Senior Manager of Engagement and Partnerships
Email Christina
As a member of the Engagement and Partnerships team, Christina builds capacity and expands opportunities by making and deepening connections and managing projects and events. Christina comes to FFI with a decade of experience in non-profit, political, and local government environments, working in collaborative teams to rethink the norms that prevent wellbeing for all.
Christina holds a Master’s in Public Administration from Binghamton University, where she started deep involvement in local government and electoral politics. In her local government roles, Christina worked as Research and Special Projects Coordinator for the County Executive and later in the Planning Department. In these spaces, she was often considered a “trouble maker,” pushing against the political processes that exclude so many. She is the President of the Broome County Young Democrats and Treasurer for New York State Young Democrats. These experiences led her directly to the work of FFI, transforming our systems to provide a fair shot at wellbeing for everyone.
When she’s not managing local campaigns or spreadsheets for NYSYD, Christina enjoys good books and food, all manner of travel and adventure, and BTS.
Associate Director of Finance & Operations
Email Sacha
Sacha is a member of FFI’s operations team, supporting administration, infrastructure, accounting, and event management. Since the beginning of her career, she witnessed how trade-offs can keep people from accessing the support and services they need.
Whether that was expectant mothers risking job stability to keep prenatal appointments or adolescents leaving school to help support their families, the risks and sacrifices were evident. These experiences drew Sacha to FFI and the organization’s approach to understanding people and transforming systems to focus on wellbeing. Sacha has worked on both the project and finance side of coalitions and non-profits and brings over ten years of experience in project management, administration, and finance to FFI. She also holds a Master of Public Health in Maternal and Child Health and is working towards her Masters of Business Administration. In her free time, Sacha can be found on the New England Hiking Trail or browsing through cookbooks trying to answer the eternal question, “what’s for dinner?”
Director of Engagement and Partnerships
Email Madge
Madge brings to The Full Frame Initiative over 25 years of experience in social services and background of leadership in systems change/improvement. She believes cultivating relationships and collaboration are critical in achieving the best outcomes for individuals, families, and communities.
Madge has demonstrated success in facilitating community and multi-agency initiatives targeting capacity building, training, technical assistance, and strategic planning with partners in child welfare, behavioral health, juvenile justice, the judiciary, education, early childhood education and development, and workforce development. Most recently, Madge served as a consultant in child welfare and family support services. She also helped launch a nonprofit organization focused on trauma-informed training for employers as Director of Programs for Trinity Opportunity Alliance through Technical Assistance Partnership of Arizona. Her former positions have included Senior Director–Bay Area at Casey Family Programs, Executive Director of Arizona Partnership for Children, and Bureau Chief of Prevention at Arizona Department of Child Safety. Madge obtained her Master of Social Work Degree with Child Welfare Specialization from Arizona State University and completed a Bachelor of Arts Degree and post-graduate studies in Psychology at California State University, Fresno and University of California, Los Angeles. While she enjoys brunches with her book club sisterhood and volunteering as a reader/recorder for Sun Sounds of AZ, Madge loves spending most of her free time nurturing, laughing and connecting with family and friends.
Director of Finance
Email Jeannine
Jeannine is a Senior Accounting Professional and Business Manager with over 30 years of experience in nonprofit accounting, contract negotiation, financial analysis, human resources and vendor relations.
As the Director of Finance for FFI, she is committed to fulfilling FFI’s strategic financial plan, ensuring accuracy and integrity in all financial activities and supporting FFI’s overall financial health. With a deep understanding of fiscal practices, she takes great pride in collaborating with FFI colleagues to achieve the organization’s goals and advance the FFI mission for wellbeing.
Throughout her career, she has been fortunate to work with various nonprofit organizations and the dedication of these organizations to their respective missions has been truly inspiring. Before joining FFI, she served as the Business Manager for Oxford University Press, where she gained valuable experience in managing business and financial operations for a renowned academic publisher. Prior to that, she held the position of CFO for Jewish Family Service of Western Mass and Lenox Charitable Fund, where she had the opportunity to align financial strategies with the agencies’ missions and values. Throughout her career, she has thoroughly enjoyed analyzing information, implementing streamlined systems to enhance operations and collaborating with team members to ensure each nonprofit agency delivered essential services to the community.
Jeannine was born and raised in Western Massachusetts, and she finds life balance beyond her role at FFI by spending quality time with her family and friends. She enjoys attending concerts with her husband of 40 years, baking her famous blueberry cake and other sweet treats, tending to her gardens and creating colorful quilts.
VP of Philanthropic Initiatives and Development
Email Jessica
As VP of Philanthropic Initiatives and Development, Jessica is responsible for developing and overseeing FFI’s fundraising strategy to enable growth and impact. For close to two decades, Jessica has partnered with social entrepreneurs to resource, build and scale innovative social change initiatives.
