Greg Carr
Founder
GORONGOSA RESTORATION PROJECT
Greg Carr received a Masters in Public Policy from Harvard in 1986. That same year he co-founded Boston Technology, an international telecommunications firm, and served as its chair until 1998.
In 1998 Carr resigned from his for-profit boards and dedicated himself to philanthropic activities. In 1999, he co-founded the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard University. Through research and teaching, the Carr Center seeks to make human rights principles central to the formulation of good public policy in the United States and throughout the world.
In January of 2008, Carr signed a 35-year agreement with the Government of Mozambique to restore and co-manage the country¹s flagship national park, Gorongosa, and to help the 250,000 people who live in the communities around the Park. Gorongosa Park had suffered in a generation of war wherein 95% of its large wildlife had been eaten. Mozambique lost one million people in the civil conflicts and the World Bank ranked Mozambique as the poorest country in the world in the 2000s. Carr signed an agreement with four government ministries: Agriculture, Education, Health, and Environment. Inside the one-million acre national park, Carr's team has restored more than 100% of the equivalent biomass of wildlife. All of the carnivores originally present in the Park have been reintroduced and herbivore species are thriving. The Gorongosa team is restoring the rainforest on Mt. Gorongosa where they have planted several million trees. National Geographic called Gorongosa the most successful wildlife restoration in Africa.
In the communities around Gorongosa, Carr's team supports 120 schools, from preschool to highschool to adult education. One after-school program called "Girls' Club" keeps teen girls in school and out of child marriage.
The Gorongosa Project helps 20,000 farm families with "regenerative agriculture" that diversifies their crops, increases yields, and prepares the land for climate change. The Project conducts mobile health clinics in remote areas that serve more than 100,000 people per year.
Carr's project is unique in combining the protection of nature with economic development (two activities that are sometimes seen as competitive). The Gorongosa Project created the concept of a "Nature-Based Special Economic Zone" that lifts people out of poverty with businesses reliant on a healthy ecosystem. 70 Universities are affiliated with the Gorongosa Project as it trains graduate students from around the world to replicate this model. The Gorongosa Project is the largest employer in central Mozambique with safari ecotourism, agricultural production, agricultural processing, forestry, health, education and national park employment.
The Gorongosa Project has been featured in more than a dozen long-from television programs by National Geographic, PBS, BBC, Disney and others. Carr was featured twice on the CBS News Program: "60 Minutes".
Martin Luther King III
With hate crimes rising, movements against social injustices sprouting, and an electorate that is deeply divided, perhaps at no other time in recent history has our world needed the clear thinking and solutions-oriented voice of civil rights advocate and global humanitarian Martin Luther King III.
From speaking to thousands at the 60th Anniversary of March On Washington in August 2023 to his dozens of arrests during peaceful protests, Martin is shepherding the healing of our nation and the world. He is connecting the important lessons of the past with the critical needs of our future and motivating a new generation of authentic leaders, while empowering others to use their voices to bring about change as well.
As the oldest son of the late Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Mrs. Coretta Scott King, Martin Luther King III is a thought leader on the world stage, a peace maker, and a negotiator on some of today’s most critical national and international platforms for social change. Amplifying the work of his father, Martin and his wife Arndrea have devoted their lives to promoting global human rights and eradicating racism, violence, and poverty, earning a reputation as a respected international statesman and one of the world’s most passionate advocates for the poor and oppressed.
Martin speaks on a variety of topics such as the importance of continuing the struggle for civil rights and taking a stand against adversity, emphasizing the importance of individual action in making his father’s dream a reality and challenging us all to do better.
More recently, Martin and Arndrea launched an effort to fund Black and Brown organizers across the country. The first round of funding went to 40 organizations whose missions are to mobilize voters in key states. By 2024, the Drum Major Coalition will invest $100 million in grassroots organizations from coast to coast.
Martin and Arndrea recently announced the Realize the Dream Initiative, with the ambitious goal of collecting 100 million service hours by Dr. King’s 100th birthday, on January 15, 2029. Through strategic partnerships and relationships with civil rights leaders and prominent activists, Martin and Arndrea are committed to realizing the dream and empowering the next generation of activists.
