Business. During her twenty-year corporate career, she held various positions in leading organizations in Malawi, South Africa, and Kenya and excelled at delivering high-value solutions as a manager in the finance, administration and human resources management functions. She is highly experienced in designing and delivering leadership development and coach-training program in organizations. Tamala is a Vital Voices Leadership Fellow and a member of a Global Network of Women Leaders who improve lives in their communities. Apart from developing women in leadership, Tamala works with and supports leaders who intentionally seek to transform their leadership journeys for their own growth and the people they lead. She is also the founder of Women’s Leadership Footprint, a coaching practice that supports women in leadership to be effective and impactful in their roles. She is currently the Director of Women in News – Africa.
John G. Coumantaros is the Chairman of the Board of Directors for Flour Mills of Nigeria Plc (FMN), the largest food and agro-allied concern in West Africa. An experienced and successful entrepreneur with interests around the globe, Mr. Coumantaros was born in 1961 and graduated from Yale University with a BA degree in history in 1984.
Mr. Coumantaros began his long relationship with FMN in 1984 and was appointed to FMN's board as a non-executive Director in 1990. He served as a Non-Executive Vice Chairman of the company and its subsidiaries from 2012 until he was elected Chairman of FMN Board of Directors in 2014. He is also the Chairman & CEO of Southern Star Shipping CO. Inc. of New York, sits on the Board of the Oxbow Carbon LLC, a leading U.S.-based international energy company, and is a Director of ELBISCO, a fast-moving consumer food business in Athens, Greece.
Mr. Coumantaros has over 30 years' experience in international trade, logistics, manufacturing, and industry and is passionately dedicated to the industrial and agricultural development of Nigeria and Sub-Saharan Africa. The founder of the U.S. Nigerian Business Council, he is also an active supporter of a number not-for-profit initiatives globally.
Glen Davis is Chief Medical Officer at The Institute for Community Living (ICL), a not-for-profit human services agency that provides behavioural health care, rehabilitation, housing and other support services to marginalized populations across New York City. Before ICL, Dr. Davis served for 10 years as a psychiatrist and Medical Director for Education & Training at the Center for Urban Community Services, where he led the implementation of New York State's opioid overdose prevention initiatives in over 70 programs across New York City. Dr. Davis graduated from Hamilton College with a concentration in comparative literature and earned his M.D. from Cornell University Medical College. He completed residency and fellowship training in psychiatry at Cambridge Health Alliance, Mount Sinai Medical Center, New York University Medical Center and Columbia University Medical Center, where he is on voluntary faculty in the Department of Psychiatry. Dr. Davis has been a co-investigator on NIH-funded research studies, and he has authored peer-reviewed articles on the epidemiology of psychiatric and substance use disorders in Sub-Saharan Africa. Before medical school, Dr. Davis served for three years as a community health education volunteer with the Peace Corps in Burkina Faso (West Africa).
Ellen is Founder and President of CHORD Consulting where she works with executives of innovative healthcare companies to develop and commercialize novel products. She has focused her career on ground-breaking technologies in life-threatening and life-altering diseases. As VP of Marketing at Crescendo Staffscience, she launched Vectra DA® , a multi-biomarker blood test that enables treatment changes to improve outcomes in rheumatoid arthritis. Prior to Crescendo, Ellen led marketing at Genomic Health, Inc., (now Exact Sciences) where she launched the Oncotype DX® Breast Cancer Assay, a standard of care test which empowers over 80,000 women annually to make better decisions about chemotherapy. While there, she also started the market strategy group, working on pipeline products in DCIS, colon cancer, and prostate cancer, all of which have now been commercialized.
Ellen began her career as a strategy consultant with Booz Allen & Hamilton and developed new products at ALZA Corporation. Ellen has an MS in chemistry and an MBA from Stanford University and a BS in chemistry from Yale University. Ellen is a Fellow of the fourth class of the Health Innovators Fellowship Program and a member of the Aspen Global Leadership Network.
Julia Haney is a co-founder of World Connect and has been involved with our cause for eleven years, two of which she worked as the Director of Education and Outreach. Julia worked to expand the education program, support school and program partners, and empower students everywhere to believe that they can change the world.
Julia earned her bachelor degree cum laude in English at Harvard University.
Robert Hecht is a Managing Director at Results for Development. He manages a growing portfolio of projects analyzing policy barriers and solutions related to AIDS and health financing, and improving R&D and access to new health technologies in developing countries. Previously he spent four years as Vice President for Policy and Advocacy at the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative. Prior to this, he enjoyed a 20 year tenure at the World Bank, where he occupied a number of senior posts.
His posts at the World Bank include Manager of the Bank's central unit for Health, Nutrition, and Population, Chief of Operations for the Human Development Network, and Principal Economist for the Latin America region. He was a lead author of the 1993 World Development Report, "Investing in Health," and from 1987 to 1996 he was responsible for World Bank-sponsored studies and projects in health in Africa and Latin America, most notably in Zimbabwe and Argentina. Robert served as a director of the Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) from 1998 to 2001, where he managed technical units based in South Africa, Cote d'Ivoire, and Thailand, as well as in Geneva. He led UNAIDS efforts to portray AIDS as a development and poverty issue impacting a wide range of social and economic goals, and published a number of papers advancing this view. Robert is the author of more than 30 articles and other publications. He received his undergraduate degree from Yale and his doctorate from Cambridge University.
Andrew has a diverse career path in entertainment (actor/writer/director/producer), venture capital, clean energy, and technology. His signature entertainment project is the feature film Burden, which received the Audience Award at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival and Nantucket Film Festival. Currently, he serves as lead advisor for Two Bear Capital, an early-stage venture capital firm focused on the intersection of technology and life sciences. He also was founder and CEO of Brightfield Energy, a clean energy company which developed utility-scale renewable power on contaminated sites, converting wasteland to productive assets, and founder and CEO of Hone, a crowdsourcing e-commerce survey tool for publishers, brands, and influencers, including American Express, Pepsi, and Condé Nast. Andrew has participated in several non-profit ventures, including building a school in Buduburam, a Liberian refugee camp outside of Accra, Ghana.
Atsuko is a strategy facilitator and executive coach. Formerly an international development and finance professional, she brings over three decades' experience working with multilateral organizations (private and public) from the inside and out. Her 23-year career at the World Bank Group focused on access to finance and financial markets development. She now consults for board and leadership teams of multilateral institutions, private firms, universities, and NGOs. Originally from Kobe, Japan, Atsuko has a BA in international relations from Johns Hopkins and an MPP from the Kennedy School at Harvard.
Rehmah Kasule is a social innovator, a gender and youth development expert, and a prolific serial entrepreneur who started her first business, a branding and marketing firm, at age 26. In 2007, after successfully running her business for ten years, she shifted from building brands to shifting mindsets and founded CEDA International in Uganda. Through her visionary leadership and with funding from U.S. State Department, United Nations Democracy Fund, and MacArthur Foundation, Rehmah has successfully designed and implemented projects in girls education, youth development, mentorship, women’s leadership, human trafficking, preventing violent extremism, and active citizenship impacting over 168,000 youths and women on the African continent. Her work was recognized by President Barack Obama in 2010 and won several international awards including Fortune and Goldman Sachs Global Women’s Leadership Award 2014.