Jessica is passionate about new ideas that can shift thinking, behavior and, ultimately, the systems which too often perpetuate inequality. Most recently Jessica served as Senior Director of Partnerships and External Affairs for Women Moving Millions, supporting the global movement for gender equality. Her experience spans philanthropy, agricultural finance, documentary film, consumer goods and leadership development. She has implemented various business models that mix philanthropy, earned income and impact investing. She began her career at Ashoka, a pioneer in the field of social entrepreneurship. Jessica earned a B.A. in Anthropology from Georgetown University and an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.
Jessica serves on the Community Board of Trustees for Jeremiah Program-Boston, an organization that disrupts the cycle of poverty for single mothers and their children. She is also active in the movement for abortion rights and reproductive justice in the United States.
Director, Office of the CEO
Email Matthew
Matthew is responsible for managing a variety of internal and external projects at FFI with an eye toward making new connections between streams of work to strengthen the movement for a fair shot at wellbeing.
Convinced at a young age that an anthropologist could save the world, he graduated with honors from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Failing to save the world immediately upon graduation, Matthew found a passion for public service and nonprofit work. He served as the executive assistant at a Franklin County Regional Housing and Redevelopment Authority for five years where he managed two public and three nonprofit boards of directors. He graduated with the 2015 class of Leadership Pioneer Valley and serves as the Vice-President of DIAL/SELF Youth and Teen Services. Prior to his work with FFI, he spent a year at the local Community Action agency networking with other area service organizations to improve the impact of their work. Being fascinated by human society, driven by service to others and focused on systems-level work has led him to FFI where he has brushed the dust off that original long-term goal to change the world. Outside of the office, Matthew can be spotted singing shape-note tunes, playing the harp and hiking and running in the hills of western Massachusetts with his husband and labrador retriever.
Manager of Engagement and Partnerships
Email Nidhi
Nidhi brings over 5 years of professional experience in healthcare and the nonprofit sector. She has experience working in a clinical setting helping individuals with mental health, substance use, and behavioral health issues. She has also dug deep into theoretical frameworks to identify what works for individuals, communities, and systems.
Both the clinical and the research experiences have enforced this: our systems are set up to only put band-aids on human problems rather than looking at the root cause of problems and understanding that there is no one-size-fits-all solution when it comes to helping the impacted individuals. FFI’s wellbeing orientation serves as a new lens to examine our systems and the impact communities.
Nidhi brings an amalgamation of strengths including, strategic planning, scientific research background, project management, and empathy to her role. She is thrilled to work alongside FFI’s changemakers and is excited to push forward the Full Frame Approach to systemic change so that everyone truly has an equal shot at wellbeing. When she’s not thinking about the inequities and the social determinants of health that exist in our communities, she enjoys spending time with her family, cooking (and of course, eating!), dancing and being a goofball.
Associate Directors of Talent
Email Samantha
Samantha brings 18+ years of human resources/talent management to the Full Frame Initiative’s Operations Team. Her diversity of roles has seen her directing human resources and operations in a variety of organizations.
Her experience ranges from a rapidly growing non-profit on the Pine Ridge reservation, to managing operations for a non-profit education organization spanning multiple North and South Dakota Native school systems, to overseeing Family Programs with an Army Stryker Brigade in Hawaii and an elite Special Forces unit in the Pacific Northwest, to tackling HR work in both Hawaii and Alabama. Samantha is originally from Gillette, Wyoming, and after many moves, has found herself back home in the Mountain West, living with her son, Malcolm, at the base of the beautiful Paha Sapa (Black Hills) in South Dakota. While Samantha has a lot of practice analyzing and improving HR and operations systems from a people prioritizing lens, she has yet to put her degrees in Human Nutrition or Culinary Arts to good use.
Associate Director of Marketing and Communications
Email Miranda
Miranda is part of the Digital Marketing team at FFI, elevating stories of change and engaging audiences across digital channels in the movement for wellbeing.
Miranda holds an MA in Writing and has spent the past decade helping nonprofits and mission-driven businesses grow their audiences, deepen engagement, and build support through compelling digital content. A common thread throughout her career has been working in partnership with impacted communities to drive change through storytelling. Prior to FFI, she collaborated with young people in foster care to share their stories and policy proposals with state lawmakers in order to improve the child welfare system. As marketing manager for the largest homeless services agency in Oregon, she partnered with people transitioning out of homelessness to amplify stories of hope. It was here that Miranda saw the need for collaboration across systems in supporting the whole person. When she’s not at her desk, Miranda can be found running, biking, hiking, reading, painting, or making a mess on the potter’s wheel.
Founder and CEO
Katya grew up in New Jersey and went to high school in Massachusetts, where she volunteered at one of the state’s first shelters for homeless families. While getting a degree in biology from Harvard, Katya continued working with people who are homeless, eventually becoming co-director of one of Cambridge, MA’s first emergency shelters.
