Linda Etim is the Senior Advisor for Africa at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. She has two decades of experience in crisis management, international development, democracy and governance programming, and conflict analysis. She also served as the USAID Assistant Administrator for Africa from 2015-January 2017 and Deputy Assistant Administrator from 2012-2015. Linda received a bachelor’s degree from the University of Wisconsin in International Affairs, French, and Portuguese, with concentrations in Agricultural Economics and African Studies. She has served on the Board of Directors for the U.S Africa Development Foundation and the Young African Leaders Initiative.

Treasurer

Christine Harada is President of i(x) investments. She has over 20 years of success in leading public policy and management consulting organizations. She has extensive government experience, most recently as the Federal Chief Sustainability Officer for the Obama Administration, where she provided oversight for all sustainability related initiatives across the Federal government in energy, fleet, and acquisitions, overseeing game-changing improvements that added to America’s clean energy future. Prior to joining the government, Christine was a management consultant to Fortune 500 and public sector clients, tackling their most pressing challenges, including business strategy development and translating that into operational excellence.

Interim CEO

John Hardy has many years experience in Economics, Finance, Consulting and Treasury, in both developed and developing regions of the world. Since 2001, John has worked has a Development Finance Advisor on projects offered by international development agencies (World Bank, EU, and USAID etc.). These assignments typically involve advising corporates, SMEs, banks, governments and other institutions on financial and business development issues.

John has held several management positions, including Managing Director at Intercap Investments Inc., Department Head in the International Treasury Division of Chemical Bank (now JP Morgan Chase) and member of the bank’s Treasury Executive Committee, Managing Consultant in the Economics Group at PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PWC), and Managing Director of the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU). John’s experience spans most regions of the world, including Africa, Europe, Asia, Latin America, the Caribbean, and the Middle East.

Maria Ivanova is an international relations and environmental policy scholar specializing in governance and sustainability. Her research and policy work focus on global environmental governance and the performance of international environmental institutions. She has worked on issues such as financing for the environment, US foreign environmental policy, and sustainability on campuses and in organizations. Her career, marked by teaching excellence and policy leadership, has bridged academia and policy. Her academic work has been recognized for bringing analytical rigor and innovative input to the international negotiations on reforming the UN system for environment. Maria served as a coordinating lead author in the Global Environmental Outlook (GEO-5), the flagship UN environmental assessment in 2012.

Maria a is Associate Professor of Global Governance at the John W. McCormack Graduate School of Policy and Global Studies at the University of Massachusetts Boston where she also co-directs the Center for Governance and Sustainability. She is also a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the U.N. Secretary-General, a Board member of the U.N. University Institute for the Advanced Study of Sustainability (UNU-IAS) and the Global Young Academy, and an Andrew Carnegie Fellow. She also serves as Ambassador for the New Shape Prize of the Global Challenges Foundation.

Chair

Alice Kaufman is an urban and regional planner and natural resource manager with a 30-year career working in the public sector. She has extensive experience in policy development, program management, and public sector finance. Alice is an experienced change manager and has provided leadership through organizational redesign. During her long career in the federal government, she helped to develop national strategies to protect children's heath through understanding the impacts of exposure to toxic chemicals, was the head of public affairs and media relations, led community stakeholder involvement programs for the cleanup of hazardous sites, and spearheaded a cost benefit analysis approach of government spending employing a social return on investment model. Alice is also an elected member of the Town of Concord, Massachusetts Select Board.

Ndioro Ndiaye is a former Minister of Social Development, Women, Children, and Family of the Republic of Senegal. She served as Deputy Director General of International Organization for Migration (IOM), a position through which she sensitized and supported developing countries in their search for a better management of both internal and international migration management. She contributed to enhancing focus on the nexus between migration and development, and to the mainstreaming of migration into national public policies for poverty reduction, which led to the establishment of IOM’s Migration for Development in Africa program.

Robert Wiles has over thirty years experience in international development and humanitarian assistance, both at an operational and policy levels. He served in various capacities with the Canadian Agency for International Development (CIDA), most recently as its senior organizational development adviser. In 2003, Rob was Recipient of the President’s ‘Award of Excellence 2003,’ an award presented to employees for exceptional contribution to CIDA’s mandate. Rob received his education from Gonzaga University in Spokane, WA, where he was awarded Bachelor and Master of Arts degrees in Philosophy/Science; and from Harvard University, where he was award a Master of Arts in Public Administration.