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Meet Our Team

Karana Rising is a diverse organization on many levels.  Our board of directors has four current members, of which 75% are people of color, 50% are women and 50% are African American. Our core team of seven: Andrea, Fecha, Liz, Ashley,Christabelle, and Leslie is 50% African or African American. Our remaining team includes one woman who is of Pacific Island decent and two white women and one bi-racial woman.  We know that diversity manifests in all facets of our team’s experiences, too.

Furthermore, lived experiences are critical to who we serve, our ability to engage, find and serve young survivors. Thus every member of our leadership is a survivor of one of the following experiences: sex trafficking, domestic violence, sexual assault and workforce related sexual assault.  Half of our team grew up in the foster care system and were involved in the juvenile justice system. Two of our team have overcome substance codependency and we have all experienced post traumatic stress disorder. These experiences do not define us but rather enable us to understand and bond with those we serve every day. We are by survivors, for survivors. 

Andrea Powell

co-founder and executive director
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Ashley Lowe

Advocacy Lab Leader
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Liz Kimbel

Co-founder
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Fecha Talaso

Co-Founder And Director Of Partnerships
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Leslie Nolan

Design and Wellness Labs Associate Lab Leader
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Tiffany Simpson

Advocacy Lab Associate
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Christabelle Robinson

Director of Survivor Design and Wellness Labs
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Snezana Vuckovic

Survivor Leader
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Board Of Directors

Karana Rising’s board of directors steward and ensure we are able to deliver our programs effectively with efficient allocation of our resources. Each board member brings to Karana Rising their talents, energy and networks so that we may reach more survivors who need us while growing our survivor community.

LEE F. SATTERFIELD

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Mark Wang

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Jessica Galimore

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Hon. Daniel Guerrero

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April L. Mims

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Advisory Committee

Karana Rising’s advisory board supports our work, shares our successes and innovations through our events and survivor created content. Our advisors are diverse innovators and industry leaders with not only the passion but the skills to ensure Karana Rising helps survivors nationally heal, thrive and become their truest most vibrant selves. We think of them as our elevation team! Interested in becoming a Karana Rising advisory committee member? Email Us

Susan Coppedge

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Nitika Chopra

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Celine Decarlo

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Karinna Karsten

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Loiusa Warwick

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Mira Sorvino

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Rebecca Ballard

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Busie Matsiko-Andan

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Marissa Louie

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Benjamin Skinner

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Deraso Dokhole

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Lillian Hathaway

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Brittany Wells

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Join us now in giving directly to a survivor in crisis or need.We offer survivors in our care direct access to services everyday.

FUNDRAISE

Andrea Powell

Andrea Powell is the co-founder and executive director at Karana Rising. Ms. Powell is Karana Rising’s chief liaison to the D.C. Human Trafficking Task Force where she co-chairs the training and outreach committee.

 Prior to founding Karana Rising, Andrea was the founding executive director of FAIR Girls, a nonprofit that serves young women survivors of human trafficking. Ms. Powell is also the Director of Survivor and Youth Engagement at Unitas. In 2014, Andrea led the FAIR Girls’ team to create and open the only safe home for young survivors of human trafficking in the nation’s capital area. Andrea has led crisis response teams where she assisted law enforcement and other front-line responders in finding and recovering survivors of human trafficking who were later offered safety and supportive services. She received her Masters of European Union Law at the Center for European Integration Studies from the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn, Germany and Bachelor of Arts and Science in International Relations from Texas State University. Andrea’s writing has been published in the New York Times, CNN, PBS, Huffington Post, Marie Claire, MSNBC, NBC THINX, Thompson Reuters, FAIR Observer, and the Washington Post. She also sits a private consultant for Freedom Fwd and Project Explorer. She can be reached at andrea@karanarising.com

Ashley Lowe

Ashley Lowe is a survivor leader whose work has been featured in Al Jazeera, the Washington Post, and the Guardian. Ashley has advocated for the Sex Trafficking of Minors Prevention Act of the District of Columbia, the Justice for Victims of Trafficking Act, and has shared her story before the Senate Judiciary Committee and the District of Columbia’s City Council. She is a contributing author to the IAMJASMINESTRONG.COM campaign and to the UNITAS prevention education series. She is the proud mother of four and an excellent poet.