With more than 25 years proven track record, she has delivered expert consultancy in strategic planning, gender mainstreaming, trade and export promotions, policy analysis and management, financial inclusion and private sector development for the African Development Bank, European Investment Bank, International Trade Center, and United Nations. She engendered the Uganda's National Export Strategy with cross-sector strategic plans that built resilient and sustainable frameworks for government ministries and trade agencies to develop inclusive growth that mainstreamed women in trade and increased their participation in male-dominated export sectors. She has also served twice as a Wise Head Judge for the MacArthur Foundation 100&Change, a $100 million competition to help solve a critical social problem.
Rehmah is a graduate of Peace, Conflict and International Development, an Aspen Leadership Fellow, Senior Synergos Fellow, VVLead Fellow, and a Global Ambassador for Let Girls Learn, a Michelle Obama initiative. Her book From Gomba to the White House has equipped over 3 million young people with tools to discover who they are, dream big, design goals, develop key skills that lead them to rewarding destinies. As a senior Fellow of the Advanced Leadership Initiative at Harvard University, she designed the PLUS+AFRICA Leadership and Employment Linkubator, a social venture that is focused on the future of work by creating employment pathways for youth in Africa.
Arum Lee Lansel is an experienced leader with two decades of experience in the nonprofit, philanthropy, international development, and venture capital sectors. Her vast breadth of leadership roles in these industries has allowed her to see what works in which context, and bring best practices across sectors.
Arum is currently the Vice President of Learning & Development at General Catalyst (GC), a leading venture capital firm with over $32 billion in assets under management. At GC, she built learning programs and spearheaded the first-ever racial justice initiative and helped GC become a DEI leader within the venture capital industry.
Formerly, Arum led operations at one of the largest philanthropic organizations, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, which grants over $400 million every year to nonprofit and mission-driven organizations. She has worked with nonprofits across the globe to support their organizational effectiveness and designed capacity building strategies. She also shaped the theory of change and led monitoring, evaluation, and learning efforts.
Arum has extensive international expertise, with a master's degree in international development from American University’s School of International Service. She worked for Tetra Tech DPK, a USAID contractor, as a Senior Project Officer and managed multi-million dollar USAID-funded projects in several post-conflict countries, including Democratic Republic of Congo, Iraq, West Bank, and Jordan.
In addition to World Connect, Arum is also proud to sit on the board of Choshen Farm, a nonprofit serving community needs in rural Zambia.
Dr Anatole Manzi serves as Deputy Chief Medical Officer in charge of Clinical Quality and Health Systems Strengthening at Partners In Health (PIH). He also serves as Director of Learning Collaborative aiming at strengthening COVID-19 contact tracing and expanded public health response through learning and exchange series targeted to expert implementers as part of the U.S. Public Health Accompaniment Unit.
Previously, Dr. Manzi served as the Director of Clinical Practice and Quality Improvement and Director of Global Learning and Training at PIH. In these roles, he oversaw the organization-wide education and training strategy, including the development and standardization of guidelines and tools essential for PIH-supported countries to deliver high quality care.
Dr Manzi is assistant professor at University of Global Health Equity, adjunct professor of global health at Tufts University, and lecturer in the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School. He also co-directs the Equity Approach to Pandemic Preparedness and Response, an online self-learning course which brings together public health experts leading national and global efforts to analyze challenges and strategic interventions through practical, interdisciplinary and equity-driven approach to address COVID-19 and other pandemics.
Dr. Manzi is the founder of Move Up Global, a Boston-based organization striving to improve access to better health and education in remote and resource-constrained communities. His research focuses on evaluating healthcare quality improvement and innovative interventions to eradicate neglected tropical diseases in resource-limited settings.
Dr Manzi is an active member and advisor at various organizations and working groups including the World Health Organization and International Standards Organization. He is also a New Voices Senior Fellow at Aspen Institute.
Morag Mwenya Neill-Johnson has over seven years of experience addressing social and economic advancement and systemic oppression across Africa through nonprofit and grant-making organizations. Originally from southern Africa, Mrs. Neill-Johnson integrates localization and applies a gender-prioritized lens to her work. She is a program officer with Results for Development's innovation practice team where she collaborates on the International Development Innovation Alliance, the Million Lives Club, and Frontier Technologies projects. She also explores integrating systems innovation into the innovation practice. Mrs. Neill-Johnson’s diverse portfolio expands from refugee studies to reimagining international development’s funding landscape. She received her master's degree in human rights studies from Columbia University where she focused her academic career on the intersection of identity, inclusion, and gender-based violence in African refugee settings. She was inducted into the class of 2018 Most Influential People of African Decent (Under 40) in recognition of the Decade for People of African Descent. Mrs. Neill-Johnson recently managed the Africa portfolio for World Connect, providing technical coaching to local development actors addressing health, education, economic opportunity, and environmental projects in their communities. Prior to this, she spent a number of years working on integrating innovative solutions for water access across Africa. Mrs. Neill-Johnson has also worked with organizations addressing HIV/AIDs in Uganda and Botswana and child trafficking in the United States.
Amédée Prouvost was the Chief Operational Risk Officer of the World Bank where he led the enterprise risk management function. He also served as the Secretary of the Operational Risk, Enterprise Risk, and Financial Risk Committees. At the end of his career, he was deeply involved in shaping the institution’s response to the COVID crisis, with a view towards improving risk awareness, achieving better risk-informed decision-making, and leading to greater resilience at the individual, functional, and institutional levels.
In earlier stages of his career, Mr. Prouvost held positions across the World Bank Group's finance and risk functions, including as CFO of MIGA (political risk insurance), Manager for Development Finance, and Financial Representative in Europe. He also served in a variety of roles in the treasury function and as Chief of Staff and Senior Advisor to three World Bank Group CFOs. He began his professional career at Banque Paribas (now BNP Paribas) and served as a Reserve Officer with the French Navy.
Following his retirement from the World Bank, Mr. Prouvost joined Chapelle Consulting (now BDO Chapelle) and worked with European multilateral institutions on enterprise risk management issues. He is now back at the World Bank as a consultant focusing on corporate security. He also serves as Senior Advisor to the Executive Director of the Green Climate Fund and as a faculty member for the DCRO Risk Governance Institute.
On the volunteer side, Mr. Prouvost serves as a Board Member and Chair of the Governance Committee of World Connect Inc. and as a member of BankFund Credit Union’s Supervisory Committee.
Mr. Prouvost holds an MBA (with distinction) from the Wharton School, a master's degree in economics and statistics from ENSAE Paris (one of the French "grandes écoles"), and a Master of Advanced Studies in economics and finance from Paris Dauphine-PSL University.
JJ Ramberg is the host of MSNBC's Your Business, the only television show dedicated to issues affecting small business owners. She is also author of the book It's Your Business – 183 Essential Tips that Will Transform Your Small Business. With her brother, JJ co-founded GoodSearch.com, a company that transforms every day actions into opportunities to support a favorite cause. Her business career began after JJ received her MBA while she was the Director of Marketing and Business Development and one of the first employees at Los Angeles-based Cooking.com.
