Naomi Abraham
Program Officer, Four Freedoms Fund
Prior to joining PIP, Naomi worked at Women’s eNews where she worked on various projects including a special report on women in Africa. Before that she worked for several refugee resettlement groups in the New York tri-state area as an employment and education manager. She has had Board and volunteer affiliations with many groups including the Grantmaking Allocations Committee of the New York Women’s Foundation, African Federation Inc. and Angel Africa. A graduate of Sarah Lawrence College, Naomi holds a graduate degree in journalism from Columbia University and another from the City University of New York in international relations. Naomi is an Ethiopian-Eritrean immigrant who has traveled across and resided on five continents.
Ingrid Benedict
Program Officer, Fulfilling the Dream Fund and Communities for Public Education Reform
Prior to joining PIP, Ingrid was fund coordinator for Tides Foundation’s California Fund for Youth Organizing, which works with practitioners and funders to promote youth organizing as an effective strategy for developing a new generation of social-change leaders. She has worked in the youth- and community-organizing sector of the social justice movement as co-director of the School of Unity and Liberation at the Youth Empowerment Center, as a school-site organizer with Youth Together, and as a trainer with the Institute for Multiracial Justice. Ingrid earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of California at San Diego and a master’s in public administration from San Francisco State University.
Cynthia Brothers
Program Officer, State Infrastructure Fund, Census Community Outreach Fund, Four Freedoms Fund and American Dream Fund
Cynthia has worked in research, advocacy and direct services in a range of areas including workforce development, public-benefits access, mental health and race and gender issues. She also worked in Asian/Pacific Islander community leadership and civic engagement, mentorship,and tutoring for low-income immigrant children in New York’s Chinatown. Prior to joining PIP in 2008, Cynthia worked as a project assistant with the Women of Color Policy Network and as an advocacy associate with the New York City Employment and Training Coalition. Cynthia holds a master’s degree in public administration from the Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service at New York University.
Nanci Champlin
Administrative Coordinator, Funders’ Committee for Civic Participation
Nanci Champlin joined the FCCP team in September 2009. Throughout the last 15 years Nanci has provided outreach, administrative, development, communications and program support to some of Oregon’s most effective nonprofits. In her seven years at the Fund for the Public Interest/OSPIRG, Nanci participated in the successful Campaign Finance Reform and Bottle Bill ballot initiatives. She helped broaden the cultural dialogue about environmental issues through street-level arts programming at Orlo, and developed a sustainability plan for a local green design and architecture firm. In March 2009, Nanci celebrated passage of new Wilderness protections for some of Oregon’s iconic wild places – the culmination of her nearly eight years at Oregon Wild.
Mona Chun
Deputy Director, International Human Rights Funders Group
Before joining PIP, Mona was the Director of Outreach and Communication at the Coro New York Leadership Center. She was also the founding Executive Director of the Center for Sustainable Human Rights Action, an organization providing capacity-building training to international human rights groups and leaders around the world. Mona has served on the Board of Directors of the New York Chinese Cultural Center and the Advisory Board of Adilisha, a human rights capacity-building organization in Southern Africa. She has a B.A.from Hofstra University and an MPA from Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs.
Henry Der
Senior Program Officer, Four Freedoms Fund
Prior to joining the Four Freedoms Fund, Henry served as the senior program officer at the Evelyn and Walter Haas, Jr. Fund, establishing its immigrant rights program. For more than 22 years Henry was the Executive Director of the San Francisco-based, membership-supported Chinese for Affirmative Action, working to promote the civil rights of Asian Americans and other racial minority groups in employment, education, voting and access to public services. A former Peace Corps volunteer in Kenya, Henry has also served as Deputy Superintendent of Public Instruction at the California Department of Education. He was appointed by the State Superintendent of Public Instruction to be the State Administrator to bring Emery Unified School District out of fiscal bankruptcy. Long active in community affairs, Henry most recently led coalition efforts to promote equal educational opportunities and access for immigrant students at the City College of San Francisco, including the construction of a permanent Chinatown/North Beach campus facility.