A hit-and-run of one of the shelter’s guests, uninvestigated by police, combined with the advice and vision of other shelter guests, led her to found Cambridge-based On The Rise, Inc. in 1995. On The Rise was widely recognized for its Full Frame Approach to working with women facing homelessness, trauma and crisis. In 2007, Katya left to work on what would become the Full Frame Initiative. She launched FFI’s systemic collaborations that are bringing a wellbeing orientation to Missouri’s juvenile justice and child welfare systems and the St. Louis County courts, and a multi-system effort in Massachusetts to reframe the government’s approach to the intersection of homelessness, sexual assault and domestic violence. A former Research Affiliate with MIT’s Community Innovators Lab, Research Fellow at the Malcolm Wiener Center for Social Policy at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, Echoing Green Fellow and Claneil Foundation Emerging Leaders Fellow, Katya speaks, publishes and advocates nationally for addressing poverty, violence, trauma and oppression by removing barriers to wellbeing. Katya is a contributor on the Forbes.com leadership channel where she explores the role of leadership in finding new frameworks for social change. She has an honorary Doctorate of Divinity from the Episcopal Divinity School, and a deep belief in the power of people to do good by and for each other. This, combined with her sense that our country isn’t fully living into that potential, feed her commitment to FFI, bolstered by amazing colleagues and copious coffee consumption. Katya is a terrible gardener and decent cook who lives in Western Massachusetts with her amazing husband and kids, and an unwieldy menagerie of dogs, cats and donkeys.
Chief of National Engagement and Partnerships
Email Tanya
Tanya has over 20 years of experience in the nonprofit, education, and youth development fields. Her career has focused on supporting low-income and undervalued youth, building relationships with external partners, developing innovative programs and leading dynamic results-oriented teams.
Supporting communities and partners to drive cross-sector, systems-level change so that every young person has the opportunity and support to achieve adult success has been at the heart of her work for over a decade. She spent 13 years with America’s Promise Alliance, a national organization devoted to helping create the conditions of success for all young people, including the millions being left behind. As the Chief of Strategic Initiatives and Partnerships, she served as part of the senior leadership team helping set the strategic direction and priorities of the organization. She led the development and implementation of all the programmatic work and engagement of the cross-sector Alliance of over 450 national organizations, over 200 communities, and thousands of individuals dedicated to making youth a priority in this country. Prior to joining America’s Promise, Tanya served at Educational Services, Inc. for six years directing a portfolio of education initiatives that focused on service and service-learning programs, mathematics and science teaching and bridging the digital divide. Tanya also spent nine years at the Association of Science-Technology Centers working on YouthALIVE! (Youth Achievement through Learning, Involvement, Volunteering and Employment), a grants program that supported museum-based enrichment and work-based learning programs for underserved youth. Tanya earned a Bachelor of Arts in Public Communication from American University and completed the Education Policy Fellowship Program sponsored by the Institute for Educational Leadership in Washington, D.C. Tanya is an avid and fiercely loyal Boston sports fan (Patriots, Red Sox, Celtics and Bruins). When she’s not following sports she loves to spend time with her family, particularly her nephew, Robbie.
Associate Director of Engagement and Partnerships
Email Lotus
Lotus is part of the Engagement & Partnerships Team at FFI, collaborating on strategy for how to support people in shifting towards using a wellbeing orientation, developing capacity building and training materials, teaching, and supporting curriculum development.
Lotus holds an MPH/MSW from the University of Michigan. While living in Michigan and working for human services in county government, she also was involved with MISSION, a nonprofit organization supporting homeless tent cities. With this organization, she saw the importance of supporting the whole person. When people were having to make significant tradeoffs for shelter that were unsustainable—because they would be giving up friends, community or stability—what worked was helping to reduce those costs with bus tokens, encouraging people to have a voice, being part of a community, and more. It is this experience that most helped Lotus connect with FFI’s approach to understanding people and the importance of shifting systems to focus on wellbeing, not simply on fixing problems. Lotus also comes with teaching experience on the Texas-Mexico border and in Macedonia. When she is not at FFI, she is doing one of a million hobbies, including but not limited to: cooking, knitting, circus, running, hiking, biking, crafting and playing violin.
Senior Fellow
Email Sandy
Two threads cut across Sandy’s career lattice – justice and curiosity. With nearly 40 years of experience in philanthropy, she has strong expertise in human services, arts and culture, green buildings, and civil legal justice.