Before joining MSNBC, JJ was a reporter at CNN where she covered a wide range of topics, ranging from breaking news to profiles of the country's top business leaders. JJ has been awarded Self Magazine's "Women Doing Good" award, Jewish Women International's "Women to Watch," and the New York Enterprise Report's Small Business Advocate among other recognition. JJ graduated cum laude from Duke University with a Bachelor of Arts degree in English and received her MBA from Stanford Business School.
Sean Reilly is CEO of Lamar, which was founded by his great-grandfather. He served in the Louisiana House of Representatives from 1988-96, succeeding his father, Kevin Patrick Reilly Sr., in the position. From 1999-2005, he served on the board of the Louisiana Community College and Technical College System. Governor Bobby Jindal called on him to serve on the Board of Trustees of the Louisiana Innovation Council, a group which emphasizes technology and economic development statewide. In 2011, Governor Jindal appointed him to the Post-secondary Education Governance Commission. Reilly is co-founder and board trustee of Blueprint Louisiana, a non-partisan effort to fundamentally improve Louisiana. Reilly's affiliations include board service to the Volunteers of America, Reserve Telephone Company, and Public Affairs Research Council of Louisiana. He is also co-chair of the Louisiana Flagship Coalition and a member of the Young Presidents Organization, Manship Board of Visitors, and Manship Campaign Advisory Board. Mr. Reilly is an alumnus of Harvard University, where he earned a bachelor's degree in 1984 and a juris doctorate in 1989. He and his wife, Jennifer, have three children.
Enrique is an accomplished leader with extensive experience managing complex U.S. foreign policy and development efforts in 30 countries including Latin America and Caribbean, Africa, Eastern Europe, and Caucasus regions. He is a renowned expert interfacing with high-level U.S. and host-country government officials, Congress, civil society leaders, political party representatives, and international donor agencies to mobilize people, programs and resources to advance U.S. foreign policy goals. Currently, Enrique serves as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Western Hemisphere and Africa in the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor in the U.S. Department of State. Previously he served as Senior Advisor to the Under Secretary for Civilian Security, Democracy and Human Rights providing strategic policy expertise on Western Hemisphere political affairs and migration, conflict prevention, human rights, and citizen security.
During his career, Enrique managed a global practice area at Creative Associates of 250 staff focusing on citizen security, migration, and governance and served as Coordinator at USAID for the Central America Regional Security Initiative to address the rise in insecurity. Enrique is a thought leader, author and frequent commentator on issues of democracy and governance, human rights, and crime and violence reduction. He has an established record of leading complex operations and building effective diverse teams with cohesive morale and has managed over $1.5 billion in international development programs. Enrique is a recipient of four USAID awards for outstanding leadership on the Central America Regional Security Initiative.
Jack Sullivan has served as Chief Executive Officer of Broadway Video Entertainment since 2002. He joined Broadway Video in 1994. Jack oversees all of Broadway Video's operations, including the New York-based Digital Studios, Production Services, Digital Delivery, Licensing and Ventures divisions and the Los Angeles based Television, Film and Branding + Creative divisions. he began his career as a finance executive for USA Network in New York. Jack received his juris doctorate degree from Pepperdine University School of Law and his undergraduate degree in business administration from Tulane University
Ayanna Wayner is an attorney and Managing Director of Fort Greene Partners LLC. She is responsible for the firm’s investments in multi-family real estate including market rate and affordable housing strategies. Ayanna is the Former Deputy Commissioner of Economic Development for the City of New Rochelle and Executive Director of the New Rochelle IDA, where she worked to usher in a massive $6 billion downtown revitalization and redevelopment project. Ayanna has 15 years of experience in real estate and economic development, having previously served as Associate General Counsel at Urban American, a $1 billion closely-held real estate investment company. She was also the Director of Programs for the Office of Preservation Services at the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development and Associate at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP in the Banking & Institutional Investing group. Ayanna has worked on economic development internationally in Honduras with WorldTeach, the RARE Center for Conservation, and the Honduran Ministry of Tourism. Ayanna serves on the Board of World Connect and Westhab and graduated from Barnard College (BA) and Columbia Law School (JD).
An inventor and entrepreneur, Bill Haney started his first company as a college freshman, inventing and building air pollution control systems for power plants. Since then he has started or helped start more than a dozen technology companies.
Bill was a founding member of the national environmental advisory board for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the President's Circle for the National Academy of Sciences. Has won a Humanitarian Award from Harvard Medical School, an Achievement Award from the ACLU, and serves or has served on boards for Harvard, MIT, State and Federal Government agencies, the World Wildlife Fund, the World Resources Institute, and the National Resources Defense Council.
Bill holds a BA from Harvard College and was a Kennedy School Fellow from 1997-2001.
John Adams co-founded the Natural Resources Defense Council in 1970, serving as its executive director and later president from its inception until 2006 — a tenure unparalleled by the leader of any other environmental organization. He continues to play an active role in the organization on the local, national and international levels.
In February 2011, Adams received the U.S.'s highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom. In presenting it, President Obama referenced Rolling Stone magazine’s description of the recipient: "If the planet has a lawyer, it's John Adams."
In 2010, Adams and his wife Patricia co-authored A Force for Nature, their memoir of 40 years of NRDC battles and victories. He currently chairs the board of the Open Space Institute and sits on the boards of numerous other environmental organizations. He has also served on governmental advisory committees, including President Clinton's Council for Sustainable Development. Prior to his work at NRDC, Adams served as Assistant U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York. He is a graduate of Michigan State University and the Duke University School of Law. Adams lives in the Catskill Mountains of New York, not far from the farm where he was raised.
Our Team
With extensive experience in supporting locally-led development across the globe, our staff and board are uniquely qualified to activate power inside communities through World Connect's co-investment model and drive progress in education, health, economic opportunity, and environment.
Ruth Canesha Chamangwana
Ruth brings an array of experience in community-led development, focusing on the design and management of initiatives in health, education, economic opportunities, and environmental sustainability. She began her career as a CorpsAfrica Volunteer in Salima District, Malawi, where she applied asset-based community development and human centered design approaches to facilitate locally led projects. In 2017, Ruth was selected as a fellow of the Young African Leaders Initiative Regional Leadership Center, an opportunity that further strengthened her commitment to advancing inclusive development and promoting women's participation in decision-making processes. Ruth holds a master’s degree in development policy, specializing in sustainable development, from the Korea Development Institute School of Public Policy and Management, and a Bachelor of Science from the University of Malawi, Chancellor College.
Asaba Gahima Emmanuel
Prior to joining World Connect, Asaba worked in local government for the Rulindo and Gicumbi Districts in Rwanda. As the Executive Secretary, he managed the day-to-day coordination of activities between residents and development partners, including overseeing the implementation of policy decisions and monitoring project performance. Asaba also mobilized community members for civic participation and coordinated activities for the National Commission for Unity and Reconciliation. His experience in youth development includes the development and implementation of the National Youth Council's strategy on youth, sports, and culture, including the monitoring of the strategy's activities. Asaba earned a Bachelor of Public Administration at Kampala International University in Uganda.