Liz Kimbel

Liz Kimbel, is a DMV native, having been born and raised in College Park, MD. Liz went on to live in Western NY, where she met her husband, and married in 2007. Liz and her family relocated to Tucson, AZ, in 2010, due to her husband’s USAF career. 

In 2012, Liz discovered the anti-human trafficking field, and began volunteering for a Tucson non-profit, Sold No More. In 2014, Liz was hired into Direct Services as Sold No More’s Survivor Mentor and Advocate. It was during this period that Liz became actively involved with Prevention Education, creating, building, vetting, and facilitating the curriculum in all of TUSD middle and high schools, reaching over 5,000 students annually. Liz also facilitated 1:1 curriculums, directly with survivors, and group curriculums with teen youth in the foster care system. Liz and her family left Tucson in 2015, to relocate to Western NY once again, where Liz worked in the Intellectually and Developmentally Disabled field, as well as with the Salvation Army, and their Domestic Violence shelter in Western NY.

Fecha Talaso

Fecha Talaso is the co-founder and director of partnerships at Karana Rising. Fecha  is a certified victim advocate using her eight  years of advocacy and direct service work to cultivate staff growth and development to advance the mission of Karana Rising and the individual goals of the survivors on our team.

Fecha works alongside the executive director to develop and advance policies and programs supporting survivor justice and and healing, including external earned media and owned media consumption. Fecha is responsible for creating and managing Karana Rising’s communications, website, virtual survivor mentoring and workshop portal and social media channels. She is responsible for the development and management of programmatic and development partnerships. 

Prior to joining Karana Rising, Fecha was the prevention education specialist at FAIR Girls, a nonprofit that serves young women survivors of human trafficking, and residential counselor for FAIR Girls’ Vida Home. 
 
Longing for a day when justice is perfect with a deeper international lens from which to view the health and humanitarian challenges facing people around the globe,wealth of experience and practical experience in development and a deep belief in the power of partnership and collaboration and transformation of vulnerable populations and communities at large has continually reenergized the urge to change the world in her own little ways. She dares to dream and passionately to fight criminal and social injustices, as well as retrogressive practices that marginalize vulnerable populations like women and children. She can be reached at fecha@karanarising.org

Leslie Nolan

Leslie Nolan is Design and Wellness Labs Associate Lab Leader at Karana Rising. She assists the Design and Wellness team in the execution of workshops, programs, and launches. Leslie has managed various salons in Maryland, and is currently a partner at Crochet Braids and Weaves by Blessed. In the past, she was a Lead Stylist of Essential Beauty Spa the first natural hair salon to pioneer the natural hair movement servicing various local celebrities including OWN TV Star, Motivational Speaker & Author Iyanla Vanzant. She credits God for her success, believing through him he guides her and helps her grow in the best possible way.

She is a survivor of childhood, verbal, and emotional abuse, as well as sexual assault and a familial cult. She spent years of her early adulthood wandering aimlessly for a place of peace, and healing, and through God and his community she found that. She spent years healing and growing, in the church, in therapy, with self-reflection and hard work. She has accomplished many of her goals: she’s a licensed cosmetologist with professional training under Paul Mitchell Training Program, and at the same time became a co-manager/mentee under Cynthia Sligh, who’s the founder of Take Charge Nation LLC and Blue Diamond Ambassador of Wakaya Perfection. She also has prior experience managing events, program supervision, and even as a fashion assistant, and at her salon she’s led the training of several stylists, as well as taught seminars to the staff.

She believes in the power of her story, and recognizes how it shapes her but believes her story no longer limits her, but empowers her, and motivates her to grow and succeed as a person. The sky’s the limit, and she’s ready to chase that limit.