Sandy currently works with partners to advance the transformation of the civil legal justice system so that policies, practices, and supports remove barriers to opportunity and help all people better protect their families, health, and livelihoods. She serves as a Senior Fellow at the Urban Institute; volunteer navigator with the Michigan Legal Help; board member of the Michigan Municipal League Foundation; and Advisory Board Member for the Self-Represented Litigation Network and LIFT Dane in Wisconsin. Previously, Sandy was a Senior Fellow and Senior Program Officer at The Kresge Foundation, where she developed strategic and layered investments to address critical issues, including access to civil legal support, climate change, and economic mobility, in close partnership with stakeholders. She was named as a 2016 Presidio Institute Fellow and participated in the fellowship program to build cross sector leadership skills to address complex social challenges. She has also served as a board member of the Funders’ Network for Smart Growth and Livable Communities and as a member of the Board Steering Committee for the Economic Opportunity Funders. A U.S. Green Building Council LEED Accredited Professional, Sandra developed Kresge’s Green Building Initiative to encourage nonprofits to design environmentally sustainable facilities. Sandra is a graduate of Tufts University, where she focused on Asian Studies and Mandarin Chinese. She grew up in Berkshire County, misses the ocean now that she lives in the Detroit area, and loves that her granddaughter has learned to dance before she can walk.
Senior Fellow
Email Gary
As Founder and Artistic Director for Plowshares Theatre Company, Gary Anderson has produced, directed, and developed numerous award-winning plays throughout his 33-year career.
With a home base in Detroit, he has directed across the nation in Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Atlanta, Denver and Houston. Each of his productions is a unique portrayal of the African American experience. His work usually unearthed some lost fact from history or examines a current topic with a fresh perspective.
Anderson is a founding member of the National Advisory Committee of the Black Seed, a first-ever national strategic plan to create an impact for Black theater institutions. A 2016 Kresge Artist Fellow from the Kresge Foundation, he is a noted expert in Black Theatre. His numerous awards include the 2002 Michiganian of the Year Award from The Detroit News; the Alain Locke Cultural Arts Award from The Friends of African and African American Art, Detroit Institute of Arts; and The Lawrence DeVine Award for Outstanding Contribution from The Detroit Free Press.
The result of Gary’s work as a Senior Fellow will be to share new approaches towards community engagement among artists and organizations. That sharing will be conducted through webinars, panel presentations at national conferences and gatherings, and the publishing of a report on the findings.
Senior Fellow
Email Phyllis
Phyllis is an experienced human services leader working with youth, families, and communities. She has broad experience in juvenile justice reform, community engagement, and professional development.
Most recently she worked for the Missouri Division of Youth Services as the director. Phyllis’ focus in Missouri was on strengthening the Missouri Approach, which is well-known for providing a comprehensive, integrated treatment approach focusing on wellbeing and positive outcomes for youth and their families. Phyllis also served as a Deputy Director, and Coordinator of Leadership Development and Quality Improvement for DYS. She brings to the Full Frame Initiative a strong belief that organizations and services should support and empower people’s need to be successful and desire to make positive changes in their lives. In addition to working for DYS, Phyllis worked as a Committee Executive at the Local Investment Commission and a Master Trainer for Communities in Schools. She has been a consultant working with nonprofits and government agencies in results-based accountability, leadership development, the school-based/school-linked services movement, juvenile justice reform, and facilitated planning processes. Phyllis is also a Senior Fellow with the Midwest Center for Nonprofit Leadership at the University of Missouri in Kansas City. Phyllis has a Bachelor of Science degree from Howard University. Phyllis is also a poet and coordinates a literary reading series in Kansas City. She and her husband Mark are jazz enthusiasts and the humans to two cats.
Senior Fellow
Email Sean
Sean Goode is a speaker, facilitator, writer, podcast host, executive coach, and nonprofit leader who is driven by his mantra, “possibilities over problems,” which was born out of his lived experience growing up in what were overwhelmingly challenging circumstances.
Sean leverages philanthropy to eliminate wealth disparities as the Chief Impact and Learning Officer at the Seattle Foundation. Through his stewardship of the now nationally recognized nonprofit, CHOOSE 180, he has worked to decriminalize youthful behavior and transform the very systems that have historically caused harm to marginalized communities. Prior to leading this 2021 City of Seattle Human Rights award-winning organization he served as a chaplain in juvenile detention, championed gang and group intervention efforts, and worked to provide education and employment opportunities for youth in at-risk communities.
Sean’s work as a Senior Fellow will focus on these questions: How can we use the lens of wellbeing to better understand how reparations have been administered historically around the world? How do we use that learning in our American context to bring reparations through the philanthropic sector to Black Americans who descended from those who were enslaved?
Senior Fellow
Email John
John Shapiro is a professor at Pratt Institute’s Graduate Center for Planning and the Environment. As a researcher focusing on climate change’s impact on land use, infrastructure and community “climigration,” John is FFI’s partner for exploring how wellbeing can inform how we plan for the coasts of the United States as seas rise and storms become more intense and frequent.
John’s nearly 50-year career is based on collaboration across disciplines and with communities. He is presently a full-time professor at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York, following eight years as the chair of Pratt’s four urbanism programs. For the prior 25 years, he was a principal of the planning consultancy Phillips Preiss Shapiro Associates, earning more than twenty awards for his work and contributions. John has prepared virtually every planning work across urban, metropolitan, rural and suburban locales. John is exuberant when visiting and learning about a new city, whether for work or pleasure. Yet, as a city kid (or perhaps because he is), his “happy place” is found in forests and on lakes.