Patrick Higdon
Patrick is responsible for overall program quality and integrity and guides World Connect's program strategy, team, and key partnerships. He is also World Connect's charity representative in the United Kingdom. In this role, he supports the World Connect UK Board of Trustees in growing the organization's reach and revenues in the UK and European markets. Patrick holds a bachelor's degree in anthropology and development from the University of Tennessee and an M.A. in Latin American and Caribbean studies from New York University.
Zione James
Zione is a dedicated advocate for community development, passionately advancing grassroots initiatives through strategic, community-driven efforts. Before joining Mudzi Connect, Zione served as a youth officer intern in the civil service for two years, collaborating with local and international partners to deliver education, health, and economic empowerment programs for women and in- and out-of-school youth. As a respected role model, Zione also championed girls' education and campaigns to end child marriage in Machinga, raising awareness of harmful cultural practices and providing mentorship and career guidance to young people. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in media for development from the University of Malawi.
Simeon Kambalame
Simeon is a development professional with expertise in leading donor-funded projects (UNAIDS, GIZ, USAID) that empower youth, women, and communities. With experience in media management as Acting Head of Programs (TV and Radio) at Timveni Child and Youth Media Organization, he combines development acumen with media savvy. Simeon is also skilled in resource mobilization, having contributed to securing key projects like the Digital Opportunity Trust's Going Beyond Project.
Rhoda K. Kanyesigye
Born and raised in a rural community in Eastern Africa, Rhoda aspires to see community livelihoods transformed by those mostly affected by the challenges. She is a development professional with nearly two decades of supporting locally-led development and has been involved with World Connect in different capacities since 2012. Before opening and leading World Connect Rwanda in 2022, Rhoda worked for Send a Cow (now Ripple Effect), supporting fundraising and business development for its programs in Rwanda and Burundi. She also worked for the U.S. Peace Corps in Rwanda where spent seven years managing the small grants program, supporting Rwandan communities and Peace Corps Volunteers to implement local development initiatives with funding support from the U.S. Peace Corps. Rhoda has also worked for the government of Rwanda in different organizations and roles. She holds a bachelor's degree in development economics from Makerere University and a Master of Business Administration in project management from Mount Kenya University.
Jonathan Kasekera
Throughout his career, Jonathan has successfully managed diverse portfolios to support projects. His experience spans the full cycle of grants management, project management accounting, business financial reporting, payroll administration, procurement processes, fixed assets management, liquidity management, and vendor relations. Jonathan possesses extensive expertise in designing and implementing collaborative financial models, such as developing accounting process flows, establishing accounting, payment, and procurement systems, and providing training and capacity-building for junior finance staff and project partners.
Frank Charles Kasonga
Frank oversees the community development efforts of local NGOs supported by Mudzi Connect funding that has improved the health, education, and economic opportunity for more than 600,000 Malawians to date. Frank is a published author with 23+ years hands-on experience in project design, proposal development and review, organizational development, capacity building and training, grants administration, governance, program and people management, financial tracking, and monitoring and evaluation. Frank holds a master’s degree in transformative community development from Mzuzu University, a Bachelor of Science in social science, and a .aw certificate from the Staff Development Institute. Frank is a leader by nature, a team player, excellent writer, and charismatic trainer. He is widely regarded as a leader in promoting locally-led development and a frequent speaker on the topic.
Christine Lackowski
Christine brings extensive experience in nonprofit leadership, financial management, and organizational operations to her role at World Connect. Prior to joining the organization, she served as Chief Operating Officer at Project Sunshine, where she oversaw strategic operations and program implementation. Christine also worked as a Client Manager at BTQ Financial, supporting nonprofit clients in finance and accounting, and began her career in the financial services industry. She holds a Master of Public Administration from Baruch College, an MBA from Pace University, and a BA in international business from the University of Georgia. Christine is committed to advancing mission-driven work through strong operational strategy and financial stewardship.
Amber Lucero-Dwyer
Amber believes that global development is most effective, and dignified, when conducted at the local level. Before joining World Connect in 2025, she spent 12 years on the African continent working for the U.S. Agency for International Development in Rwanda and the U.S. Peace Corps in Malawi in various capacities including communications, programming, and leadership. Prior to this, she had a career in art museums in Cincinnati, Ohio, and San Diego, California, and also served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in El Salvador. In her spare time, Amber is an avid runner and film snob — and she is the biggest fan of the Olympics that you will ever meet.
Lisa Meadowcroft
Lisa aspires to live by the African proverb: "If you want to go fast, go alone; if you want to go far, go together." She has served for more than two decades in senior resource mobilization, communications, and management positions at international humanitarian and development organizations including the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative, Amref Health Africa and the International Rescue Committee. Lisa is also a cat lover, an avid traveler, and an Argentine tango enthusiast.
Bertha Mukhuna
Dedicated and results-oriented, Bertha is committed to advancing World Connect's mission of unlocking the potential of local communities to solve their own challenges and thrive. She plays a key role in supporting the design, implementation, and monitoring of community-led development projects across Malawi. Passionate about grassroots impact, Bertha works closely with local organizations, leaders, and communities to ensure that projects are not only successfully delivered, but are also sustainable and responsive to real community needs. Before joining Mudzi Connect, Bertha served as a CorpsAfrica Volunteer in a rural community in Dedza District, Malawi. With a strong background in project management, she brings expertise in community mobilization, capacity building, and partnership development, having successfully managed projects in education, health, and economic empowerment. She holds a bachelor's degree in education languages from the University of Malawi and a certificate in programme management from the University of Cape Town.
Pamela Nathenson
As World Connect's Global Executive Director since 2012, Pamela is responsible for charting the organization's direction, ensuring achievement of programmatic and operational objectives, and nurturing a community of staff, board, and implementing partners who are aligned in our shared mission to activate locally-led development. Pamela brings 25+ years experience in building social impact organizations and designing and implementing public health programming, resulting in millions of healthier and saved lives. Prior to joining World Connect, she was the first hire at the Fund for Public Health in New York City, a nonprofit organization established by the Bloomberg Administration to expand the work of the New York City Health Department. As Director of Program and Resource Development, Pamela worked closely with leading Health Department scientists to position innovative initiatives for funding, pursue new business opportunities, and develop new partnerships while defining and implementing organizational direction for a fledgling city-affiliated nonprofit. During her eight years with the Fund, Pamela helped raise more than $250 million in public and private sector funds. Prior to this, Pamela served as the Director of Programs at the REACH Community Health Foundation, the charitable giving arm of Northern Berkshire Health Systems in Massachusetts.
Pamela earned a bachelor's degree in the philosophy of medicine from Boston University's University Professors Program and a Master of Public Health with a concentration in international health from Boston University's School of Public Health. Pamela has three daughters, one husband, a menagerie of pets, and attributes her lifelong mission of improving health and advancing social justice to the example set by her father, a public hospital physician in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where Pamela grew up.
