Boldly Go team

Nana is a specialist in international relations and law, speaker, former government advisor and restaurant owner. She has over 5 years of experience in international environments which were instrumental in molding a strong foundation and ideals for her career. She is determined to work towards global cooperation by means of creating reliable relationships and cultural understanding amongst the nations and individuals. Nana speaks fluent English, Azerbaijani, Russian, Turkish and a bit of French.

In 2017, Nana became the first person from Azerbaijan to be elected to run an international non-governmental organization. She became the Secretary General of ELSA – the largest young lawyers’ association in the world with the principal mission of internal governance. After completing her term in Belgium, she managed multiple government projects in Azerbaijan in youth policy implementation at the Youth Foundation. To increase youth employment in agriculture, Nana co-led a grassroots advocacy and education campaign as part of a project at the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization. Additionally, she has experience in the field of mission support and risk management working mainly in the United Kingdom.

As a Schwarzman Scholar, Nana earned her Master of Management Science in Global Affairs degree from the University of Tsinghua in Beijing, China and a Bachelor of Laws from Baku State University in Baku, Azerbaijan.

To nurture her creativity, in 2019 she opened a signature restaurant in Baku. Nana is currently working on several entrepreneurial projects and the law blog which she co-founded in 2018. She is a speaker at international conferences and a trainer on soft skills. Nana is very passionate about the topics of women’s empowerment and the effects of globalization alongside performing arts and Russian literature.

Nana is a highly adaptive advocacy & communications and project management professional with a proven record of building and developing relationships, managing projects from ‘embryo’ to delivery stages, designing educational programmes in multi-dimensional and multi-cultural contexts.

Grace strongly believes that every person irrespective of their background should have access to adequate resources in order to thrive and live a life of dignity. Her previous and current experiences which span across Business, Non-Profit and International Development has demonstrated this philosophy.

Whiles pursuing her undergraduate degree, she dedicated her time volunteering with numerous development projects including but not limited to Leap Africa (as a speaker empowering children especially girls in rural areas to stay in school), Starfish Aid (where she spent her time building libraries and teaching children in remote areas with no portable water, electricity and internet services), and the Let Girls Learn Initiative organized by IBM and Peace Corps as a mentor. In her Junior year, fueled by her personal story as a young woman from an economically disadvantaged background, Grace started the Bowney Initiative, a non-profit organization in Ghana that envisions a world where all girls have access to resources to unleash their full potential.

Prior to dedicating majority of her time at the Bowney Initiative, Grace worked as a Faculty Intern for Foundations of Design and Entrepreneurship at Ashesi University, a VP for strategic Growth and Business Development at Engboxx, a start-up Fintech firm in Ghana, and a researcher at the International Organization for Migration (IOM), Beijing office writing a discussion paper on the impact of the Belt and Road Initiative on Migration in Africa.

Through her leadership and work, she was awarded the 2015 Dalai Lama Fellowship, 2016 Bryon Fellowship, 2019 Milead Fellowship, 2019 Compassionate Leadership Fellowship, and a 2020 Empowered to Educate Fellowship. Grace holds a degree in Business Administration from Ashesi University as a MasterCard Foundation Scholar and a Msc. in Global Affairs from Tsinghua University as a Schwarzman Scholar. Grace is from Ghana.

Erin Benton is a PhD Candidate in Health Behavior and Health Education at the University of Texas at Austin. She is a graduate of Boise State University where she received a BS in Health Education and Promotion. She has a master’s degree in Public Health from Baylor University. Her research interests include sexual health, specifically HIV and sexually transmitted infection (STI) prevention, among vulnerable and underserved populations and college students. Specific areas of focus include intimate partner violence, pre-exposure prophylaxis adoption (PrEP) among women, purity culture, and evidence-based interventions.

She has spent the past 5 years consulting for various local nonprofits in Austin, Texas (Community First! Village, Open Door Preschool, Foundation Communities), as well as national nonprofits (LiveLikeLou Foundation). Erin specializes in research, evaluation, data management, strategic planning, and survey development and analysis.

In her free time, she enjoys reading, trying new restaurants, and cycling.

Lindsay Broyhill has over a decade of experience leading and executing strategies for organizations serving children, women, and families in the U.S. Prior to joining Boldly Go, Lindsay was the director of a strategic family foundation investing in child and family health in North Carolina, where she led strategic planning, program management, and communications strategies with the president and founder.