Tiffany Simpson

Tiffany Simpson is Karana Rising advocacy lab leader, advocate and nationally-read blogger who uses her lived experiences as a survivor of child sex trafficking and incarceration as her power to offer transformative wisdom to reach survivors and prevent the very abuses she has endured. Tiffany has obtained her GED and enjoys reading, photography and dreaming of a future where she is free from her trafficking. Currently, Tiffany is serving 20 years of a 30 year sentence after her trafficker trafficked her and another teenage girl. Tiffany’s advocacy is rooted is her belief that the true way to end human trafficking is through building compassion for those who have experienced it. Tiffany currently leads workshops for incarcerated women and girls who have experienced exploitation and abuse and seek to create better futures and find their inner purpose. You can support Tiffany’s freedom by signing her petition at www.change.org/freetiffanysimpson

Christabelle Robinson

Christabelle Robinson is the Director of Survivor Design and Wellness Labs at Karana Rising. She helps build, structure, and refine our survivor-led and survivor-inspired workshops. Her focus is on building a robust and safe community for survivors to grow in, where everyone can feel heard and feel equal while creating heartfelt designs with ethically sourced products that benefit survivors and are kind to our planet. She has over a decade of art design experience as well, ranging from jewelry design and crafting, to fluid mediums, and photography. She is bringing her knowledge to the table to show others how to learn forms of self-expression, as well as teaching skills that allow for survivors to become more independent and confident in themselves.


Prior to Karana Rising, Christabelle has three years of media, team organization, and building experience, having freelanced with various companies to increase and improve their public image, and boost internal growth by encouraging things such as communication, trust, and consistency in-house.

Snezana Vuckovic

Snezana Vuckovic is a survivor leader and human rights advocate based in Belgrade, Serbia. She uses her personal experiences as a survivor of human trafficking and a youth growing up in state orphanages in Serbia to advocate for the rights of youth who are also experiencing exploitation. Her advocacy has been featured in documentary footage with FAIR Girls, a Washington, D.C. based nonprofit. She is currently working with Karana Rising, a U.S. based nonprofit and benefit corporation focusing on offering survivors of all forms of human trafficking with jobs in the wellness and artisan space. Snezana is an artist, composer, and singer. Her dream is to support young survivors coming up in life to reach their fullest potential.

Lee F. Satterfield

Lee Satterfield is the former Chief Judge of the Superior Court of the District of Columbia. In 1992,he was appointed and sworn in as an Associate Judge of Superior Court. During his 16 years as an Associate Judge, he served as the Presiding Judge of the Court’s Domestic Violence Division, and its Family Court. He served 8 years as the Chief Judge before being appointed in March 2017 to his current position as a Senior Judge.

He is a childhood cancer survivor, stroke survivor, and heart transplant recipient.He is a public speaker and the author of the book, Courageous Warriors, Overcoming Obstacles to Inspire and Lead. He was born and raised in the District of Columbia.

Mark Wang

Mark Wang supports all aspects of financial management as a board member of Karana Rising. His primary areas of focus are budgeting and cash management to ensure operational continuity. He has been working with Andrea on and off for nearly 10 years in various similar capacities.

Mark is a co-founder of Kindly Light, a search fund. He has over 15 years of experience in financial planning and analysis and operations strategy. He lives in Brooklyn, NY with his beautiful wife Lily and rambunctious toddler kids Elliot and Emi. When not working, they spend most of their days enjoying their surrounding neighborhoods and parks. 

Jessica Galimore

Jessica Galimore is a Manager in Deloitte’s Government Human Capital practice where she brings more than twelve years of experience from working with private and public entities. She developed her expertise in talent management, performance management, organizational strategies, and HR systems implementation through work with clients such as the USAID, U.S. Postal Service, Department of Veterans Affairs, National Finance Center, Center for Disease Control, U.S. Department of Agriculture Affairs, and the Department of Justice, and AnnieCannons. She has a Master in Business Administration from the University of Maryland Smith School of Business and a Bachelor of Arts concentrated in Psychology from the University of Michigan.