Lidia Oxí
Lidia Oxí joined World Connect in 2024 to lead grantmaking in Guatemala and build a Fundación Guate Conecta as a locally-led development hub that supports local leaders to drive progress. Lidia previously served as Co-Executive Director of MAIA, the only Maya-serving organization of its size led and designed by indigenous women. Lidia is a fellow of the Vital Voices Engage Program, Gratitude Network, Global Governance Forum and MIT Solve. She is committed to social justice, access to education, gender equity, and indigenous rights. Lidia is part of the board of directors for Women Justice Initiatives, Mujeres Liderando Guatemala, MAIA, and a member of the global councils of One Young World Indigenous Council and Community Centric Fundraising.
Lidia is passionate about education, sustainable development, human rights, and gender equality, and the Honnold Foundation and Guatemala.com have highlighted her advocacy efforts. Lidia's national and international experience and fluency in four languages (Kaqchikel, Spanish, English and Chinese Mandarin) allow her to build strategic partnerships to reduce inequality and proactively advocate for indigenous communities.
Natacha Scott-Weiss
An expert on refugee issues and on development impact analysis with a special focus on gender, Natacha has been the Partner Liaison for World Connect since 2017. In the 90s, she worked as a senior advocate for Refugees International in Africa, both in West Africa and the Great Lakes region, and served on their board from 2004 to 2021, including as Board Co-Chair. Natacha's three decades of experience include numerous missions throughout Africa and the Americas. Her work in Sierra Leone was credited in the New York Times, and she was interviewed by CNN, ABC and Fox News. In 2001, Natacha founded and was the President of American Friends of the Bambi Homes Colombia, a foundation for abandoned children in Colombia. In 2007, Natacha helped form Surgeons Overseas, an organization assisting surgical capacity in Sierra Leone, Nigeria and Ghana. She sits on Refugee International’s emeritus board, the advisory board of Bata Children’s Program, and the advisory board of The Reckoning Project, an NGO focused on recording war crimes in Ukraine. Swiss and Canadian, Natacha has two children and resides in Brooklyn, New York.
Alli Tolbert
Alli began collaborating with World Connect in 2014, bridging rural Ecuadorian communities with World Connect's co-investment opportunities. For more than a decade, she has supported diverse rural communities in Ecuador with their local projects for improved health, economy, and environmental protection. Alli is also an equine therapist with a focus on supporting women and teenage girls recovering from trauma. She earned a Bachelor of Arts in international studies and Spanish, and is soon to complete a Master of Social Work. Alli believes in holistic approaches to creating resilient communities for the health of people, animals, and the environment. She is committed to exploring how international collaborations can reflect decolonial, equitable dynamics for greater liberation and well-being.
Nina Watkins
Nina is an urban planner, artist, and nonprofit leader with more than two decades of experience at the intersection of philanthropy, social justice, and community-led development. Before joining World Connect, she held senior roles at the Open Society Foundations, where she focused on global youth initiatives, and at Esperanza, an alternative-to-incarceration program for young people in New York City. A lifelong New Yorker, Nina is also a working potter and collaborates with other makers and artists across NYC. She holds a bachelor's degree in sculpture from Bard College and a master's in urban planning from Hunter College.
George Biddle is a humanitarian and development expert with over three decades of experience in crisis response, peace-building, and conflict mitigation. He is currently the chairman of World Connect.
From 2000 to 2015, Biddle was the executive vice president of the International Rescue Committee (IRC), a leading humanitarian organization that responds to conflict and natural disasters across the globe. He served as the IRC's acting president from May to July 2002. Previously, he served as the vice president of the International Crisis Group. Biddle was also president of the Institute for Central American Studies, an organization he founded in 1989 to assist post-cold war Central America in its transition from violent conflict to peace and democracy.
Biddle has testified before Congress and presented at the UN Security Council and the European Parliament, is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and currently serves as a board member of the IRC as well as several other nonprofits. He received his AB from Harvard and MA from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.
Stephanie Cabot is half French, half American, and grew up in London, Paris, and New England. She attended Harvard, where she studied history, and first worked in New York and London with JP Morgan. Her career as an agent began at WME in London, where she spent nine years and ran the office for the last five, before relocating to the U.S. and to The Gernert Company in NYC, where she worked for fifteen years. Stephanie joined SLA in the Spring of 2020. Her interests are a reflection of her own reading tastes which have always been wide and far ranging. She represents authors from all over the world and is drawn to the international narratives whether told in story, memoir, or essays as well as literary fiction reflecting diverse, global voices, speculative fiction, upmarket commercial fiction, crime, and thrillers.
James Hunt is a Partner and Portfolio Manager at Tocqueville Asset Management, where he serves as Chairman of the Investment Committee and lead portfolio manager for the firm's International and Global strategies.
Prior to Tocqueville, he spent 10 years as an executive in corporate finance at Lehman Brothers and Dillon Read, advising corporations and governments globally on privatizations, mergers and acquisitions and capital raising transactions. James also serves on the board of WaterAid America, a not for profit focused on clean water and sanitation. He earned a BA from Brown University and an MBA from Yale's School of Organization and Management.
Christoph Becker is the driving force behind the reinvention of business-to-business (B2B) marketing. As both CEO and CCO, he has grown gyro into one of the largest, most successful B2B agencies in the world.
Under Becker’s leadership, gyro was named 2019 Global B2B Agency of the Year by the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) as well as B2B Marketing’s Top U.S. B2B Agency 2017-2018. gyro was also named Advertising Age’s 2016 Global B2B Agency of the Year. In 2018, Becker was inducted into the ANA's prestigious B2B Hall of Fame.
Becker has spent nearly 30 years building brands and creative cultures around the globe. Before gyro, he served as Chairman and CCO of FCB New York for eight years, leading the agency’s creative output across the entire client portfolio. A true global citizen, he spent seven years in Mexico City as CCO of Bozell Latin America, where he guided the creative success of eight countries. Prior to Bozell, he worked at TAPSA Madrid and Ogilvy & Mather Madrid.
Becker has spoken at a number of high-profile events such as Cannes Lions, Fortune Brainstorm: Tech, Forbes CMO Summit and Advertising Week. Throughout the course of his career, he has judged nearly every major creative awards show including Cannes Lions, the Effie Awards, Spikes Asia and FIAP. Becker has also served as jury chair at Dubai Lynx.
For the past decade Christoph has been a board member of the International Rescue Committee (rescue.org), a global non-profit organization founded by Albert Einstein.
Clara Bingham is a journalist, author and documentary film producer whose work has focused on social justice and women's issues. Her most recent book is Witness to the Revolution: Radicals, Resisters, Vets, Hippies, and the Year America Lost Its Mind and Found Its Soul (Random House, 2016). Previously, she produced a documentary that exposed the ravages of mountain top removal coal mining in Appalachia. Clara and Laura Leedy Gansler co-wrote Class Action: The Landmark Case that Changed Sexual Harassment Law (Doubleday, 2002), which was adapted into the 2005 feature film North Country (Warner Bros).