Christen Dobson
Program Coordinator, Policy and Research,
International Human Rights Funders Group
Prior to IHRFG, Christen consulted for the Social Science Research Council’s Gender and Security program. Christen has also worked with UNIFEM, Safe Horizon’s Anti-Trafficking Program, Global Youth Connect and the Project to End Human Trafficking. Her volunteer activities have included work with the Cambodian NGO Khemara and the UNIFEM US National Committee. Christen is originally from Pittsburgh and holds a bachelor’s in International Studies and Japanese from Mount Union College and a master’s in International Affairs from Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs with a concentration in human rights.
Regina Grady
Receptionist
Prior to joining PIP Regina Grady served 20 years in federal law enforcement with Administrative Office Services. After volunteering in several capacities Regina began to focus on helping others and her idea for forming a nonprofit organization was recently selected by the Center for Caribbean Progress. Under the Center’s mentorship Regina’s project of collecting and distributing personal care products for displaced families and individuals in New York City shelters can expand to provide help on a larger scale.
Angela Kahres
Program Assistant, U.S. Human Rights Fund
Angela comes to PIP by way of the Picower Foundation, where she served as a grants assistant. She graduated magna cum laude with departmental honors in English from Wagner College, where her activities included founding a club focused on encouraging interfaith dialogue on campus and collaboratively developing a course involving travel to Israel for students to gain hands-on understanding about the conflicts in the area. She has also traveled to Bangladesh, where she worked with classmates to collect water samples from rural villages affected by arsenic contamination of drinking wells.
Channapha Khamvongsa
Founder and Director, Legacies of War
Prior to joining PIP, Channapha worked in the Peace and Social Justice Unit of the Ford Foundation, the Center for Public and Nonprofit Leadership at Georgetown University, the Southeast Asia Resource Action Center, the Bill and Melinda Gates Millennium Scholars Program and the National Asian Pacific Center on Aging in Seattle. In 2004 she founded Legacies of War, a special initiative of PIP. She received her master’s degree in public policy from Georgetown University. Channapha was six years old when her family fled Laos to the U.S. in 1980.
Elizabeth Lee
Program Officer, Communities in Public Education Reform and Racial Justice Collaborative
Since joining PIP in 2004, Elizabeth has provided administrative and programmatic support for several PIP initiatives, including the Four Freedoms Fund and the Racial Justice Collaborative. Elizabeth holds a bachelor’s degree in Environmental Science/Public Policy from Wells College.
Edisson Marmolejo
Finance Manager
Edisson has more than 22 years of experience handling accounting and finance matters for the not for profit sector. During the last three yeas prior to joining PIP, Edisson served as controller for the Lower East Side Tenement Museum. For more than 14 years Edisson was Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts’ senior accountant, monitoring an Endowment Fund and a Pension Fund worth $80 million and $50 million respectively. Edisson earned a bachelor of business administration from Baruch College and a master of science in accounting from New Jersey City University.
Lisa Mendes
Staff Accountant
Lisa has over six years of experience in nonprofit accounting and finance. Prior to joining PIP in 2009, she worked for the Women’s Prison Association for five and a half years as an Accounting Specialist and Staff Accountant. Lisa graduated from Medgar Evers College and holds a Bachelor of Science degree in accounting.
Ly Nguyen
Program Assistant, Communities for Public Education Reform and Fulfilling the Dream Fund
Prior to joining PIP in 2008, Ly completed a one-year internship with the William Penn Foundation’s Children, Youth, and Families program area. Ly is a member of the Fellowship for Emerging Leaders in Public Service, a development program of the Research Center for Leadership in Action at NYU Wagner that brings together emerging leaders working in public service positions throughout New York City. Ly graduated magna cum laude from the University of Pennsylvania, where she majored in sociology and Asian American studies.