Hon Daniel Guerrero

A native of San Marcos, Daniel Guerrero is a Distinguished Alumnus of San Marcos High School, holds a bachelor’s in mass communications from Texas State University, masters in organizational leadership and change from St. Edward’s University, and is currently pursuing his Doctorate of Leadership and Higher Education from St. Edward’s University.Daniel has served in nonprofit leadership roles as the Executive Director for INROADS/Central Texas, Inc. and led fundraising development campaigns as the Executive Director for the San Marcos Education Foundation.Daniel has previously served Texas State University as the Assistant Dean of Students for Student Development and Leadership Programs. He has previously served on the McCoy College of Business faculty where he taught courses in Global Business Leadership and the University College as a University Seminar

instructor.Daniel also serves as a global business development consultant for J.L. Powers & Associates and is a licensed realtor. This Fall, Daniel will join the MBA faculty at Concordia University teaching Business, Society, and Public Policy.As a civic leader, Daniel has served his hometown as a City Council member and three-term Mayor for the City of San Marcos. In 2018, Daniel was appointed by Governor Gregg Abbott to serve as a board member for the State Board of Pharmacy. Daniel is also a trained family law mediator and Court Appointed Special Advocate (CASA). He currently serves as the Vice President for the San Marcos Friends of the Family Justice Center.Daniel is a 38-year cancer survivor, an avid world traveler, certified NAUI scuba diver, and enjoys spending time with his rescued pets Milly (dog) and Diego(tortoise).

April Mims

April is Vice President of Public Policy at Hims & Hers, where she oversees government relations, public affairs and policy partnerships for all 50 states and at the federal level. She was drawn to Hims & Hers because of its mission-driven approach to healthcare. Previously, April was Director of Public Policy at Lyft. She prides herself on working collaboratively with government, corporate and non-profit stakeholders to solve problems and advance public policy for the 21st century. April believes in the power of civic engagement and has volunteered for several organizations in New York, Texas, and California that are committed to empowering the survivors of sexual assault and exploitation and mentoring children whose parents are incarcerated. She has participated in various panels and public hearings throughout the United States. She is a licensed New York attorney with a J.D. from the Georgetown University Law Center.

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Susan Coppedge

Susan Coppedge joins Krevolin & Horst as of-counsel, continuing a career of strong advocacy for those in need of a champion in the courtroom.  Susan is a former Ambassador and federal prosecutor, with 19 years of experience in white collar criminal matters, human trafficking prosecutions, grand jury investigations, government enforcement actions, internal investigations, and environmental litigation. With 21 federal trials, Susan excels in presenting complex facts to a jury.

 

Susan served as an assistant U.S. attorney in both the Government Fraud and Economic Crimes and the Major Crimes Sections of the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Atlanta. In this position, Susan led all phases of the investigation and prosecution of economic and fraud-related crimes, environmental crimes, tax crimes, white collar crimes, human trafficking, public corruption, document fraud/identity theft, and intellectual property crimes. With her expertise, Susan conducted trainings for state, federal, and international law enforcement, and engaged in community outreach events. Susan was one of the first federal prosecutors to bring a sex trafficking case in Georgia and, over her career, indicted 49 human traffickers in cases involving domestic sex trafficking of adults and minors, international sex trafficking of adults and minors, and labor trafficking.  Susan has successfully argued cases before the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals.  For her work on a civil case filed under the Clean Water Act, Susan received the John Marshall Award, the Justice Department’s highest honor.

 

Susan was appointed by President Obama and confirmed by the United States Senate to lead the U.S. Department of State’s global diplomatic engagement to combat Human Trafficking as an Ambassador-at-Large.  She continues to stay active in the anti-trafficking community by serving on the Board of Street Grace and on the Advisory Board of the Georgia Asylum and Immigration Network.

 

Prior to joining the firm, Susan ran the Atlanta office of Nardello & Co. a global investigations firm with experience across a broad range of issues including corruption-related investigations, civil and white-collar criminal litigation support, corporate social responsibility compliance audits, and supply chain/labor trafficking investigations.

Nitika Chopra

Nitika Chopra is the founder of Chronicon, a media and events company, dedicated to elevating the lives of those living with a chronic illness. Nitika was diagnosed with psoriasis at the age of 10 and psoriatic arthritis at the age of 19 and lived over 17 years of her life being defined by her conditions. 

