Focus: NGO/Social Activism
Alex Muñoz Wilson
Alex Muñoz Wilson is National Geographic's Pristine Seas Director for Latin America. He has been the driving force behind the creation of the seven largest fully-protected marine reserves in Latin America, covering 1.2 million square kilometers of ocean. He has also led many important ocean policy changes in Chile, including making it the first country in the world to legally protect all of its seamounts from destructive fishing; reforming Chile’s fisheries law to require science-based quotas and reduce incidental mortality of species; stopping coal-fired power plants from destroying marine habitats and fishers’ livelihoods; protecting vast areas of Patagonia from salmon farming; establishing the first regulations to reduce antibiotic use and…
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Hyppolite Ntigurirwa
Hyppolite Ntigurirwa is an artist, activist, and founder of Be the Peace, an organization focusing on the use of art to halt the intergenerational transmission of hate and to promote the power of cross-generational healing. A child survivor of the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi, Hyppolite continues to promote reconciliation and peace throughout Rwanda. In 2019, he envisioned and conducted the “Be the Peace Walk,” a 100-day performance piece in which he walked across the country in commemoration of 25 years since the end of the genocide. Hyppolite was an international Artist in Residence with Arts Connect International in Boston in 2016. Since then he has worked as Arts Program…
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WAN Yanhai
WAN Yanhai is Founder and Director of the Beijing Aizhixing Institute, the largest AIDS NGO in China that uses health education, research, publishing, and conferences to confront the HIV/AIDS crisis in China. As one of the most prominent leaders in the global campaign against HIV/AIDS, Yanhai launched China's first HIV/AIDS counseling hotline in 1992 while working for China's National Health Education Institute. The institute works on HIV/AIDS and public health related policy, legal aid and human rights, and community outreach among the most vulnerable population. Yanhai organized several challenging campaigns in China including a national compensation campaign for the victims of HIV infection caused by blood transfusion or blood products,…
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Raenette Gottardo
Raenette Gottardo is a consultant based in South Africa with expertise in public policy, politics, and defense and foreign policy. She was formerly the Director of The Helen Suzman Foundation and Adjunct Senior Lecturer at the University of Cape Town. In 1999, at the age of 25, she became the youngest woman ever elected to the South African parliament. As a former Democratic Alliance MP, she was the Shadow Minister of Finance and a member of the Portfolio Committee on Finance. She also served on numerous other parliamentary committees, including the Standing Committee on Public Accounts during the arms deal investigation. From 2011-2015, Raenette served as a member of the…
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Rami Nakhla
Rami Nakhla, also known by his alias Malath Aumran, is a long time democratic advocate who works on political reform in Syria and the Middle East since the mid-2000s. In 2012 and due to the increased dominance of Islamic radicals in the Syrian uprising, Rami resigned from all his political positions to focus on a nonpartisan pursuit of peace and democracy in Syria. Currently, he is working with tech companies to leverage disruptive new technologies and channel them toward positive social impact. Rami has played a prominent role in the leadership of the Syrian democratic movement, serving as a spokesperson for the Local Coordination Committees (LCC) of Syria and as…
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Vivianne Naigeborin
Vivianne Naigeborin is a pioneer in social impact investing in Brazil and serves as Strategic Advisor for Potencia Ventures. Potencia is an international organization that invests in emerging global markets to support an enabling environment for businesses contributing to poverty reduction. Potencia was the first investor and principal strategic partner for a half-dozen key initiatives for businesses with social impact in Brazil, including Vox Capital, the first Brazilian impact investing venture capital firm, and Artemisia, a pioneer organization in the dissemination, promotion. and acceleration of impactful businesses in Brazil. Prior to Potencia, Vivianne worked as a strategic consultant for companies, funds, individuals and citizen sector organizations in the field of…
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Muluemebet "Mulu" Chekol Hunegnaw
Muluemebet "Mulu" Chekol Hunegnaw is the Vice President for Strategy and Measurement at HIAS, a refugee assistance organization guided by its Jewish values. She is responsible for providing leadership in strategic planning, articulation of organization-wide strategic framework, and instituting a comprehensive monitoring and evaluation system for its international and U.S. programs and to monitor organizational performance. Mulu has over 20 years of leadership experience in international development and recently served as the Senior Director for Save the Children’s Global Monitoring and Evaluation and Knowledge Management department. Prior to that, Mulu served as Director of Programs for Africa Region, Director of South Sudan and Somaliland Country Offices and Regional Advisor for…
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Orzala Nemat
Orzala Nemat is Director of the Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit (AREU) and an Afghan political ethnographer and a senior teaching fellow at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London. She has two decades of experience in development practice, research, programmatic review, and academia. She is the founder of Humanitarian Assistance for Women and Children of Afghanistan, was a guest scholar at the Cher Michelson Institute in Norway, and has worked with different international organizations including ICCO in the Netherlands as its country representative in Afghanistan. Orzala has served on the boards of national and international development organizations in Afghanistan and is currently a trustee of…
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Debra Shushan
Debra Shushan is Director of Government Affairs at J Street, where she manages the advocacy operations and activities of the Government Affairs team. As an analyst of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and US foreign policy, Debra honed her expertise as the director of policy and government relations at Americans for Peace Now. Prior to that, Debra was an assistant professor of government at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, VA, where she focused on the comparative politics and international relations of the Middle East, including the Gulf states. She was also a research fellow at the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Doha, Qatar. Debra's research and language…
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Gemma Mortensen
Gemma Mortensen is an award-winning social entrepreneur and thinker and practitioner interested in transformative, systemic change. She is Co-Founder and Vice-Chair of More In Common and a Trustee of Bite Back 2030 and The HALO Trust. She is currently working on The New Constellation, a project to help people make transformational leaps towards regenerative social, political, and economic models. Gemma was previously Chief Global Officer at Change.org, the world’s largest platform for social change, CEO of Crisis Action, an organization that won the MacArthur Award and Skoll Award for its innovative systems model, and she co-chaired the World Economic Forum’s Global Council on systems leadership. She has also worked in…
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