Lindsay enjoys finding high-impact opportunities at the intersection of philanthropy, policy, practice, and communications. She previously managed communications and supported fundraising and grantmaking at Ascend, a policy program at the Aspen Institute focused on building intergenerational cycles of prosperity for families in the U.S. Prior to the Aspen Institute, she held roles at management and communications consulting firms, where she supervised and supported projects for early childhood education, K-12 public education, and public health and financial federal agencies. Lindsay started her career raising funds and awareness for the largest child care provider for families with low incomes in New England.

Lindsay holds a bachelor’s degree in Sociology from Cornell University. She was born and raised in North Carolina, and enjoys spending time outdoors and thrifting for antique artwork.

Esder Chong founded RU Dreamers, a student organization that advocates for undocumented, DACA, and TPS students’ access to higher education. Collaborating with various stakeholders, she led efforts to pass the S699 State Financial Aid bill, expanding access to higher education for undocumented residents in New Jersey. She also worked on the Let’s Drive NJ campaign to expand access to New Jersey driver’s licenses to undocumented immigrants, formerly incarcerated people, domestic violence survivors, and senior citizens who faced barriers to getting state ID. She also worked for the National Immigration Law Center, GW Law Immigration Clinic, and NJ Governor Phil Murphy’s Office of Federal Relations.

She recently completed her Ed.M. from the Harvard Graduate School of Education and has previously completed her Masters in Global Affairs at Tsinghua University as a Schwarzman Scholar. She currently serves as a student strategy member at The Presidents’ Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration and a mentor for Minds Matter Boston and UCLA Labor Center’s Dream Summer program. She was featured in the NY Times, Chronicle of Higher Education, TIME, NPR for her immigrant rights advocacy work. Esder was born in South Korea and raised in Central New Jersey.

Walid Hedidar comes to Boldly Go from the international development space. He has more than five years of work experience in seven different countries supporting international organizations, non-profits, startups, and governments with driving social impact. Walid has worked previously with the Brookings Institution in Washington D.C., the Ministry of Education in France, and the African Leadership University in Mauritius. He also consulted on several education and health projects with the United Nations Development Programme, Last Mile Health, and UNESCO’s International Institute of Educational Planning in Dakar.

Walid’s day-to-day work has previously involved: supporting countries with integrating 21-st century skills in their national education systems, designing COVID-19 response learning tools for community health workers, and conceptualizing TV-education programs for youth with low access to the internet.

Walid started his journey of social impact in his home country Tunisia. At the age of 17, he started two education reform initiatives focused on teacher training and youth development. These initiatives are now part of a startup, LEAPS Education, that Walid has been co-leading with a mission to revolutionize education in Africa and the Middle East.

Walid holds a master’s degree in International Educational Development from the University of Pennsylvania and an executive certificate in Strategic Philanthropy from Cambridge Judge Business School. He also holds a bachelor’s degree in Anthropology and International Affairs from the University of Denver.

Walid speaks Arabic, French, and English. In his free time, he enjoys trying new recipes and playing the Oud.

Hatim is a doctoral candidate at the University of Oxford (on Rhodes Scholarship). He is a lawyer by training and has previously completed graduate degrees in Global Affairs at Tsinghua University as a Schwarzman Scholar (2020), the Bachelor of Civil Law (BCL) at University of Oxford and dual degrees in commerce and law from National Law University, India. He currently teaches regulatory innovation at Judge Business School and is working on developing an experimental regulatory intelligence platform at Regulatory Genome Development Limited. His current research examines natively digital assets at the intersection of technology, finance and law.

Naaima Khan is a consultant and Owner and Principal of Create Good consulting, where she consults with organizations to help them achieve more effective, equity-centered strategy and evaluation planning.

Naaima has worked with nonprofits for 10+ years as a strategic planner/facilitator, content creator, grant program manager, evaluator and equity/inclusion leader. She holds a master’s in Public Affairs from the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin. Naaima specializes in helping clients center equity in their strategic planning and evaluation by applying principles of antiracism, human-centered design and restorative practice. Naaima served as an advisor to St. Olaf College’s Lutheran Center for Faith, Community and Values and serves on the board of the Minnesota Evaluation Association.

She facilitates restorative justice circles to help divert community members from the court system.

highlights

• Former Executive Director, Peter Kiewit Foundation: $450m place-based private funder.
• Former McKinsey consultant, built and led FSG’s San Francisco office and education practice.
• Six years of on-the-ground education experience as a teacher in the South Bronx and a nonprofit director in Harlem.

bio

Jeff Kutash started his career as a Teach For America corps member, teaching math at a public bilingual middle school in New York City. His students were all recent immigrants, and while he was teaching them math, they were teaching him the importance of hard work to overcome adversity and achieve big dreams. He left the classroom to revive the Harlem Educational Activities Fund, a dormant nonprofit serving youth in Harlem and Washington Heights. Jeff grew a small mentoring program into a college success pipeline that helped hundreds of youth finish high school, go to college, and get a degree. One of his proudest moments was when an early participant in his program finished college and became a teacher in the neighborhood she grew up in.

