Advisors

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Solange Impanoyimana

Solange is a Co-Founder at Resonate where she worked from January 2014 through July 2016 to develop and adapt Resonate’s leadership curriculum. During her time as Lead Trainer and Program Manager she built strategic partnerships in Rwanda and delivered Resonate’s training to over 1,500 participants. She was named by Conscious Company Magazine as one of the 17 Rising Social Entrepreneurs of 2015 for her work with Resonate.

Prior to Resonate, Solange was a Program Manager at Gardens for Health International where she developed and adapted image-based health curricula for a local context, and lead training of trainers sessions for the community. Solange is also a former Global Health Corps fellow, and has worked for Voices of Rwanda translating genocide narratives and for Radio Isango Star and contributed to news programming. Solange has more than 10 years of experience working with community development projects for NGOs and government contractors, and supporting Rwandan youth development in rural communities.

Solange was a Generation Rwanda Scholar and holds a bachelor’s degree of Journalism and Communications from Institut Catholique de Kabgayi.

 
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George Deriso

George Deriso is an experienced executive, entrepreneur, educator, coach, consultant, mentor, speaker and advisor who has worked with businesses of all sizes worldwide. Prior to founding his current consulting practice – Cosmos Partners – George worked for Falcon Venture Partners, a Colorado private equity firm. George has had a successful career as an executive with some of the biggest brands you know, including AT&T, Apple and Gartner, Inc., and as a serial entrepreneur, private equity investor and social impact innovator. As a leader in community service, George has mentored for the Unreasonable Institute, the Global Social Benefit Incubator and Innovation Center of the Rockies, and overseas with Ustvarjalnik and iXperiment (entrepreneurship for high school age youth-eastern Europe), among many others. He has lived and worked overseas, conducting business extensively throughout Europe, North America and Asia-Pacific. Currently, George is a professor at the University of Colorado Leeds School of Business, a preceptor at Watson University, and an advisor to new ventures and investors globally.

 
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Greta Cowan

Since 1999 Greta Cowan has been coachingclients on The Four P’s: helping leaders toconnect with and congruently communicate theirpassion, lead with their principles, find clarityof purpose, and leverage their full, authenticleadership presence. She helps clients make their vision of the future vivid, compelling, tangible, and possible

Greta is a certified leadership coach who has worked nationwide and abroad with a wide variety of executives. Coaching not-for-profit leaders is her specialty; working with organizations like The American Red Cross, Acumen Fund, Achievement First, Uncommon Schools, and the National Cancer Institute. Greta brings a dynamic blend of humor, compassion, honesty, and rigor to her approach to coaching; helping leaders become more inspired and inspirational. Greta has taught and lectured at Harvard University Executive Education, Darden Business School, and Columbia Business School under the auspices of the Executive Education and Executive MBA departments and the Institute for Not-for-Profit Management.

 
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Wanjira Mathai

Wanjira Mathai is the director of wPOWER and the project leader at the Wangari Maathai Institute for Peace and Environmental Studies (WMI). Prior to this she directed International Affairs at the Green Belt Movement (GBM), where she managed International outreach and resource mobilization. For 6 years prior to joining GBM, Ms. Mathai worked as Sr. Program Officer at the Carter Presidential Center, Atlanta, Georgia (USA), monitoring and evaluating disease eradication programs. Since 2002, Ms. Mathai directed International Affairs at GBM, which was founded by her mother, the late Nobel Peace Laureate Wangari Maathai. Today Wanjira directs the new Partnership for Women’s Entrepreneurship in Renewables (wPower) Hub at the Wangari Maathai Institute. Wanjira is the Chair of the Green Belt Movement and sits on the Board of WMI. She is also a World Future Councilor, Advisory Council Member (Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves), member of the Global Restoration Council and is a member of the Earth Charter International Council. Wanjira is Kenyan and a graduate of Hobart and William Smith Colleges (USA). She earned graduate degrees in Public Health and Business from Emory University’s Rollins School of Public Health and Goizueta School of Business (USA).