Martin regularly appears on CNN, MSNBC, NBC News, and ABC News. His writings have been published in The Washington Post, The New York Times, on CNN.com, and other major news outlets.
Chester Woolley
Managing Partner
Patamar Capital
Chester has been active in venture capital investing for over 30 years, managing more than $2 billion in investment capital as the founder of successful venture funds in the United States, Europe, and Asia. As Founding Partner of Dominion Ventures and European Venture Partners (now called Kreos Capital), Chester pioneered the concept of venture debt. Over his career, Chester has invested debt and equity in over 400 companies, including Ciena, Coinstar, Hotmail, and Human Genome Science.
Chester has been involved in frontier market venture capital investing since he joined Unitus Labs as a board member in 2001. During his time as Unitus Labs’ Capital Markets Chair, he was instrumental in the launch of Unitus Equity Fund, the first commercially focused micro finance equity investment fund, as well as Unitus Capital, the first investment bank focused on serving social enterprises throughout Asia. Since its launch, Unitus Equity Fund and its successor Elevar Equity have raised three funds totaling nearly $168 million, while Unitus Capital has successfully arranged over $1.6 billion in debt and equity financing for social enterprises. In 2011, Chester co-founded Patamar Capital (formerly Unitus Impact), a frontier markets venture capital firm with the mission of unlocking better economic opportunities for Asia’s low-income communities.
In addition to his current role as Co-Founder and Partner of Patamar Capital, Chester holds board seats at MicroBenefits, Jana Care, and Kinara. He is a founding and current board member of SKS Microfinance, India’s largest microfinance bank, and Samhita Microfinance. As co-founder, Chester launched the largest student-led venture fund in the United States, the $18.5 million University Venture Fund. In addition, Chester launched the University Impact Fund, which partners university students with top-tier impact investing firms and social enterprises to provide the students with real-time exposure to projects and investments.
Chester holds a B.S. in Business Management from Brigham Young University and an MBA from the University of Utah.
Becky Douglas
Founder
Rising Star Outreach
As founder of Rising Star Outreach, Becky is motivated by the belief that every person deserves opportunity and a life of dignity. Her humanitarian work has been featured in numerous national and international journals, books, and in several TV series. She was the recipient of the John Houston Allen Humanitarian of the Year Award, and has been named as one of five “Classic Women” by Traditional Homes Magazine. She is the subject of the PBS Documentary, Breaking the Curse. Becky Douglas and her husband, John are the parents of ten biological and adopted children.
Aldo Carrascoso
CEO
Vivum
Aldo is a visionary entrepreneur and technology leader known for his ability to innovate and disrupt traditional industries. He is currently the CEO and Co-Founder of Vivum AI (ViVum pioneers cutting-edge Evolutionary AI (E-AI), reshaping AI for autonomous vehicles, robotics, and edge devices that currently run on Conventional AI (C-AI) like Deep and Reinforcement Learning).
Previously, he was the Co-Founder and CEO of InterVenn Biosciences (2016), where he led the company in creating a first-of-its-kind glycoproteomic biomarker interrogation platform called GlycoVisionTM using AI and machine learning, which improved the diagnosis and treatment of various diseases through liquid biopsies. This platform was based on the decades-long work of his co-founders, Nobel Laureate Dr. Carolyn Bertozzi from Stanford (glycobiology) and renowned scientist Dr. Carlito Lebrilla from UC Davis (glycoproteomics).
Under Aldo’s leadership, InterVenn revolutionized the field of precision medicine by being the first to scalably unlock the glycoproteome, which has enabled the accurate and early detection of diseases such as cancer and autoimmune diseases. Additionally, the company’s cutting-edge technology has facilitated the identification of new biomarkers and drug targets, paving the way for the development of more effective treatments and diagnostics, such as DawnTM Immunotherapy, GloriTM Ovarian, and GlycoKnowTM Colorectal.