Between creating college prep programs and visiting students in their homes to help with college applications, Jeff married his college sweetheart, Jessica. Together, they went off to Harvard Business School — Jessica to advance her career in marketing, and Jeff to pick up a business skill set he thought was needed in the social sector. After getting his MBA, Jeff joined McKinsey & Company where he worked with financial services, tech, manufacturing, and retail clients. Helping Fortune 500 companies with their most critical business issues honed Jeff’s problem solving, communication, and client service skills, which he took with him to join The Bridgespan Group, a nonprofit consulting firm that helps funders and nonprofits create social impact.

In 2005, Jeff was recruited by The Seed Foundation to help open public college preparatory boarding schools in California. Jeff secured major pledges from donors, gained school district approvals, built broad community support, and ran legislation to fund the schools. And while the California budget crisis at the time put the project on hold, the groundwork was laid for The SEED School of Los Angeles, which will open its doors in 2022.

Jeff then joined Foundation Strategy Group (FSG), a nonprofit consulting firm focused on effective philanthropy and social impact. It was the perfect opportunity to combine his background in consulting with his entrepreneurial mindset. For the next seven years, Jeff led FSG’s San Francisco office, growing the team from two to over 30 professionals. He launched and built FSG’s national education practice, overseeing scores of consulting engagements with leading corporations, foundations, nonprofits, school districts, and government agencies. A few projects he is particularly proud of include helping reestablish New Orleans’ education system after hurricane Katrina and leading a statewide effort to reform New York’s juvenile justice system.

In 2013, Jeff and his family moved to Omaha, Nebraska where he became the CEO of the Peter Kiewit Foundation, a place-based private funder. Jeff crafted the foundation’s first strategic plan focused on education-to-career pathways, economic opportunity, and thriving and inclusive communities; transformed the foundation’s approach to grantmaking and evaluation; and retooled all operational functions. Jeff was responsible for $25-30M in annual grantmaking and led the foundation’s programmatic initiatives, community engagement, and operations. In that role, Jeff helped catalyze a $300M riverfront redevelopment, launch a regional transportation plan, and develop a statewide initiative on college success. After seven years at the foundation, Jeff left to found Boldly Go Philanthropy.

Jeff holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and a BA in Political Science from the University of Pennsylvania. He has served on the boards of the Greater Omaha Chamber, College Possible, National Center for Montessori in the Public Sector, and Great California Public Schools.

Jeff speaks around the country and writes on topics of effective philanthropy, corporate social responsibility, urban core and rural community development, effecting social change, and education.  He is author of multiple papers and case studies including “Structuring Post-Secondary Scholarships to Increase Student Success,” “The School Turnaround Field Guide,” and “Practices From the Portfolio: Case Studies on Effective Education Practices.”

Jeff and Jessica are the proud parents of three awesome kids – Gabriel, Theara, and Holden. As a family, they love to travel, mountain bike, snowboard, and hike. In those rare moments when he is not working or coaching his kids’ sports teams, Jeff can be found curled up on a couch with a great book.

Dee Mainali has a passion for dismantling barriers instituted by systems of oppression in order to create equitable access to healthcare around the world. Their academic interests are centered around sociocultural factors and how legal realities intersect with medicine to impact quality of life. Dee has worked previously with the InterAmerican Development Bank and the Keller Center, using ethnographic methods to analyze qualitative data and better understand how networks of informal and formal healthcare intersected for intra-Latin-American migrant workers at the cusp of COVID and for adolescents in the greater Princeton community, respectively. Dee is committed to creating tangible impacts to better the world, and actualizing theory into material change. 

Dee holds a bachelor’s degree in Anthropology from Princeton University. They immigrated to the USA from Nepal at the age of 5 and have lived in Texas most of their life. In their free time, they love watching horror movies, reading manga, writing poetry, and creating charcuterie boards that are much too elaborate. 

Beauclaire is a Rhodes Scholar currently studying an MSc in Environmental Change and Management at the University of Oxford. He is a graduate of the University of Rochester, where he received a BSc. In Chemical Engineering. He has a master’s degree in Global Affairs from Tsinghua University as a Schwarzman Scholar. He was the co-founder of CareforSeven, an organization creating energy innovators among youths in developing countries. He has engaged in energy storage research of lithium liquid metal batteries. He also has experience as an energy analyst for the Utility and Energy Management Unit at the University of Rochester, New York. In the upcoming academic year, he will be pursuing an MBA program at the Saïd Business School at the University of Oxford.