John’s research is on how to keep environmental justice from spiraling with climate change. To assure that, his outlook is that we must incorporate wellbeing (including for nature) into making the decisions, addressing the controversies and spending the trillions needed for “climigration” and new infrastructure. The aim is to create a better future, not just protect what we have.
Acting FFI Board Chair; Chief Impact Officer, National Center for Family Philanthropy
Miki Akimoto is the Chief Impact Officer at the National Center for Family Philanthropy. In this role, she partners with the CEO to help move the NCFP strategic plan forward, align and integrate revenue, relationship management and program strategies, enhance sector partnerships and ensure a strong measurement and evaluation plan. She oversees the program, communications and development teams.
Most recently, Miki served as a Senior Philanthropic Strategist at Bank of America’s Private Bank. In that role, she provided consultation and support to families, foundations and major nonprofits about their governance, grantmaking and impact strategies. Prior to joining the Bank of America, Miki was Vice President and then Acting President of Philanthropy Massachusetts, the regional association of foundations, corporate givers and other key donors in Massachusetts and New Hampshire. She has also served as the first Director of Grants Management for the Annie E. Casey Foundation and as a program officer at the Corporation for National Service/AmeriCorps.
She is actively involved in the philanthropic community nationally and locally. She chairs the board of TSNE MissionWorks and also serves as Clerk of the board of the Full Frame Initiative. Past board experience includes Asian Americans/Pacific Islanders in Philanthropy, YWCA Boston, the Boston Foundation for Architecture, and the Forum of Regional Associations of Grant Makers. She is a co-founder of the Saffron Circle, the first Asian Giving Circle in Massachusetts.
She holds a Bachelor of Political Science degree from Stanford University, and lives in Medford, Massachusetts. In her spare time, she bakes, reads, and travels to far flung places whenever she can.
Chief Executive Officer, Interise
Darrell Byers came to Interise from Habitat for Humanity Greater San Francisco where he was Chief Advancement Officer. He previously held leadership roles at Easterseals Bay Area and EarthJustice, and was the recipient of the Eleanor Collier Award from Case District 1 for his contributions to education. Darrell holds a B.A. in History from the College of Holy Cross.
Darrell cares about equality. Since the first slave came off the boat in 1619, Black Americans have been fighting for equality across our nation. Every individual born Black is forced to start life on an unequal playing ground, and there is not one facet of our society where that is not the case. As a result, Darrell has made it his mission to uplift and support communities of color, by helping them grow local economies and build generational wealth.
Interise is a national organization which means our impact spans far and wide. Being a former small business owner, he personally understands the struggles that alumni go through on a daily basis. From understanding their finances to accessing capital to gaining economic traction with anchor institutions, Darrell has lived and felt the challenges of it all. No matter where he has been in his career, he has always worked to transform lives and that’s what Interise does.
Senior Fellow, Columbia University Justice Lab
Gladys Carrión has been recognized as a national leader in her efforts to reform Juvenile Justice in New York State and a fearless advocate for children and families involved in the child welfare system. She has been an advocate for system-impacted girls and launched an initiative to end the incarceration of girls in New York.
She has received numerous awards and has served on several national advisory committees focused on reforming juvenile justice and promoting the wellbeing of children and young adults. She currently is a Senior Fellow at the Columbia University Justice Lab and co-chairs the Youth Correctional Leaders for Justice where she advocates for the abolition of youth prisons and systems reform.
Gladys was appointed Commissioner of the New York City Administration for Children’s Services (ACS) in January 2014 and served until March 2020 where she was charged with providing child welfare, early childhood care and juvenile justice services to the City’s most vulnerable children and families. She was also responsible for implementing Close to Home, the City’s juvenile justice program and right sizing the system.
Prior to her appointment to ACS, Gladys was Commissioner of the Office of Children and Family Services (OCFS), overseeing New York’s child welfare, early childhood care and juvenile justice systems. As OCFS Commissioner she is credited with overhauling the juvenile justice system. Under her leadership, she shut down 21 juvenile centers, diverting juvenile justice involved youth to less costly and more effective therapeutic programs located closer to home.
Gladys was Senior Vice President for Community Investment with the United Way of New York City. She was responsible for implementing United Way’s Community Action Strategy, engaging with community-based organizations to allocate resources within high poverty areas. Prior to joining United Way of New York City, she was the Executive Director of Inwood House, one of the oldest youth serving organizations in the city, which helps teens develop the necessary skills to make healthy choices and become active members of their communities. As Commissioner of New York City’s Development Agency under Mayor David Dinkins, Gladys led antipoverty efforts by restructuring the Community Actions Programs. Her efforts led to an increase in the number of communities and residents eligible to receive funding.