Prior to InterVenn, he founded and was COO/CTO at Veem (2013), a global cross-border payment processing company and blockchain pioneer, and founded and was CTO at Jukin Media(2009), one of the world’s largest UGC licensing platforms that has over half a trillion views. Aldo has a proven track record of success as an entrepreneur, having started companies that have generated significant value for investors (>$1B) and improved people’s lives. He is also an active angel investor and holds an MBA from Babson and a BS from Ateneo De Manila University. Aldo is widely respected for his deep understanding of transformative technologies such as artificiaI Intelligence, machine learning, data science, blockchain, and cloud computing.
Dr. Kal Mentak
Co-Founder
Vision Innovation Institute (VII)
Dr. Kal Mentak is an institutional investor, scientist, and entrepreneur. Kal has played a pivotal role in building successful companies across the US and Europe. He founded and led several biotechnology companies including Surgidev Corporation (Ciba Vision and Bausch & Lomb), Advanced Vision Science, Inc. (Santen Ltd), and Tenon Medical (NASDAQ). As an investor and board member, Kal has provided guidance and support to numerous startup founders. He is the author of Cross-Border Capital Quest: A Startup's Journey to Global Funding, Global Nomads: The rise of the borderless startups, and Letting Go to Grow: The Power of Embracing the Unknown. He was the commencement speaker at the college of engineering at the University of Florida in 2019 and holds over 50 patents. Kal acted as an advisor for mergers and acquisitions with Warburg Pincus and has participated in over $3B in acquisitions and IPOs.
Kal is passionate about eliminating global blindness. He is a principal and board member of the Cure Blindness Project, an organization that has restored sights to 1.6M people and has provided basic eye treatments to over 16.5M people. His latest project, The Vision Innovation Institute (VII) and the Andrew Dougherty Vision Foundation (ADVF) initiative, aims at eliminating global blindness by providing cutting-edge technologies and treatments to all, regardless of economic status.
Peter Borish
Director
CIBC
Since first starting his career at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Borish has been at the intersection of technology, financial markets and innovation.
The 1987 market crash coupled with his appointment to the Presidential Task Force on Market Mechanisms (Brady Commission) fostered his commitment to public policy and nonprofits.
After being recruited by Paul Tudor Jones, Borish helped build Tudor Investments into a leading global macro hedge fund. There he led the firm's investment in research, data and computing.
In addition to his hedge fund business, which he continues today at Computer Trading Corporation, Borish has been an angel investor in numerous startup technology companies. His central thesis is bringing transparency to opaque markets, which reflects his philosophy that more information leads to better decisions. Mr. Borish is an independent director of RMB Funds and CIBC Bank USA where he is audit committee certified. He mentors young entrepreneurs as an advisor to a few VC and hedge funds.
The intersection of poverty, policy and politics is the focus on Borish's nonprofit interests. The Robin Hood Foundation, which he is a founding trustee, brings rigorous metrics and data analysis to its effort to raise families out of poverty in New York City.
Math for America, for which Borish heads the audit committee, founded by the late by Jim Simons, is building a community of accomplished mathematics and science teachers. Borish is a trustee of the Institute of Financial Markets (IFM), which seeks to increase public awareness and understanding of the importance of financial markets and the financial services industry to the global economy.
At the intersection of finance, early stage technology and nonprofits, Borish is uniquely positioned to track the spectrum of opportunities across the investment universe. As such, he regularly shares his expertise and appears on Bloomberg, Yahoo! and CNBC, to name a few.
Of course, it all begins with the University of Michigan, where Mr. Borish received a BA in Economics and a Masters in Public Policy from The Gerald R. Ford School.
Pamela Hawley
Founder
Universal Giving
Pamela Hawley is the founder and CEO of UniversalGiving® (www.universalgiving.org), an award-winning nonprofit that helps people give and volunteer with vetted, quality opportunities all over the world. Opportunities range from giving $25 to provide a month of meals to a child in Haiti, to volunteering with migrant children in Beijing, China. All projects are vetted through UniversalGiving®’s proprietary Quality Model™. 100% of each donation goes directly to the cause. UniversalGiving® is financially sustainable through UniversalGiving® Corporate, which assists Fortune 500 companies to scale their global CSR programs worldwide. Key clients include Apple, Cisco, Gap, BHP, and RSF Social Finance.