Jarred Myers is an independent consultant specializing in Philanthropy and Impact Investing. Jarred was formerly the head of the Innovation Portfolio for the Dell Family Foundation in their Africa office. Jarred designed, built, deployed and managed both the education and workforce programs. Prior to joining the foundation, Jarred worked as a consultant and project manager for more than 10 years at various organizations in South Africa, both in the nonprofit sector at Afrika Tikkun and in the corporate sector in various capacities.

Jarred was a founding partner at the Arc Impact Foundation where he helped launch their technology focused impact venture capital fund and he continues to serve on their investment committee. Jarred consults globally to foundations, family offices, and nonprofits on strategy, innovation, and impact management – he holds an MBA from Duke University in North Carolina. Jarred has several hobbies which he plans to resume after his five daughters have left for college.

Sarah lives by the motto “leave a place better than you found it.” Most recently, she was a Business Development Lead at the environmental engagement SaaS company, Temboo. She developed the go-to-market strategy for a new product and designed environmental data collection systems for community-based, government and private organizations. At Walmart eCommerce, Sarah created a new model for identity-based employee resource groups that was replicated across several US offices. Previously, Sarah was the Business Development Lead at Saathi, an Indian biodegradable sanitary pad brand. She led the brand’s product launch and managed a NGO partnership to donate 25K pads to rural women and girls. Prior to Saathi, Sarah was a Fulbright English Teaching Assistant to Bahrain where she taught research skills and English language courses. She graduated with her MMSc in Global Affairs at Tsinghua University in summer 2021, and has a BS in Mechanical Engineering from MIT.

HIGHLIGHTS

• Former Executive Director, Walton Family Foundation: over $600 million in grantmaking per year.
• Built and led Foundation Strategy Group (FSG) for 14 years: advisor to philanthropists around the world.
• Ten years of global development experience in Africa: on-the-ground training for impact.

BIO

Kyle Peterson joined the Peace Corps right out of college and fell in love twice – first with his wife, a fellow volunteer, and the second time with the adventure of making a difference. While in Sierra Leone with the Peace Corps, Kyle helped farmers plant over 100,000 oil palm trees, witnessed a rich culture and heritage, experienced unjust inequities, and was inspired by everyday heroes.

The experience sparked an interest in Africa, international development, and solving big problems through business-like approaches. After getting business and public policy master degrees at the University of Texas, Kyle joined Population Services International (PSI), a non-governmental organization pushing the boundaries on social marketing, a new approach to social change at the time. Kyle went to Rwanda, six months after the end of the country’s genocide, as country director to restart PSI’s program shut-down during the war. He established a family planning and HIV/AIDS prevention program. Two years later, he started PSI’s social marketing program in Zimbabwe, the epicenter for HIV in Southern Africa in the mid-1990s. Kyle launched a number of novel health programs through the private sector — including a network of HIV counseling and testing sites and insecticide treated mosquito bed nets — that averted thousands of cases of HIV/AIDS and malaria.

Interested in private sector approaches, he signed on with Monitor Consulting to learn the strategy-making ropes, moving from Zimbabwe to Boston. He was soon in Wichita managing a competitiveness study for the firm’s founder, Harvard Business Professor, Michael Porter. He went back to Rwanda and started a multi-year project advising President Kagame and the Cabinet on the country’s economic strategy.

In 2001, Michael Porter and Mark Kramer had just started a new type of consulting organization — Foundation Strategy Group (FSG) — to help philanthropists be more effective. Kyle helped to launch and lead FSG over the next 14 years. While at FSG, Kyle built the global development and health practice areas and led over 150 consulting engagements for foundations, companies, and nonprofits. He also served on FSG’s board of directors and helped with big idea pieces, such as “Catalytic Philanthropy,” “Collective Impact,” and “Shared Value.”

The Walton family was searching for a new leader of their family philanthropy and Kyle signed on as the head of the 30 year-old Walton Family Foundation, based in Bentonville, Arkansas, in 2016. In the role, he oversaw the transformation of one of the nation’s largest family foundations to support $600 million in annual grant making, across education, environment, and economic development program areas. He also supported the philanthropic projects of all Walton family members, which included establishing new charitable vehicles. He helped to create a think tank serving the Heartland and was the founding board chair for two groundbreaking charter school facility revolving loan funds. He strengthened the profile of the organization with a new mission and vision and values; led a diversity, equity, and inclusion assessment and organizational change effort; and built new collaborative relationships with other funders.