Women on the Hill: Challenging the Culture of Congress (Times Books, 1997) chronicles the lives of four female members of the 103rd Congress following the 1992 "Year of the Woman" elections. As a Washington, D.C. correspondent for Newsweek from 1989 to 1993, Clara covered the George H. W. Bush White House leading up to and during the 1992 presidential election. She also worked as a press secretary on the Michael Dukakis 1988 Democratic presidential campaign.
Clara's freelance writing has appeared in publications including The Daily Beast, Ms., Vanity Fair, Vogue, Harper's Bazaar, Talk, Glamour, The Washington Monthly, and United Press International, the wire service for which she wrote as a stringer from Papua New Guinea. Clara graduated from Harvard University with an AB in history and literature.
Courtenay Cabot Venton is an international development economist. By demonstrating the relative returns of social and environmental interventions, she contributes to an evidence base for what works and what doesn't when it comes to reducing poverty worldwide. Courtenay's recent work demonstrates that, by responding proactively to some of the world's most pressing problems, we can not only avert human suffering, but we could also save billions of dollars – dollars that are critically needed to continue to support people's growth out of poverty.
Tamala Chirwa is an International Coach Federation-credentialed Associate Certified Coach specializing in executive .eadership and group and team Coaching. She is a certified DISC practitioner, corporate trainer/leadership consultant. She has an MBA from MANCOSA, an ACCA diploma in financial management and a post-graduate management certificate from University of Cape Town Graduate School of Business. During her twenty-year corporate career, she held various positions in leading organizations in Malawi, South Africa, and Kenya and excelled at delivering high-value solutions as a manager in the finance, administration and human resources management functions. She is highly experienced in designing and delivering leadership development and coach-training program in organizations. Tamala is a Vital Voices Leadership Fellow and a member of a Global Network of Women Leaders who improve lives in their communities. Apart from developing women in leadership, Tamala works with and supports leaders who intentionally seek to transform their leadership journeys for their own growth and the people they lead. She is also the founder of Women’s Leadership Footprint, a coaching practice that supports women in leadership to be effective and impactful in their roles. She is currently the Director of Women in News – Africa.
John G. Coumantaros is the Chairman of the Board of Directors for Flour Mills of Nigeria Plc (FMN), the largest food and agro-allied concern in West Africa. An experienced and successful entrepreneur with interests around the globe, Mr. Coumantaros was born in 1961 and graduated from Yale University with a BA degree in history in 1984.
Mr. Coumantaros began his long relationship with FMN in 1984 and was appointed to FMN's board as a non-executive Director in 1990. He served as a Non-Executive Vice Chairman of the company and its subsidiaries from 2012 until he was elected Chairman of FMN Board of Directors in 2014. He is also the Chairman & CEO of Southern Star Shipping CO. Inc. of New York, sits on the Board of the Oxbow Carbon LLC, a leading U.S.-based international energy company, and is a Director of ELBISCO, a fast-moving consumer food business in Athens, Greece.
Mr. Coumantaros has over 30 years' experience in international trade, logistics, manufacturing, and industry and is passionately dedicated to the industrial and agricultural development of Nigeria and Sub-Saharan Africa. The founder of the U.S. Nigerian Business Council, he is also an active supporter of a number not-for-profit initiatives globally.
Glen Davis is Chief Medical Officer at The Institute for Community Living (ICL), a not-for-profit human services agency that provides behavioural health care, rehabilitation, housing and other support services to marginalized populations across New York City. Before ICL, Dr. Davis served for 10 years as a psychiatrist and Medical Director for Education & Training at the Center for Urban Community Services, where he led the implementation of New York State's opioid overdose prevention initiatives in over 70 programs across New York City. Dr. Davis graduated from Hamilton College with a concentration in comparative literature and earned his M.D. from Cornell University Medical College. He completed residency and fellowship training in psychiatry at Cambridge Health Alliance, Mount Sinai Medical Center, New York University Medical Center and Columbia University Medical Center, where he is on voluntary faculty in the Department of Psychiatry. Dr. Davis has been a co-investigator on NIH-funded research studies, and he has authored peer-reviewed articles on the epidemiology of psychiatric and substance use disorders in Sub-Saharan Africa. Before medical school, Dr. Davis served for three years as a community health education volunteer with the Peace Corps in Burkina Faso (West Africa).
Ellen is Founder and President of CHORD Consulting where she works with executives of innovative healthcare companies to develop and commercialize novel products. She has focused her career on ground-breaking technologies in life-threatening and life-altering diseases. As VP of Marketing at Crescendo Staffscience, she launched Vectra DA® , a multi-biomarker blood test that enables treatment changes to improve outcomes in rheumatoid arthritis. Prior to Crescendo, Ellen led marketing at Genomic Health, Inc., (now Exact Sciences) where she launched the Oncotype DX® Breast Cancer Assay, a standard of care test which empowers over 80,000 women annually to make better decisions about chemotherapy. While there, she also started the market strategy group, working on pipeline products in DCIS, colon cancer, and prostate cancer, all of which have now been commercialized.
Ellen began her career as a strategy consultant with Booz Allen & Hamilton and developed new products at ALZA Corporation. Ellen has an MS in chemistry and an MBA from Stanford University and a BS in chemistry from Yale University. Ellen is a Fellow of the fourth class of the Health Innovators Fellowship Program and a member of the Aspen Global Leadership Network.
Julia Haney is a co-founder of World Connect and has been involved with our cause for eleven years, two of which she worked as the Director of Education and Outreach. Julia worked to expand the education program, support school and program partners, and empower students everywhere to believe that they can change the world.
Julia earned her bachelor degree cum laude in English at Harvard University.
Robert Hecht is a Managing Director at Results for Development. He manages a growing portfolio of projects analyzing policy barriers and solutions related to AIDS and health financing, and improving R&D and access to new health technologies in developing countries. Previously he spent four years as Vice President for Policy and Advocacy at the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative. Prior to this, he enjoyed a 20 year tenure at the World Bank, where he occupied a number of senior posts.
His posts at the World Bank include Manager of the Bank's central unit for Health, Nutrition, and Population, Chief of Operations for the Human Development Network, and Principal Economist for the Latin America region. He was a lead author of the 1993 World Development Report, "Investing in Health," and from 1987 to 1996 he was responsible for World Bank-sponsored studies and projects in health in Africa and Latin America, most notably in Zimbabwe and Argentina. Robert served as a director of the Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) from 1998 to 2001, where he managed technical units based in South Africa, Cote d'Ivoire, and Thailand, as well as in Geneva. He led UNAIDS efforts to portray AIDS as a development and poverty issue impacting a wide range of social and economic goals, and published a number of papers advancing this view. Robert is the author of more than 30 articles and other publications. He received his undergraduate degree from Yale and his doctorate from Cambridge University.
Andrew has a diverse career path in entertainment (actor/writer/director/producer), venture capital, clean energy, and technology. His signature entertainment project is the feature film Burden, which received the Audience Award at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival and Nantucket Film Festival. Currently, he serves as lead advisor for Two Bear Capital, an early-stage venture capital firm focused on the intersection of technology and life sciences. He also was founder and CEO of Brightfield Energy, a clean energy company which developed utility-scale renewable power on contaminated sites, converting wasteland to productive assets, and founder and CEO of Hone, a crowdsourcing e-commerce survey tool for publishers, brands, and influencers, including American Express, Pepsi, and Condé Nast. Andrew has participated in several non-profit ventures, including building a school in Buduburam, a Liberian refugee camp outside of Accra, Ghana.