Pamela started in community service at age twelve, after experiencing life-changing poverty on a family vacation. She and her father were in a marketplace and looked down a side cul-de-sac where she saw a whole line of half-clothed, begging, unwashed, starving children. The word UNACCEPTABLE came across her mind and led her to volunteer all over the world.Some of Pamela’s many volunteer experiences include working with microfinance in rural India, sustainable farming in Guatemala, earthquake relief work in El Salvador, and computer training in Cambodia.
Pamela has a Political Science degree cum laude from Duke University and a Masters in International Communication on a scholarship from the Annenberg School of Communications, USC. Pamela was a finalist for Ernst and Young’s Entrepreneur of the Year Award and most recently received the Distinguished Alumni Achievement Award for the Political Science Department at Duke University. She has also received the Castilleja Alumni Award. She is a guest lecturer at Stanford, Harvard, Berkeley and USC.
Linda Horner
Partner
Uplifting Capital
Linda Magara Horner is a Partner at Uplifting Capital, an impact investment firm serving high-net-worth individuals and institutions seeking to align their investments with their values. The firm specializes in fund-of-funds strategies designed to deliver strong financial returns alongside meaningful environmental and societal impact. Linda serves on the investment team and Investment Committee, chairs the firm’s Sustainability Committee, and leads corporate strategy initiatives.
Previously, she was Director of Corporate Strategy at SCAN Health Plan, a $4 billion Medicare Advantage organization focused on improving healthcare for older adults. Her career includes roles in product strategy and M&A at Medtronic, investment banking at Credit Suisse, and finance at Aetna. Linda began her professional career as a CPA in Deloitte & Touche’s audit practice( now inactive).
She earned her MBA from Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business, where she received the Julia Stell Award for outstanding leadership. Linda graduated Summa Cum Laude with a BS in Business Administration from The Master’s University and holds certifications in impact measurement from the University of Oxford and impact investing from the CFA Institute. She was recently named one of the Toigo Foundation’s 2024 Top 35 Rising Leaders.
Beyond her work, Linda lectures on healthcare strategy at UCLA, coaches in Dartmouth’s MBA personal leadership program, serves as Vice Chair of the Board for Action in Africa, and is an Advisory Board member for the National Black MBA Association – Los Angeles Chapter. A proud Ugandan immigrant and first-generation college graduate, Linda lives in Los Angeles with her husband, Josiah, a high school teacher, and their two sons, Peter (10) and Michael (9). Her life’s passion is to “empower others to walk untrodden paths,” just as she has.
Zoe Ryan
Founder
ZAR Agency
Zoë Alderfer Ryan founder of The ZAR Agency is a social entrepreneur and global citizen who has spent the majority of the last 25 plus years living and working in 7 different countries on 6 different continents. Culturally fluent and adept at bringing people together to turn problems into opportunities, she is passionate about helping people make life breakthroughs. With a formal background in education and a diverse career as a children’s author, mediator, designer, music talent manager, and program developer for organizations around the world, she has an arsenal of skills and experiences to draw upon.
Her work is to assist individuals who are committed and truly ready to make a transformation and have an impact on their communities. Currently she is working with individuals in five different countries - helping them design and implement a plan to reach their dreams...
Zoe believes that if each person in the world had one person who cared enough about them and believed in their ability to succeed the world would be an even better place.
Mark Lutz
SVP, Global Philanthropy
Opportunity International
Mark Lutz joined Opportunity International in 1986 as a key member of the private fundraising team, where he’s grown private annual revenue from $1 million to more than $40 million.
Mark grew up in South Africa with his missionary parents. Living for 20 years under apartheid shaped him to become an advocate for justice. Visits to 50 countries sharpened his vision for a world free of extreme poverty.