Kyle has a BA in international studies from the American University, an MBA from the McCombs School of Business (University of Texas), and an MPA from the LBJ School of Public Affairs (University of Texas). He has served on several boards during the last decade, including Foundation Strategy Group, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, and the Global Health Council. He is a lifetime member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Kyle is a frequent speaker on family and institutional philanthropy, corporate social engagement, and international development. He is author of several field reports including “Ahead of the Curve: Insights for the International NGO of the Future” and “Competing by Saving Lives: How Pharmaceutical and Medical Device Companies Create Shared Value in Global Health” and articles such as “Lobbying for Good” featured in the Stanford Social Innovation Review. He contributed the chapter  “Social Enterprise and Innovation in Emerging Markets” with Leslie Crutchfield in the 2016 book, Innovation in Emerging Markets. 

When not working, Kyle loves to travel, hike, and mountain bike with his wife, Maury, and teenage son, Finn.

Jean Sano-Santana was born and raised in the Dominican Republic. He has over five years of experience working for nonprofits and international organizations to advocate for the rights of marginalized communities in his home country. 

Jean dedicated his early career to advancing the sexual and reproductive rights of Latin American and Caribbean young people.  As a former member of the Youth Advisory Panel of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and the Pan-American Health Organization (PAHO), Jean worked in the design of youth-friendly programs and policies such as the Youth National Plan of the Dominican Republic and the Caribbean Adolescent and Youth Health Road Map. 

Before joining Boldly Go, Jean was the Technical Assistant of Inclusion and Human Rights at the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Dominican Republic. At the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, he planned, implemented, monitored, and evaluated the UNDP emergency response for marginalized groups such as LGBTQIA+ persons, sex workers, and people living with HIV. Additionally, he supported grant recipients and drafted policy documents to advise the Dominican government on mainstreaming human rights in the national emergency programming. 

Jean is a Fulbright fellow and Master of Public Affairs graduate from the LBJ School, the University of Texas at Austin. He also obtained a certificate in Nonprofit Management and Data Science for Policy Analysis. Jean is interested in mainstreaming human rights in social programs and using data science to inform social policy interventions. 

In his free time, Jean enjoys traveling, writing poetry, and growing orchids. 

Sara Surani has cross-sector experience working at the intersections of gender equity, health, education, environment, and poverty alleviation. Sara graduated from Harvard University with a degree in Social Studies and Global Health and recently completed her Masters in Global Affairs at Tsinghua University in China as a Schwarzman Scholar.

She is Co-founder of a health education program in South Texas called iConquer focused on educating over 20,000 young children about healthy living as well as Co-founder of a start-up called Nayaraq focused on dismantling gender equity through storytelling workshops. She has previously spearheaded mental health initiatives in Boston, designed public health programming for the Zika virus outbreak in Nicaragua, implemented programming for a tuberculosis intervention in Peru, and researched maternal and child mortality in Tanzania. She has worked with community empowerment and entrepreneurship globally, collaborating with organizations including the government of Oaxaca, Mexico. In 2018, through a Fulbright Fellowship, Sara worked with remote communities in the Amazon jungle on youth empowerment, education, and public health, and helped start the first public holistic education school in Peru.

She is currently working with the New Mexico Department of Health, leading educational training for community health workers across the state and designing strategies to make health care resources more accessible for communities most impacted by systemic racism.

Rachel Gordon Vivas

Rachel has over 10 years of experience providing both strategy and management consulting services to non-profits, foundations and public sector entities. In a variety of cross-sector roles, she has developed a toolkit of best practices and data-driven techniques to closely collaborate with partner organizations and drive social impact.

Rachel began her career advising academic institutions on how to increase operational efficiencies, reduce costs and mitigate risk through data analysis, business process redesign and stakeholder interviews. She then transitioned to providing project management support to local governments, including planning, executing and implementing long-term initiatives, as well as advising on performance improvement strategies to enhance their daily operations. More recently, Rachel works with social change organizations to develop high-impact strategies and operational approaches centered on racial equity.

Outside of consulting, Rachel has managed research and evaluation projects to support data-driven decision-making regarding resource allocation and real estate investment in support of community development activities. She has led focus groups with community members and conducted demographic analyses to assess education, health and housing needs and develop models to measure long-term outcomes in their areas. She also served as a Mayoral Fellow focusing on government efficiency, policy analysis and enhancements to city-wide initiatives related to economic development, education, public safety and sustainability for the City of Chicago.

Rachel earned her BA from the University of Michigan in Organizational Studies and Political Science as well as her MPP from the Harris School of Public Policy at the University of Chicago. She also currently serves as an Associate Board Member for City Year Detroit and a mentor to its corps members.