Atsuko is a strategy facilitator and executive coach. Formerly an international development and finance professional, she brings over three decades' experience working with multilateral organizations (private and public) from the inside and out. Her 23-year career at the World Bank Group focused on access to finance and financial markets development. She now consults for board and leadership teams of multilateral institutions, private firms, universities, and NGOs. Originally from Kobe, Japan, Atsuko has a BA in international relations from Johns Hopkins and an MPP from the Kennedy School at Harvard.
Rehmah Kasule is a social innovator, a gender and youth development expert, and a prolific serial entrepreneur who started her first business, a branding and marketing firm, at age 26. In 2007, after successfully running her business for ten years, she shifted from building brands to shifting mindsets and founded CEDA International in Uganda. Through her visionary leadership and with funding from U.S. State Department, United Nations Democracy Fund, and MacArthur Foundation, Rehmah has successfully designed and implemented projects in girls education, youth development, mentorship, women’s leadership, human trafficking, preventing violent extremism, and active citizenship impacting over 168,000 youths and women on the African continent. Her work was recognized by President Barack Obama in 2010 and won several international awards including Fortune and Goldman Sachs Global Women’s Leadership Award 2014.
With more than 25 years proven track record, she has delivered expert consultancy in strategic planning, gender mainstreaming, trade and export promotions, policy analysis and management, financial inclusion and private sector development for the African Development Bank, European Investment Bank, International Trade Center, and United Nations. She engendered the Uganda's National Export Strategy with cross-sector strategic plans that built resilient and sustainable frameworks for government ministries and trade agencies to develop inclusive growth that mainstreamed women in trade and increased their participation in male-dominated export sectors. She has also served twice as a Wise Head Judge for the MacArthur Foundation 100&Change, a $100 million competition to help solve a critical social problem.
Rehmah is a graduate of Peace, Conflict and International Development, an Aspen Leadership Fellow, Senior Synergos Fellow, VVLead Fellow, and a Global Ambassador for Let Girls Learn, a Michelle Obama initiative. Her book From Gomba to the White House has equipped over 3 million young people with tools to discover who they are, dream big, design goals, develop key skills that lead them to rewarding destinies. As a senior Fellow of the Advanced Leadership Initiative at Harvard University, she designed the PLUS+AFRICA Leadership and Employment Linkubator, a social venture that is focused on the future of work by creating employment pathways for youth in Africa.
Arum Lee Lansel is an experienced leader with two decades of experience in the nonprofit, philanthropy, international development, and venture capital sectors. Her vast breadth of leadership roles in these industries has allowed her to see what works in which context, and bring best practices across sectors.
Arum is currently the Vice President of Learning & Development at General Catalyst (GC), a leading venture capital firm with over $32 billion in assets under management. At GC, she built learning programs and spearheaded the first-ever racial justice initiative and helped GC become a DEI leader within the venture capital industry.
Formerly, Arum led operations at one of the largest philanthropic organizations, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, which grants over $400 million every year to nonprofit and mission-driven organizations. She has worked with nonprofits across the globe to support their organizational effectiveness and designed capacity building strategies. She also shaped the theory of change and led monitoring, evaluation, and learning efforts.
Arum has extensive international expertise, with a master's degree in international development from American University’s School of International Service. She worked for Tetra Tech DPK, a USAID contractor, as a Senior Project Officer and managed multi-million dollar USAID-funded projects in several post-conflict countries, including Democratic Republic of Congo, Iraq, West Bank, and Jordan.
In addition to World Connect, Arum is also proud to sit on the board of Choshen Farm, a nonprofit serving community needs in rural Zambia.
Dr Anatole Manzi serves as Deputy Chief Medical Officer in charge of Clinical Quality and Health Systems Strengthening at Partners In Health (PIH). He also serves as Director of Learning Collaborative aiming at strengthening COVID-19 contact tracing and expanded public health response through learning and exchange series targeted to expert implementers as part of the U.S. Public Health Accompaniment Unit.
Previously, Dr. Manzi served as the Director of Clinical Practice and Quality Improvement and Director of Global Learning and Training at PIH. In these roles, he oversaw the organization-wide education and training strategy, including the development and standardization of guidelines and tools essential for PIH-supported countries to deliver high quality care.
Dr Manzi is assistant professor at University of Global Health Equity, adjunct professor of global health at Tufts University, and lecturer in the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School. He also co-directs the Equity Approach to Pandemic Preparedness and Response, an online self-learning course which brings together public health experts leading national and global efforts to analyze challenges and strategic interventions through practical, interdisciplinary and equity-driven approach to address COVID-19 and other pandemics.
Dr. Manzi is the founder of Move Up Global, a Boston-based organization striving to improve access to better health and education in remote and resource-constrained communities. His research focuses on evaluating healthcare quality improvement and innovative interventions to eradicate neglected tropical diseases in resource-limited settings.
Dr Manzi is an active member and advisor at various organizations and working groups including the World Health Organization and International Standards Organization. He is also a New Voices Senior Fellow at Aspen Institute.
Morag Mwenya Neill-Johnson has over seven years of experience addressing social and economic advancement and systemic oppression across Africa through nonprofit and grant-making organizations. Originally from southern Africa, Mrs. Neill-Johnson integrates localization and applies a gender-prioritized lens to her work. She is a program officer with Results for Development's innovation practice team where she collaborates on the International Development Innovation Alliance, the Million Lives Club, and Frontier Technologies projects. She also explores integrating systems innovation into the innovation practice. Mrs. Neill-Johnson’s diverse portfolio expands from refugee studies to reimagining international development’s funding landscape. She received her master's degree in human rights studies from Columbia University where she focused her academic career on the intersection of identity, inclusion, and gender-based violence in African refugee settings. She was inducted into the class of 2018 Most Influential People of African Decent (Under 40) in recognition of the Decade for People of African Descent. Mrs. Neill-Johnson recently managed the Africa portfolio for World Connect, providing technical coaching to local development actors addressing health, education, economic opportunity, and environmental projects in their communities. Prior to this, she spent a number of years working on integrating innovative solutions for water access across Africa. Mrs. Neill-Johnson has also worked with organizations addressing HIV/AIDs in Uganda and Botswana and child trafficking in the United States.
Amédée Prouvost was the Chief Operational Risk Officer of the World Bank where he led the enterprise risk management function. He also served as the Secretary of the Operational Risk, Enterprise Risk, and Financial Risk Committees. At the end of his career, he was deeply involved in shaping the institution’s response to the COVID crisis, with a view towards improving risk awareness, achieving better risk-informed decision-making, and leading to greater resilience at the individual, functional, and institutional levels.