She began her legal career as an attorney with the Bronx Legal Services Corporation and rose to become the Managing Attorney for the South Bronx Office. As an attorney, Gladys advocated for Bronx residents on a wide range of issues including housing, child welfare, education and family law.
Born and raised in the Bronx, Gladys is a graduate of Fordham and New York University School of Law.
FFI Board Treasurer; Senior Consultant, Social Innovation Partners
Tim served as the Director of the Missouri Division of Youth Services from 2007-2013 and Director of the Missouri Children’s Division from 2013-2018. Tim retired from state government in 2018, after serving for 34 years in a variety of leadership positions with the Missouri Department of Social Services and the Greater Kansas City Local Investment Commission (LINC), one of the nation’s most innovative public/private community partnerships.
After serving for over 11 years as an agency director, Tim founded Social Innovation Partners to support leaders interested in government, community, non-profit, and private-sector innovation in child welfare, juvenile justice, education, and youth development.
Independent Artist
José Faus is a native of Bucaramanga, Colombia and longtime Kansas City resident. He is an artist, writer, performer and independent teacher/mentor with an interest in the role of artists as catalysts for community building. He is a co-founder of the Latino Writers Collective and sits on the boards of Latino Writers Collective, UMKC Board of Governors Alumni Association, and Charlotte Street Foundation.
His writing appears in various anthologies and journals. His chapbook “This Town Like That” was released by Spartan Press. His second book of poetry “The Life and Times of Jose Calderon” was published by West 39 Press. He has participated in large scale mural programs regionally and internationally. He maintains Carido Studio, a fine arts studio in downtown Kansas City.
CEO, The International Institute Of Family Development, Inc.
Veola Green creates bridges between people, governments and organizations to serve the causes of child welfare and international women’s development. She brings dynamic energy and a background that includes field work, policy reform, and management to address issues at a systemic level. Veola is the Executive Managing Partner and Principal at The International Institute of Family Development which is driven by the premise that entire communities are lifted up when women are given tools for economic stability.
Veola and her team turn the dreams of the National Development Plans of African countries into reality, by creating opportunities for partnership with Black American private sector firms to increase enterprise generation and secure economic sovereignty – leaving a legacy of Black wealth that impacts the present and future generations to come.
Veola has been honored as a Global Goodwill Ambassador, recognized for her Humanitarian work abroad. She lends her expertise to various boards including non-profit organizations and political committees. By invitation of the African Union Mission in Washington DC, Veola is a member of the Pan-African Women’s Development Association (PADWA) Legislative and Agriculture committees. She also holds a position on the executive leadership team of Black Emergency Managers Association International (BEMA), supporting the organization’s global partnership development. She is a board member of 211 Maryland and, most recently, accepted board membership at The Association of Climate Change Officers (ACCO), focusing her time on the Equity and Inclusion Committee.
Executive Director, University of Chicago Health Lab
Dr. S. Rebecca Neusteter has dedicated her career to advancing equity in the criminal justice and health care systems. Her work spans the country. She is focused on reducing justice system contact, disparities, and collateral consequences. She works to enhance public safety, civic participation, and opportunities to support health and vitality.
Rebecca previously served as the Vera Institute of Justice’s founding Policing Program Director. Prior to that position, she served as Director of Research, Policy, and Planning for the NYPD. Rebecca has also served as Director of Criminal Justice for the Laura and John Arnold Foundation, Research Associate for the Urban Institute’s Justice Policy Center, Director of Criminal Justice Programs for The Doe Fund, Senior Analyst for the NYC Office of Management and Budget, and Deputy Director of Planning for the Center for Employment Opportunities.
Rebecca holds several appointments, including trustee of Friends of Island Academy, a nonprofit organization that supports and brings opportunity to youth during and after their time in New York City jails; Research Advisory Board member of the Police Executive Research Forum; and Research Advisory Committee member of the International Association of Chiefs of Police. Rebecca holds a Ph.D. in Criminal Justice from John Jay College of the Graduate Center, City University of New York, an MS in Urban Policy Analysis and Management from the Milano Graduate School of the New School University, and a BA in Sociology from Chapman University.
Senior Fellow, Haas School of Business, UC Berkeley
Jane Wei-Skillern is a Senior Fellow at the Center for Social Sector Leadership at the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley. Previously, she served on the faculty at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, Harvard Business School (HBS), and London Business School. She has studied and published extensively on nonprofit networks for more than two decades. She is the author and coauthor of dozens of HBS and Haas UC Berkeley case studies, book chapters and journal articles and is the lead author of the casebook, Entrepreneurship in the Social Sector (Sage Publications, 2007).
A distillation of her work can be found at New Network Leader. Her research has focused most prominently on network leadership. This research examines how nonprofit leaders that focus less on building their own institutions and instead invest to build strategic networks beyond their organizational boundaries can achieve dramatic gains in mission impact with the same or fewer resources.