Prior to joining Opportunity, Mark served as Senior Director of Resource Development for MAP International, a Christian organization providing life-changing medicines and health supplies to people in need.
In 2010, Mark wrote UnPoverty: Rich Lessons from the Working Poor, in which he tells the stories of
entrepreneurs who have received micro loans from Opportunity.
Mark earned a Bachelor of Arts in music and a Masters in Cross-Cultural Communication from Wheaton College.
Mark and his wife, Lise, have three adult children and live in New Jersey.
Barry Gold
Principal
Earth Resilience Group
Barry is a consultant for the Rob Walton Foundation (RWF) working to advance large landscape scale conservation in Africa through the development of an African Keystone Protected Area partnership. He also leads RWF’s work on ocean conservation.
Barry has more than 20 years of experience in leadership positions at the Walton Family Foundation, the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, and the David and Lucile Packard Foundation. In addition, he was President of the Board for the Biodiversity Funders Group, the leading affinity group for U.S. environmental philanthropy.
Prior to his work in philanthropy he helped create the National Biological Service at the U.S. Department of the Interior and led its merger with the U.S. Geological Survey. He also helped develop and lead the Glen Canyon Dam adaptive management program, an effort to protect some of the most highly prized scenic and natural resources in the U.S. while balancing potentially conflicting social and political interests and demands upon the Colorado River ecosystem.
Before that he was a s senior staffer for the U.S. House of Representatives’ Committee on Science, working on issues ranging from risk assessment to the Clean Water Act to the federal budget. And, before that, he held senior positions at the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
In 2017 he received the National Champion of the Ocean Award for his work to advance marine spatial planning, past recipients have included Leon Panetta and Christy Todd Whitman. In 2007 he was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS for “…enhancing scientific literacy in the electorate, academia, agencies, and philanthropic organizations, and for training the next generation of leaders at the science-policy interface.”
Barry has a B.S. in biology from the University of Miami, an M.S. in marine ecology from the University of Connecticut, an M.A. in political science, from George Washington University and a D.Sc. with a focus on ecological modeling, from Washington University in St. Louis.
Tony Elumelu
Founder / Chairman
The Tony Elumelu Foundation / Heirs Holdings
Tony O. Elumelu is an African investor and philanthropist, and one of the world’s most prominent voices on Africa’s transformation agenda. He is the founder and Chairman of Heirs Holdings, his family-owned investment company, which invests in strategic sectors of the African economy, including financial services, hospitality, power, energy, technology, and healthcare, as part of its commitment to improving lives and transforming Africa. Tony is also the Chairman of the United Bank for Africa (UBA) Group, which operates in 20 countries across Africa, as well as the United Kingdom, France, the UAE, and the United States. He chairs Nigeria’s largest quoted conglomerate, Transcorp Group, whose subsidiaries include Transcorp Power, a leading producer of electricity in West Africa, and Transcorp Hotels Plc, Nigeria’s foremost hospitality brand. Together with Heirs Energies, one of the continent’s largest natural resources producers, Transcorp Power is executing Africa’s foremost integrated energy business, dedicated to ensuring African resources drive and power value creation on the African continent. In 2010, he created The Tony Elumelu Foundation (TEF), the leading philanthropy empowering a new generation of African entrepreneurs across all 54 African countries. Since inception, the Foundation’s flagship programme has identified and funded over 20,000 young African entrepreneurs and created a digital ecosystem of over 1.5 million Africans, as part of a ten-year US$100m commitment to fund, mentor, and train young Africans. In 2020, TIME magazine named Tony as one of the 100 Most Influential People in the World and in 2022 TIME again recognised him with its inaugural TIME100 Impact list, honouring him alongside five other global leaders who have gone above and beyond to move their industries – and the world – forward. The Federal Government of Nigeria honoured Tony with the title, Commander of the Order of the Federal Republic, in 2022 for his contribution to Nigeria’s economic and social development. He has also been recognised with Belgium’s oldest and highest royal order. Tony sits on a number of global boards, including the Global Leadership Council of United Nations Generation Unlimited.