In 2010 she decided to take all of the lessons her health journey had taught her and use it to help others with the creation of her online magazine Bella Life. Since the start of her entrepreneurial journey Nitika has hosted her own TV talk show on Z Living called Naturally Beautiful, hosted over 40 events with hundreds of guests in attendance and has created dynamic partnerships with over 150 brands in the wellness space. After 10 years in event creation, Nitika launched Chronicon in the fall of 2019, focused on those living with a chronic illness. The event sold out, had over 2,000 livestream viewers, high-level brand sponsors and has been growing ever since. Now, Nitika is excited to announce that Chronicon is expanding online with The Chronicon Community, a new, accessible online space with inspiration, advocacy, and empowerment for chronically ill folks across the globe to connect. Follow her for daily inspiration @ChroniconOfficial.

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Celine Decarlo

Celine began her career with CNN International in London, U.K. as a global senior executive developing tailored communication and business development strategies for multi-national companies across diverse industries. 

In 2015, Celine shifted her focus to her interest in SMEs and joined Mara Hoffman, a privately owned apparel company. She has concentrated on the company’s executive development and has supported the company and apparel industry’s shift towards more sustainable practices, with a special attention on social engagement and community organizing. Celine sits on the Board of the Women’s Prison Association, the Advisory Council of the social enterprise program the New Standard Institute, and the Advisory Board of Custom Collaborative.

Louisa Warwick

Louisa Warwick is a British fashion model based in New York City. She is the director of the Social Acceleration Group, helping brands grow on social media. She is a graduate of New York University with a degree in Sports Management. She is passionate about health, fitness, and helping others. As a seasoned model and actress, she knows that health and wellness are critical to one’s success. 

Mira Sovrino

Academy award winning Actress and United Nations Goodwill ambassador Mira Sorvino first began expressing her passion for social justice at Harvard University, where she received two Ford Foundation grants to research her summa thesis on Racial Conflict between Chinese and African students in the PRC, which was awarded the coveted Hoopes Prize. Upon graduation, she researched and interviewed Russophilic neo-Nazi leaders for a documentary on the rise of anti-Semitism in Russia, “Freedom to Hate,” which she associate produced.  

She was the official ambassador for Amnesty International’s “Stop Violence Against Women” campaign from 2004 to 2008. Her work with Amnesty was recognized at the Artivist Film Festival. In March 2006, she was honored with Amnesty International’s Artist of Conscience Award.  She lobbied Capitol Hill on the topic of Human Trafficking and officially testified before Congress on the genocide in Darfur, Sudan.  

Having supported the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime anti-trafficking initiatives since 2007, in 2009 Sorvino was appointed to her current position as the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime’s Goodwill Ambassador in the Global Fight Against Human Trafficking. She has traveled to Mexico and Spain to launch the U.N.’s Blue Heart Campaign to fight Human Trafficking, and to London and Bangkok, Thailand to promote the recently created U.N. Voluntary Trust Fund for Victims of Human Trafficking.  She has participated in public forums in Luxor, Egypt, at the Niemeyer Center in Aviles, Spain, Baku Azerbaijan, and in Washington D.C.. In each locale, Sorvino works together with NGOs on the ground and members of government and law enforcement to better synthesize efforts to discover and protect victims, and punish perpetrators of, Human Trafficking.  In Fall 2010 she was honored for her work by Save The Children, and in December 2010, the U.N. awarded her “Global Advocate of the Year.” She has participated in sessions to create the UN General Assembly’s Global Plan of Action to Combat Human Trafficking.  She represented UNODC at the Vatican at the 2nd Annual Conference on Modern Day Slavery and the collaboration between the church and law enforcement.  She regularly addresses the UN General Assembly.

She has testified before the US Senate on Human Trafficking, helped engender legislative change at the National Conference of State Legislators, spoken at the National Association of Attorneys General, the American Bar Association, the Mashable Social Good Summit, and the Deloitte Center to reform state laws on human trafficking and domestic minor victims of trafficking for commercial sexual exploitation, as well as speaking at Harvard, Delta Airlines, and in conferences in Sweden and Aruba.