For the past several years, she has taken a leave from teaching in the MBA classroom to focus on supporting social impact leaders in the field to grow their impact through networks. She is frequently invited to present keynote speeches, webinars, and workshops to share her research on network leadership and to facilitate the development of trust based collaborators within organizations and communities.
Founder and CEO, Full Frame Initiative
Katya grew up in New Jersey and went to high school in Massachusetts, where she volunteered at one of the state’s first shelters for homeless families. While getting a degree in biology from Harvard, Katya continued working with people who are homeless, eventually becoming co-director of one of Cambridge, MA’s first emergency shelters. A hit-and-run of one of the shelter’s guests, uninvestigated by police, combined with the advice and vision of other shelter guests, led her to found Cambridge-based On The Rise, Inc. in 1995. On The Rise was widely recognized for its Full Frame Approach to working with women facing homelessness, trauma, and crisis.
In 2007, Katya left to work on what would become the Full Frame Initiative. She launched FFI’s systemic collaborations that are bringing a wellbeing orientation to Missouri’s juvenile justice and child welfare systems and the St. Louis County courts, and a multi-system effort in Massachusetts to reframe the government’s approach to the intersection of homelessness, sexual assault, and domestic violence.
A former Research Affiliate with MIT’s Community Innovators Lab, Research Fellow at the Malcolm Wiener Center for Social Policy at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, Echoing Green Fellow and Claneil Foundation Emerging Leaders Fellow, Katya speaks, publishes and advocates nationally for addressing poverty, violence, trauma, and oppression by removing barriers to wellbeing. She has an honorary Doctorate of Divinity from the Episcopal Divinity School, and a deep belief in the power of people to do good by and for each other. This, combined with her sense that our country isn’t fully living into that potential, feed her commitment to FFI, bolstered by amazing colleagues and copious coffee consumption. Katya is a terrible gardener and decent cook who lives in Western Massachusetts with her amazing husband and kids, and an unwieldy menagerie of dogs, cats and donkeys.
FFI Staff Representative to the Board
Lotus is part of the Engagement & Partnerships Team at FFI, collaborating on strategy for how to support people in shifting towards using a wellbeing orientation, developing capacity building and training materials, teaching, and supporting curriculum development.
Lotus holds an MPH/MSW from the University of Michigan. While living in Michigan and working for human services in county government, she also was involved with MISSION, a nonprofit organization supporting homeless tent cities. With this organization, she saw the importance of supporting the whole person. When people were having to make significant tradeoffs for shelter that were unsustainable—because they would be giving up friends, community or stability—what worked was helping to reduce those costs with bus tokens, encouraging people to have a voice, being part of a community, and more. It is this experience that most helped Lotus connect with FFI’s approach to understanding people and the importance of shifting systems to focus on wellbeing, not simply on fixing problems. Lotus also comes with teaching experience on the Texas-Mexico border and in Macedonia. When she is not at FFI, she is doing one of a million hobbies, including but not limited to: cooking, knitting, circus, running, hiking, biking, crafting and playing violin.
Author
Dorothy is the prize-winning author of a number of books, including Bastard Out of Carolina. She specializes in capturing the voices and rawness of entrenched poverty and violence and plans to work with FFI’s founder on raising up the voices of program participants in Full Frame programs.
Program Director, Children, and Youth Program, Futures Without Violence
Juan Carlos is an internationally recognized activist, public speaker, trainer and facilitator, and published author. Previously, he served as Director of the National Latin@ Network at Casa de Esperanza and as a Sexual Assault Prevention Specialist at Harvard University and he is a founding member of the United Nations Network of Men Leaders to combat violence against women created by former Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.
MSW, Ph.D., Independent Consultant
Prue’s work focuses on the documentation and evaluation of community change initiatives, new approaches to learning from and providing assistance to these initiatives, and the role of philanthropy in community change. She was a Research Fellow at the Chapin Hall Center for Children and served as Deputy Director of the Urban Poverty Program at the Ford Foundation.
Director of Children’s Services, Futures Without Violence
Lonna oversees a range of national and international programs for the nation’s preeminent anti-family-violence organization (in translating grassroots effectiveness into social policy and change). She has been a pioneer in creating state and national policy and programs to address domestic violence.
M.D., M.P.P., President, Echoing Green Foundation
Cheryl heads one of the nation’s most prestigious social entrepreneurship fellowships. A pediatrician and an accomplished social entrepreneur (founder of Boston’s Family Van), Cheryl has expertise in health care, labor issues, and national policy.
Ph.D., Distinguished Professor of Social and Personality Psychology, City University fo New York
Michelle is a nationally known expert on the intersection of social justice and academic research. Her research program surrounds questions of community development with a particular emphasis on urban youth and young adults. She is working on a number of projects about access, opportunity and the New York public schools.