In earlier stages of his career, Mr. Prouvost held positions across the World Bank Group's finance and risk functions, including as CFO of MIGA (political risk insurance), Manager for Development Finance, and Financial Representative in Europe. He also served in a variety of roles in the treasury function and as Chief of Staff and Senior Advisor to three World Bank Group CFOs. He began his professional career at Banque Paribas (now BNP Paribas) and served as a Reserve Officer with the French Navy.
Following his retirement from the World Bank, Mr. Prouvost joined Chapelle Consulting (now BDO Chapelle) and worked with European multilateral institutions on enterprise risk management issues. He is now back at the World Bank as a consultant focusing on corporate security. He also serves as Senior Advisor to the Executive Director of the Green Climate Fund and as a faculty member for the DCRO Risk Governance Institute.
On the volunteer side, Mr. Prouvost serves as a Board Member and Chair of the Governance Committee of World Connect Inc. and as a member of BankFund Credit Union’s Supervisory Committee.
Mr. Prouvost holds an MBA (with distinction) from the Wharton School, a master's degree in economics and statistics from ENSAE Paris (one of the French "grandes écoles"), and a Master of Advanced Studies in economics and finance from Paris Dauphine-PSL University.
JJ Ramberg is the host of MSNBC's Your Business, the only television show dedicated to issues affecting small business owners. She is also author of the book It's Your Business – 183 Essential Tips that Will Transform Your Small Business. With her brother, JJ co-founded GoodSearch.com, a company that transforms every day actions into opportunities to support a favorite cause. Her business career began after JJ received her MBA while she was the Director of Marketing and Business Development and one of the first employees at Los Angeles-based Cooking.com.
Before joining MSNBC, JJ was a reporter at CNN where she covered a wide range of topics, ranging from breaking news to profiles of the country's top business leaders. JJ has been awarded Self Magazine's "Women Doing Good" award, Jewish Women International's "Women to Watch," and the New York Enterprise Report's Small Business Advocate among other recognition. JJ graduated cum laude from Duke University with a Bachelor of Arts degree in English and received her MBA from Stanford Business School.
Sean Reilly is CEO of Lamar, which was founded by his great-grandfather. He served in the Louisiana House of Representatives from 1988-96, succeeding his father, Kevin Patrick Reilly Sr., in the position. From 1999-2005, he served on the board of the Louisiana Community College and Technical College System. Governor Bobby Jindal called on him to serve on the Board of Trustees of the Louisiana Innovation Council, a group which emphasizes technology and economic development statewide. In 2011, Governor Jindal appointed him to the Post-secondary Education Governance Commission. Reilly is co-founder and board trustee of Blueprint Louisiana, a non-partisan effort to fundamentally improve Louisiana. Reilly's affiliations include board service to the Volunteers of America, Reserve Telephone Company, and Public Affairs Research Council of Louisiana. He is also co-chair of the Louisiana Flagship Coalition and a member of the Young Presidents Organization, Manship Board of Visitors, and Manship Campaign Advisory Board. Mr. Reilly is an alumnus of Harvard University, where he earned a bachelor's degree in 1984 and a juris doctorate in 1989. He and his wife, Jennifer, have three children.
Enrique is an accomplished leader with extensive experience managing complex U.S. foreign policy and development efforts in 30 countries including Latin America and Caribbean, Africa, Eastern Europe, and Caucasus regions. He is a renowned expert interfacing with high-level U.S. and host-country government officials, Congress, civil society leaders, political party representatives, and international donor agencies to mobilize people, programs and resources to advance U.S. foreign policy goals. Currently, Enrique serves as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Western Hemisphere and Africa in the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor in the U.S. Department of State. Previously he served as Senior Advisor to the Under Secretary for Civilian Security, Democracy and Human Rights providing strategic policy expertise on Western Hemisphere political affairs and migration, conflict prevention, human rights, and citizen security.
During his career, Enrique managed a global practice area at Creative Associates of 250 staff focusing on citizen security, migration, and governance and served as Coordinator at USAID for the Central America Regional Security Initiative to address the rise in insecurity. Enrique is a thought leader, author and frequent commentator on issues of democracy and governance, human rights, and crime and violence reduction. He has an established record of leading complex operations and building effective diverse teams with cohesive morale and has managed over $1.5 billion in international development programs. Enrique is a recipient of four USAID awards for outstanding leadership on the Central America Regional Security Initiative.
Jack Sullivan has served as Chief Executive Officer of Broadway Video Entertainment since 2002. He joined Broadway Video in 1994. Jack oversees all of Broadway Video's operations, including the New York-based Digital Studios, Production Services, Digital Delivery, Licensing and Ventures divisions and the Los Angeles based Television, Film and Branding + Creative divisions. he began his career as a finance executive for USA Network in New York. Jack received his juris doctorate degree from Pepperdine University School of Law and his undergraduate degree in business administration from Tulane University
Ayanna Wayner is an attorney and Managing Director of Fort Greene Partners LLC. She is responsible for the firm’s investments in multi-family real estate including market rate and affordable housing strategies. Ayanna is the Former Deputy Commissioner of Economic Development for the City of New Rochelle and Executive Director of the New Rochelle IDA, where she worked to usher in a massive $6 billion downtown revitalization and redevelopment project. Ayanna has 15 years of experience in real estate and economic development, having previously served as Associate General Counsel at Urban American, a $1 billion closely-held real estate investment company. She was also the Director of Programs for the Office of Preservation Services at the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development and Associate at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP in the Banking & Institutional Investing group. Ayanna has worked on economic development internationally in Honduras with WorldTeach, the RARE Center for Conservation, and the Honduran Ministry of Tourism. Ayanna serves on the Board of World Connect and Westhab and graduated from Barnard College (BA) and Columbia Law School (JD).
An inventor and entrepreneur, Bill Haney started his first company as a college freshman, inventing and building air pollution control systems for power plants. Since then he has started or helped start more than a dozen technology companies.
Bill was a founding member of the national environmental advisory board for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the President's Circle for the National Academy of Sciences. Has won a Humanitarian Award from Harvard Medical School, an Achievement Award from the ACLU, and serves or has served on boards for Harvard, MIT, State and Federal Government agencies, the World Wildlife Fund, the World Resources Institute, and the National Resources Defense Council.
Bill holds a BA from Harvard College and was a Kennedy School Fellow from 1997-2001.
John Adams co-founded the Natural Resources Defense Council in 1970, serving as its executive director and later president from its inception until 2006 — a tenure unparalleled by the leader of any other environmental organization. He continues to play an active role in the organization on the local, national and international levels.
In February 2011, Adams received the U.S.'s highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom. In presenting it, President Obama referenced Rolling Stone magazine’s description of the recipient: "If the planet has a lawyer, it's John Adams."
In 2010, Adams and his wife Patricia co-authored A Force for Nature, their memoir of 40 years of NRDC battles and victories. He currently chairs the board of the Open Space Institute and sits on the boards of numerous other environmental organizations. He has also served on governmental advisory committees, including President Clinton's Council for Sustainable Development. Prior to his work at NRDC, Adams served as Assistant U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York. He is a graduate of Michigan State University and the Duke University School of Law. Adams lives in the Catskill Mountains of New York, not far from the farm where he was raised.