Collaborating with the CNN Freedom project, she led Jim Clancy on a discovery of the National Human Trafficking Resource Center and Hotline, narrated the documentary “Mozambique or Bust,” and was the on-the-ground interviewer in the award-winning documentary “Everyday in Cambodia”  on the crisis of virgin sales in Phnom Penh. She participated in the ECPAT documentary “What I’ve Been Through is Not Who I Am” (one of many collaborations with ECPAT), and acted in the dramatic films on modern day slavery, “Human Trafficking” and “Trade of Innocents” and wrote the foreword to “Walking Prey” on the vulnerability of US youth to sex trafficking. She will be seen in 2020 in the 20th Century Fox feature “Sound of Freedom” opposite Jim Caviezel, which highlights the child trafficking victim rescue Operation Underground Railroad (OURescue).   

In the fall of 2017 Sorvino was one of the first women to come forward about Harvey Weinstein’s Sexual Misconduct in Ronan Farrow’s New Yorker exposé. She has emerged as one of the most prominent voices of #MeToo and #TimesUp and has received several honors for her advocacy including from UCLA for both Human Trafficking and #MeToo. She has spoken at the Tribeca TimesUp summit and the Museum for Civil and Human Rights, and for the New York Times New Rules summit and the Wrap Women conference. Legislatively she helped pass the strongest slate of anti-sexual harassment bills in the country in CA with Equal Rights Advocates. Her advocacy in NY State alongside TimesUp and Governor Andrew Cuomo helped pass extensions to the statute of limitations for rape and strengthened protections against sexual harassment. . She was just awarded Humanitarian of the Year by the United Nations Association of New York for her work on Human Trafficking.

Sorvino considers herself a victims’ and survivors’ advocate and has interviewed and been inspired by many of them around the world. She is happily married to actor/writer/director Christopher Backus, and they have four lovely children.  

Rebecca Ballard

A “jack of all trades” and dreamer and schemer driven by a desire to enhance social justice, Rebecca has worked in DC and throughout Asia as a social entrepreneur, ED, lawyer, and consultant. 

Her passions are market-based social change that advances human rights, values-based consumptive behavior, and ending homelessness. Rebecca has directly supported trafficking survivors through law and policy work as well as nonprofit management. She founded Maven Women to meet an unmet market need for additional socially conscious options for professional women’s attire and “move the needle” in the global garment industry through product creation and partnership, consumer education, and advocacy. Rebecca holds a BA from Duke University, JD from The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and Executive Certificate in Nonprofit Management from Georgetown University. 

Busie Matsiko-Andan

Busie Matsiko-Andan is an award-winning global strategist and serial entrepreneur; she previously has been recognized as one of the most Influential people of African Descent.

She has transcended in different industries and has been revolutionary in notable industries, including fashion. She co-founded one of the first fashion-technology companies, Fashion Indie, which was acquired by Nylon magazine; Busie continues to share and influence in her fashion styling, on Poshmark where she has several thousand subscribers, following her.


Busie has expanded her creativity and was pivotal in the creation of one of the top cosmetic surgery practices in the East Coast and continues to be a sought after resource, given her knack for strategy and her keen eye of identifying top talent in the health industry, Wall Street, Economic and Business Development.

She continues to be evolve as a leader in diaspora affairs, a role she has assumed for over 20 years. She has been recognized by the African Union for her efforts in uplifting various African entities in the diaspora, with focus on diversity and inclusion, whilst keeping up with changing needs and actively advocating for the African continent.

Busie is the founder and CEO of Pont Global, a boutique Management and Recruitment firm consultancy firm, hinged on women helping women. She is also the creator of RESET, a platform for thought-leaders to discuss the reflective pivot of their businesses as the world navigates COVID-19 together. She hosted the first-ever nonpartisan show, encouraging Africans in the Diaspora to exercise their civic duty of voting in the just-concluded US election.

Despite all of her accomplishments, Busie’s proudest job is being a mom to her 3 daughters and serving as a mentor. She’s also an ardent proponent of supporting and upskilling the evolving dynamic of women – from mothers seeking to return to the workforce, to choosing to stay home, to working from home, to working outside the home, or returning to a different industry altogether.