Ph.D., Founder and Principal, Cynthesis Consulting
For almost three decades, Cynthia’s work has focused on public policy research and analysis, program development, strategic planning, survey design, evaluation, and marketing and communications. She has held leadership roles with several national foundations and nonprofits and is a widely published author and blogger on issues affecting the nonprofit/philanthropic sector.
MBA, Chief Executive Officer, Jones & Vining
Lee is a well-known and highly regarded Interim CEO and management consultant, having successfully restructured over 300 companies in his more than 25 years of management experience. He is an expert in business planning and integrating operational metrics with financial planning. Lee is a founding member of VETRN, an organization that provides veteran small business owners an opportunity to attend a program in entrepreneurship exclusively designed for veterans to grow their own small business. He has a long-standing commitment to domestic and international work that seeks to empower poor and marginalized communities.
Ph.D., Professor, Boston College Lynch School of Education
Lisa is an expert on the intersection of poverty, domestic violence and mental health issues. She partnered with FFI’s founder in documenting the Full Frame Approach, and they continue to collaborate on research and writing about the Full Frame Approach and community-based strategies to addressing violence in the context of poverty.
Ph.D., Massachusetts Department of Mental Health, Forensic Services
Mio has spent the last 25 years working with those who have been failed by systems and supports. She worked at Bridgewater State Hospital for over a decade, and now works in the courthouses of the Commonwealth assessing criminal defendants. (alleged perpetrators of violence towards others) as well as those struggling with mental health or substance abuse issues facing involuntary civil commitment.
Ed.D. Professor of the Practice of Community Development, MIT
Ceasar’s work focuses on the development of community knowledge systems and civic engagement. He has been working on the use of narrative and story making as a tool for sharing and maintaining grassroots knowledge. His research and teaching interests also include the use of mass media and technology in promoting democracy and community-building, the education of urban students, the development and use of empathy in community work, civil rights history, peacemaking and conflict resolution.
LICSW, Founder, The Family Center (Now The Parenting Journey)
Anne is a longtime champion of family-based strategies to support families mired in poverty. She has been involved in many of the Boston-area’s most important start-ups and community-based organizations.
Fellow, Center for the Study Of Social Policy
Lee is a national authority on “what works” to improve the future of disadvantaged children and their families and neighborhoods. She is the author of several highly regarded books on the subject.
Ph.D., Partner, Bridgespan
Nan heads the knowledge division of Bridgespan, a national consulting firm to leading nonprofits and managers. Prior to coming to Bridgespan, she was editor-in-chief of Harvard Business Review.
Former Chief Capacity Officer, The Full Frame Initiative
Laura has been part of developing and growing mission-based organizations, coalitions and networks for over 25 years. She served as FFI’s founding Chief Capacity Officer for nearly nine years and is highly committed to collaborative work that advances social change.
M.D., Director, One Sky Center, and Professor Of Psychiatry, Public Health and Preventive Medicine, Director of the Center for American Indian Education and Research, Oregon Health and Science University
Dale is nationally recognized for his work as an advocate and activist for access to healthcare and the Elimination of the stigma of mental illness and addiction, particularly among American Indians.
Ph.D., Associate Adjunct Professor, Haas School of Business at University of California, Berkeley
Jane is a pioneer in the study of (and is an evangelizer for) how nonprofits achieve greater impact by working in networks.
Ph.D., Harry Kahn Senior Lecturer in Social Policy, Malcolm Wiener Center for Social Policy, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University
Julie is interested in poverty policy, family policy, and urban race relations. Julie spent three years at the NY Department of Social Services, where she directed the Office of Program Planning, Analysis, and Development.
Senior Vice President, Collaborative Philanthropy; Founder & CEO, Co-Impact, Rockefeller Foundation
Olivia Leland brings more than 20 years of experience in philanthropy, government, and the nonprofit sector to her role as founder and CEO of Co-Impact, a global philanthropic collaborative focused on systems change in the areas of health, education, and economic opportunities in low and middle-income countries. Olivia worked with Bill and Melinda Gates and Warren Buffett as the founding director of the Giving Pledge, an effort to help address society’s most pressing problems by encouraging philanthropy globally. Previously, she led a cross-foundation strategy effort at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and served as associate director for financial and private sector development at the Millennium Challenge Corporation. She has consulted on microfinance and private sector development, as well as strategic consulting at Monitor Group where she focused on branding, market research, and venture philanthropy. In addition to being the CEO of Co-Impact, Olivia also serves as a senior vice president at The Rockefeller Foundation, focusing on bringing collaborative approaches to the Foundation’s initiatives. In 2014 Olivia was recognized by the World Economic Forum with the distinction of being named a Young Global Leader. Olivia received her AB in Social Studies from Harvard University and MSc in Development Management from the London School of Economics and Political Science. She lives with her husband and three children in London, UK, and holds dual US/French nationality.