 
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Marshall Ganz

Marshall Ganz grew up in Bakersfield, California, where his father was a Rabbi and his mother, a teacher. He entered Harvard College in the fall of 1960. He left a year before graduating to volunteer with the 1964 Mississippi Summer Project. He found a “calling” as an organizer for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, and, in the fall of 1965, joined Cesar Chavez in his effort to unionize California farm workers. During 16 years with the United Farm Workers he gained experience in union, political, and community organizing, became Director of Organizing, and was elected to the national executive board on which he served for 8 years. During the 1980s, he worked with grassroots groups to develop new organizing programs and designed innovative voter mobilization strategies for local, state, and national electoral campaigns. In 1991, in order to deepen his intellectual understanding of his work, he returned to Harvard College and, after a 28-year “leave of absence,” completed his undergraduate degree in history and government. He was awarded an MPA by the Kennedy School in 1993 and completed his PhD in sociology in 2000. As senior lecturer in public policy at the Kennedy School of Government, he teaches, researches, and writes on leadership, organization, and strategy in social movements, civic associations, and politics. He has published in the American Journal of Sociology, American Political Science Review, American Prospect, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times and elsewhere. His newest book, Why David Sometimes Wins: leadership, organization and strategy in the California farm worker movement was published in 2009, earning the Michael J. Harrington Book Award of the American Political Science Association. He was awarded an honorary doctorate in divinity by the Episcopal Divinity School in 2010.

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Jonathan Kaufman

Jonathan Kaufman is co-founder & Principal of Third Plateau Social Impact Strategies. In this role, Jonathan collaborates with nonprofits, philanthropists, and social entrepreneurs all over the world, helping them expand and deepen their impact. He specializes in business and strategic planning, metrics development, program design, community engagement, and impact assessment for a wide array of Third Plateau’s clients.

Prior to launching Third Plateau in 2011, Jonathan served as the Regional Director for a hunger-relief organization in Chicago; the Housing Coordinator for an agency working with homeless individuals with severe mental illness in Los Angeles; and as the Special Programs Director at a refugee rights NGO in Athens, Greece.

Jonathan holds a B.A. in Religion from Vassar College and an MBA in Nonprofit Management and Social Entrepreneurship from Washington University in St. Louis, where he received the Dean’s Award for Corporate Social Responsibility and graduated at the top of his class.

Jonathan currently lives in Sacramento, CA with his wife, Joanna, and their two kids, Oliver and Louisa. Together, the four of them travel the world, eat more BBQ than any human should, and are embarking on Phase VII of their world domination plans.

 
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Gretchen Wallace

Gretchen Steidle Wallace is the founder and President of Global Grassroots, an international organization working at the intersection of personal and societal transformation to catalyze the ideas of grassroots change agents working for women’s rights and well-being post-conflict.  In 2005, she launched Global Grassroots’ work in the Darfur refugee camps of eastern Chad, and in 2006 expanded to Rwanda. Gretchen is a producer of the documentary film, The Devil Came on Horseback, which was nominated for three Emmy Awards in 2009.  She is also co-author of the memoir, “The Devil Came on Horseback: Bearing Witness to the Genocide in Darfur”, published by PublicAffairs, about her brother, Marine Capt Brian Steidle’s experience as a military observer in Darfur. She holds an MBA from the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College and a BA in Foreign Affairs from the University of Virginia.

Gretchen believes that cultivating inner awareness and contributing to the common good are both necessary to advance the greatest level of positive social change. She is a certified Integrative Breathwork Practitioner and trained in Coherent Breathwork, which she utilizes in her work in Haiti and Rwanda to help women and children heal trauma from war, disaster and sexual violence.   In 2007, Gretchen was honored by World Business Magazine and Shell as one of the top International 35 Women Under 35. In 2010 she was chosen with her husband as CNN Heroes working in Haiti after the earthquake.  In the same year she was awarded the inaugural Susan J. Herman Award for Leadership in Holocaust and Genocide Awareness by the Cohen Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Keene State College. In 2011 she was chosen one of seven Remarkable Women of the World by New Hampshire Magazine.

