Board of Directors

Ayla is currently a graduate student at Stanford Graduate School of Business. As Resonate's former CEO and Co-Founder, Ayla was responsible for leading strategy, partnerships, program expansion, and curriculum innovation. She has a background in community organizing where she worked on leadership development and coaching with staff, volunteers, and community members. Along with her co-founder, she adapted proven community organizing tools to be used to unlock leadership potential among disadvantaged women in East Africa.

Prior to starting Resonate she was a Field Organizer and Program Manager at Groundswell in Washington, DC, where she led and managed the launch of a city-wide energy efficiency and financing program for low-income residents. She has also worked as a strategic communications consultant and specialized in stakeholder engagement and facilitation. She brings these skills to her work at Resonate, leveraging the influential power of communication for positive change. 

Ayla was a Mary Maples Dunn scholar at Smith College, where she graduated with honors with a B.A. in Political Science and a minor in Spanish Language. Ayla was awarded the 2014 Brimstone Award for Applied Storytelling for her work with Resonate and was named one of Conscious Company Magazine’s 17 Rising Social Entrepreneurs. She is a 2015 Unreasonable Institute Global Fellow,  a 2016 recipient of the Cordes Fellowship, and represents Resonate as part of the 2017 GSBI Accelerator Program and the 2017 cohort of the SPRING Accelerator. Ayla serves as an International Grant Advisor for The Pollination Project, and as a member of the Global Advisory Board for the Women’s Global Leadership Initiative.

Chantal Uwizera is an international development professional with 10 years of dedicated experience working with governments, the private sector, international agencies (UN), foundations, and other non-profits to drive social impact, focusing on Africa. She is currently the Head of Africa Philanthropy for Save the Children UK, leading the organization’s philanthropic strategy across the African market. She previously worked for the Africa America Institute as the Director of Global Programs, overseeing the strategic direction to support governments across Africa in building strong higher education institutions. She also worked for the Government of Rwanda at the United Nations, where she led negotiations and policy reviews of international agreements on social and economic issues and oversaw the office's communication and public relations. 

Chantal completed her MA in International Peace and Conflict Resolution, focusing on peacebuilding and human rights at the School of International Service at American University in 2012 and her BA in Political Science and International Relations in 2006 from the University of Indianapolis. 

Her passion for empowering women to reach their highest potential is inspired by her upbringing, surrounded by empowered women who continuously support her dreams and aspirations. She brings program development and community engagement experience and looks forward to contributing her skills and passion to the Board of Resonate.

Lamiaa is a global strategist and investor driven by leading the development of a business and its people to do well and good at scale. After 8 years as a Private Equity investor at Ardian, thriving at helping and supporting companies reaching their next stage of growth, Lamiaa decided to bring that expertise internally to Apple. She joined Apple in Cupertino, California, to support Worldwide Business Planning. She graduated from Stanford Graduate School of Business, as a Robert Joss Scholar. She also earned a masters in banking, finance and insurance from Paris IX Dauphine University.

As a French-Moroccan woman who grew-up in Morocco, Lamiaa is grateful for having been inspired and empowered by African women to build the leadership skills necessary to chase her dreams, impact her community and now broaden that reach by serving on the wonderful Board of Resonate.

Deborah Dean is a lawyer and advocate for accelerating gender parity in the world. She recently completed a year in-residence as a Fellow at Stanford University’s Distinguished Career Institute. Immediately prior to Stanford, she served as an executive at Dassault Systèmes for several years in the roles of Vice President, General Counsel-Americas, Founder and leader of the Women’s Initiative (WIN). WIN’s mission is to provide leadership for the advancement of women in the company as well as education and scholarship aid for girls in Rwanda. Debbie was a member of the Board of Directors of DS Americas Corp. and both a past and present member of the Board of the Dassault Systèmes US Foundation. She was recognized as In-house Lawyer of the Year for Mentoring by Chambers Women in Law USA in 2014, as one of the top 100 Diverse Corporate Leaders in STEM by StemConnector in 2014 and named a Leader in the Law by Lawyers Weekly in 2013.

Florian is a Human Resources Management expert who currently serves as Head of HR at the US-based Humanitarian NGO Center for Civilians in Conflict.

Florian had the opportunity to learn about and support the people at Resonate and their work while he was in East Africa from 2014 until 2021, where he worked for One Acre Fund, a social enterprise that provides innovative solutions to increase the food security of smallholder farmers. The vast majority of these farmers are women. At One Acre Fund, Florian led people operations and organizational development initiatives. Florian is originally from Germany, where he started his career as a management consultant, focusing on HR diagnostics, employee selection, and training. He holds a Master’s degree in Educational Science from the University of Heidelberg.

Resonate’s mission aligns with his values. One of them is that each person has the right to reach their full potential and to be a leader. Florian has experienced that the work that Resonate does helps women to reach this goal.

Maggie is an agile problem solver focused on addressing the major environmental, health, economic, security and natural resource challenges across Africa, with a specific focus on the Sahel and wider West Africa. She has over 15 years of experience leading and mentoring diverse, multi-cultural teams in the USA, Africa and Central Asia. Currently, the Regional Director for the Sahel for the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, Maggie supports political leaders, advisors and regional institutes on strategy, policy and delivery using tech as an enabler. Previously, she oversaw a multi-million US dollar, five-year program and multi-disciplinary team of advisors to address the challenges of collaboration, learning and communication among development and humanitarian actors across Niger and Burkina Faso for the US Government.

A skilled and visionary leader, she is adept at solving complex organizational and contextual challenges, facilitating collaboration across stakeholders and inspiring enthusiasm for shared goals and objectives, with a view towards continued learning and adaptation. Her prior experience includes management and leadership roles with international non-profits, the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and NYC medical centers. From Detroit, MI USA, she holds a Master of Public Health from Tulane University’s School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine and a bachelor’s degree in international Relations from James Madison College at Michigan State University. She started her career in community-based health as a Peer Educator and served as a community health extension volunteer with the U.S. Peace Corps in Cameroon. Maggie is passionate about women’s leadership and mentorship - recognizing the many women who have been instrumental in supporting her success, she strives to do the same in her career and in the wider communities where she lives and works. She believes strongly in the mission of RESONATE and the power of women to create positive change for themselves, their communities and the world.

Claire Evans has experience in the financial services, legal and nonprofit sectors.  Claire has a strong understanding of nonprofit governance and management through her prior service as the Executive Director of charitySTRONG, an organization created by the New York Attorney General’s Office in 2014 to train a new generation of nonprofit directors to be effective and accountable.  She was asked to lead charitySTRONG after spending three years serving as an Assistant Attorney General in the Charities Bureau, where she investigated and prosecuted nonprofit fraud and abuse. Before joining the New York Attorney General’s Office, she provided tax consulting and financial planning services for private foundations, charitable remainder trusts and public charities.  Claire has served on a number of international nonprofit boards and as a member of the New York City Bar's Committee on Nonprofit Organizations. She holds a J.D. from Fordham University School of Law and a B.A. from Georgetown University.