Bob Gay
Managing Director
Kensington Capital Holdings
Robert C Gay is Founder and Managing Director of Kensington Capital Holdings (his family office), Executive Director of HGGC (Huntsman Gay Global Capital) and emeritus General Authority Seventy of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
Bob and his wife, Lynette, have co-founded and served as directors of multiple global humanitarian organizations, including the world’s first micro-finance accelerator, Unitus. Their efforts have focused on building schools, medical and maternal healthcare clinics, financing and growing microenterprises, clean water boreholes, latrines, and rescuing at risk persons including those trapped in modern slavery and illiteracy. These efforts have helped lift tens of millions of lives across the globe, but especially in India and Africa. They are also the founding partners of the Ballard Center for Social Impact at Brigham Young University, the Center for Business, Health and Prosperity at the University of Utah, and the Ensign Global University in Ghana.
As a General Authority for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, Bob served in its worldwide leadership as a member of the Presidency of the Seventy, President of the Asia North Area, and Chairman of the Self-Reliance Services and Perpetual Education Fund Committee where he helped develop and implement programs that create educational, employment and small business opportunities for those in need. These programs are currently being used globally in all the areas of the world where the Church operates. Before his call as a General Authority, Bob resided in and served as Mission President in the countries of Ghana, Sierra Leone, and Liberia and as a full-time missionary in Spain.
Prior to his full-time church service, he worked on Wall Street as a merchant banker and private equity investor. He is a former senior managing partner for Bain Capital, co-founder and CEO of HGGC, co-founder of Sorenson Capital, Executive Vice-President of GE Capital Markets Group and management consultant for the international consulting firm, McKinsey & Company.
Bob earned a PhD in business economics from Harvard University where he taught economics and international finance. He is the recipient of the Utahan of the Year Award, the United States Presidential Service Award and the Martin Luther King Center Special Recognition Service Award for Non-Violent Social Change. He and his wife are parents of 7 children and grandparents to 23 grandchildren.
Arndrea Waters King
Arndrea Waters King is an advocate, thought leader, and uniter in the movement for peace, justice, and equity. She gained significant experience working within the anti-hate movement at the Center for Democratic Renewal, an organization founded and headed by Dr. C.T. Vivian, a lieutenant of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. During her tenure, Arndrea organized the first National Conference on Hate Crimes and Hate Violence with over 100 national partners. With hate crimes on the rise and an increasingly divided country, she is a leading voice in the anti-hate movement with substantive knowledge of hate speech, hate crimes, and the various organizations promoting hate and division.
In her current role as president of the Drum Major Institute, a nonprofit founded over 60 years ago, she has built strategic partnerships and managed the daily operations of this active social justice organization. As president of DMI, Arndrea advances the Kingian legacy by encouraging individuals to embrace their unique contribution to peace, justice, and equity for all. Through her work, she gives voice to Black women, who were historically shut out of speaking roles at the height of the civil rights movement. She is a passionate advocate for empowering women and youth activists through the democratization of the King Legacy.
Through her leadership at DMI, Arndrea has spearheaded the effort to organize tens of thousands of activists and more than 100 partner organizations to March on Washington in support of federal voting rights legislation. Her efforts garnered national attention and activated an untapped grassroots powerhouse that is using their collective voice to demand action in Washington in the wake of disastrous laws passed by states that restrict voting rights. Most recently, Arndrea led the organization of the 2023 March on Washington, commemorating the 60th Anniversary of the march, which became the year’s largest civil rights movement.
Expanding on the King Family legacy, Arndrea and her husband Martin have recently launched an ambitious initiative of collecting 100 million service hours by Dr. King’s 100th birthday, on January 15, 2029, with the launch of the Realize the Dream initiative.
Arndrea is a graduate of Emory University in Atlanta. Her writing has appeared in prominent media outlets, including the Atlanta Journal Constitution, USA Today, and CNN Opinion. She has also been interviewed by MSNBC, ABC, CBS, NBC, and other prominent outlets.