 
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Manu Kabahizi

Manu Kabahizi is an international consultant working at the intersections of information, society, and policy. His work in mobile has been featured at the 2013 Personal Democracy Forum, 2012 ITU Conference, and 2011 Broadband Commission. He currently holds a position as a Digital Editor for the International Institute for Sustainable Development reporting on multilateral processes on sustainable development, climate change, and other issues. Manu also consults for various digital advocacy organizations, including The Rules, Purpose, and Online Progressive Engagement Networks.

Manu’s work has always been influenced by an understanding of gender and narrative. He has worked on such projects as the documentation of Sexual and Gender-Based Violence of the 1994 Genocide, and has researched and presented on the importance and challenges of documenting Sexual and Gender Based violence in post-conflict development. In 2009, Manu acted as a field researcher for National Democratic Institute’s Women and Political Parties Best Practices Guidebook, interviewing female leaders in the country with the world’s highest female leadership in government.

In 2011, Manu worked with Nike Foundation’s Girlhub to develop traditional insight and appreciation of teenage girls into a girl-centered positive engagement platform. Distributed monthly and largely produced by girls, Nyampinga is now Rwanda’s most widely circulated magazine and the only magazine for girls. Manu lives in Toronto and travels regularly to his home country, Rwanda, where he is a partner in a software firm.

 
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Felicite Rwemarika

Felicite Rwemarika is the founder and CEO of Association of Kigali Women in Sports whose mission is to empower women through sports and education. She is a Chairperson for Rwanda Women Football and the Commissioner of the Rwanda National Football Federation. A leader in the efforts to improve women’s lives in Rwanda, Felicite is involved in many women’s empowerment initiatives such as We-act for Hope. She is the President of Rwanda NGO Forum on Aids and Health Promotion that coordinates, promotes, and evaluates national activities to fight HIV and Aids.

She is an Ashoka fellow and recently her work with AKWOS received an Award from Stars Foundation.

 
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Cynthia Ryan

Cynthia is a current or former trustee of the Fund for Global Human Rights, the Nation Institute, the Ploughshares Fund, Green for All, Women for Women International, National Braille Press, and the National Association of Health Education Centers. She is a member of the Clinton Global Initiative, Global Philanthropy Forum, Peace & Security Funders Group, the International Human Rights Funders Group, and Grantmakers Without Borders. She has served on the Women’s Leadership Board and the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy, both at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, and was the Outreach Chair of the Advisory Committee of the Women’s Rights Division at Human Rights Watch. She is currently a partner in the Democracy Alliance. Cynthia received her Bachelor of Arts from the New School for Social Research in New York and a Masters of Arts from the School of Oriental & African Studies at the University of London in England. She is a contributing author in the book Women, Philanthropy and Social Change: Visions for a Just Society.

 
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Julie Carney

Julie is the cofounder of Gardens for Health International, which partners with health clinics in Rwanda to integrate agricultural support with comprehensive health education to fight child malnutrition. Julie graduated from Yale University and is an Echoing Green Fellow and an Ashoka Fellow.

 
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Teri Eyre

Teri Eyre is an accomplished Human Resources executive and Board member with a record of creating shareholder value through human capital strategies that drive growth, performance, and scale. Teri had a distinguished career at Hewlett-Packard Company where she was accountable for global HR for multiple business sectors. As Senior Vice President of HP, Teri was accountable for a workforce of more than 115,000 employees in 50 countries.

Since 2016, Teri mentors global entrepreneurs building social enterprises through the Miller Center for Social Entrepreneurship at Santa Clara University. In addition to Resonate, Teri advises  the founders and CEOs of the Monrovia Football Academy, Peace by Piece International, and Talent Across Boundaries as they build plans to scale their ventures and secure additional investment.

In Northern California, Teri currently serves on the Board of Directors for JobTrain, focused on job development for underserved communities. Teri also serves on the Executive Compensation Committee for El Camino Hospital where she advises the publicly-elected Hospital Board on CEO selection, executive performance, compensation, and succession in the rapidly changing health care sector.

Teri holds a Ph.D. in Industrial and Organizational Psychology from Colorado State University and completed an Executive Program in Strategy and Organization at Stanford University's Graduate School of Business.