Maggie Raife
Executive Assistant
Maggie brings more than five years of experience in nonprofit and government administration to PIP. Before moving to New York she served as the executive assistant and communications director for Oakland, California’s elected city auditor. Maggie’s background also includes political organizing, non-profit finance, and development with extensive work in reproductive rights. She holds a bachelor’s degree from Oberlin College in English and Women’s Studies.
Justin Restauri
Program Associate, U.S. Human Rights Fund
Before joining PIP, Justin worked as an organizer at the United Steelworkers Union and as a research assistant at the National Economic and Social Rights Initiative. Justin graduated from New York University’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study with a bachelor’s degree in individualized study concentrating on globalization, immigration and community organizing.
Lori Rosenblatt
Director of Operations and Human Resources
Prior to joining PIP, Lori worked as a licensed fertility nurse in New York, where she also served as executive assistant, managed the medical office staff, and provided patient assistance and training. Lori, a native New Yorker, graduated from Queensborough Community College and Mandel Medical School.
Deb Ross
Executive Director, Funders’ Committee for Civic Participation
Prior to joining PIP in 2006, Deb worked for six years as National Field Director for Public Campaign, an organization dedicated to advancing the public financing of elections. In the 1990s she did regional social- and economic-justice work with the Western States Center, where she developed its signature leadership training programs and provided strategic support, training and technical assistance to community organizations. Deb founded and directed one of Oregon’s early battered women’s shelters in the 1980s and was co-director of the McKenzie River Gathering Foundation. She also chaired the board of the Funding Exchange and served as interim director of the Women’s Foundation of Oregon.
Azeen Salimi
Program Manager, Education and Convening,
International Human Rights Funders Group
Before coming to PIP, Azeen was a senior manager of the Senior Fellows Program at the Synergos Institute, where she designed peer-learning activities for a network of 100 civil society leaders in 34 countries. Azeen also worked in Burma, Bangladesh, Sudan, and the New York office of Doctors Without Borders; with the New York Legal Aid Society’s Immigration Law Unit; and at the Africa Desk of the Committee to Protect Journalists. She also volunteered in Liberia and with Iranian refugees and asylum-seekers in the United States. Azeen holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign and a master’s from Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs.
Jill Savitt
Director, Genocide Prevention Project
Jill advises NGOs on advocacy and communications initiatives and directs the Genocide Prevention Project, which seeks to build political will to address mass atrocity crimes. In 2007, when Jill joined PIP, she founded and directed Dream for Darfur, a public advocacy initiative to urge the Chinese government to take specific actions regarding the Darfur crisis in the lead up to the 2008 Beijing Games. The New York Times Magazine profiled Jill and the initiative in March 2008. From 2001 to 2007, Jill was the Director of Public Programs at Human Rights First, where she designed and supervised efforts to address the crisis in Darfur, global refugee and asylum policies, and US interrogation policy. Jill has taught a course on human rights advocacy at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA). She began her career as a reporter for WAMU, the NPR affiliate in Washington, DC. She graduated summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa from Yale University.
Jordan Thierry
Program Associate
Jordan Thierry jumped into non-profit advocacy in 2003 with both feet and hasn’t looked back since. He credits this to his rich experience at the University of Oregon, where he co-directed the Student Multicultural Center and became a highly active leader on campus. Jordan went on to earn his M.A. from Howard University, and continued his commitment to social change as a program coordinator at the National Coalition on Black Civic Participation in Washington, DC, and later as an educator in Newark, NJ.
Nadia Zaidi
Program Coordinator, Outreach and Communications,
International Human Rights Funders Group
Before joining IHRFG, Nadia was an associate in the global division of Fragomen, Del Rey, Bernsen, & Loewy and a volunteer attorney at the Legal Aid Society of New York. She has also served as a research assistant in international human rights. Nadia grew up in Kuwait and holds a BA from Temple University and a JD from New York Law School. She is admitted to practice law in New York and New Jersey and is a member of the International Human Rights Committee of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York.