Busie’s work has been featured in Businessweek, Forbes, Fortune, New York Post, Daily News, Timeout New York, Women’s Wear Daily and international publications such as the BBC, Africa.com, Face2face Africa, Modern Ghana, The Daily Monitor, Vanguard among others. She speaks internationally on different topics including Diversity and Inclusion, Entrepreneurship, Women Empowerment and has spoken at TEDX Princeton,  Goldman Sachs, Newsweek, Forbes’s Digital Accelerator-Nigeria Edition. She also continues to be invited to sit on numerous boards such as ADCAM, ADDI, HACSA, ANGEL Africa, and the Patient Advisory Board of New York Presbyterian Hospital.

A master of personal and professional reinvention, Busie combines savvy business acumen with her innate ability to cultivate strategic partnerships and take powerful ideas from concept to reality. She is the ultimate compassionate dot-connecter who believes in the power of human capacity and selflessly helps others uncover their true potential.
 
 
 

Marrisa Louie

Design leader with a proven product and business background. Experienced in building and coaching design teams, and leading the design of delightful products used by over 1 billion people. 

As an org leader and people manager, I enjoy helping grow extraordinary leaders.I started tinkering with code as a kid, and fell in love with web design while taking my first computer science course at UC Berkeley. Since then, I’ve enjoyed tackling really hard problems with some top notch people.  In my free time, I can be found exploring visual storytelling through photography, videography, and animation, and learning about a wide range of subjects including design, business, leadership, and management. I am intensely curious, and in a state of constant growth. I’m a San Francisco Bay Area native, and live with my husband, Corey Reese, in Portola Valley.

Benjamin Skinner

Ben Skinner is responsible for orchestrating Transparentem’s teams as they deliver on its mission.

Previously, Ben was a Senior Fellow at the Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism of Brandeis University. He also held a fellowship at the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy of the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, served as Special Assistant to Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, and worked as a Research Associate for U.S. Foreign Policy at the Council on Foreign Relations. His 50+ chapters, monographs, and articles have appeared in numerous publications including Bloomberg Businessweek, Time, Newsweek, Travel + Leisure, Los Angeles Times, Foreign Policy, and others.

In 2008, Ben was named one of National Geographic’s “Adventurers of the Year.” His first book, A Crime So Monstrous: Face-to-Face with Modern-Day Slavery (Free Press; 2008), was awarded the 2009 Dayton Literary Peace Prize for nonfiction, a citation from the Overseas Press Club in its book category for 2008, and was a finalist for The Ryszard Kapuscinski International Award for literary reportage in 2011. The World Economic Forum recognized him as a Young Global Leader in 2011. Ben graduated from Wesleyan University.

Lillian Hathaway

Lillian Joy Hathaway is a Los Angeles based Board Certified Physician Assistant, mental health advocate, and model. Secondary to lived experiences, Lillian seeks to decrease stigma surrounding issues of trauma, and seeking safety and support through accessing resources like therapy, and does so with a digital project called My Project Stigma which she created in 2018. Lillian is passionate about advocacy and putting a face on what it looks like to persevere in community in spite of the odds.

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Brittany Wells

Brittany Wells is a DC-based writer, model, mother, public speaker, and advocate for women. She serves as a positive force in the content creator and fashion community through her social media channels and blog. She is blessed with a global perspective and an infectious spirit of positive energy that builds momentum for the causes she is passionate about. Through her business, Brittnoelle.co, Brittany partners with and promotes ethical and sustainable brands and designers from around the globe. By moving away from fast-fashion, Brittany focuses on ethical, authentic, and sustainable designers and brands that align with her mission to empower women to be authentically them while being environmentally conscious.

As a public speaker, author, fashion leader, and model, she shares her ongoing self-discovery journey and enlightenment journey. She hopes to inspire women to be the best version of themselves and provide tools to become fully independent, live more sustainable lives and let go of what no longer serves them.

As she works towards obtaining her degree in International Relations at Georgetown University, she has a career in Human Resources at Accenture Federal Services. She hopes through education and her partnerships, she continues with her mission to become a strong force in the fight against human trafficking.