Melissa A. Berman
Philanthropy – whether through giving, investing or advocating – has embarked on an exciting age of exploration with new horizons, new tools and new commitment. We’re creating the maps as we discover opportunities.
Nick Hodges
Nick loves building systems that strengthen and build capacity for RPA’s clients and staff—leveraging technology for stronger programmatic outcomes.
Walter Sweet
Walter is driven by the opportunity to help donors turn talent and motivation into philanthropic impact.
Yolanda Arias
“Many people go through their whole lives having no real sense of what their talents may be, or if they have any to speak of. Human resources are like natural resources; they’re often buried deep. You have to go looking for them, they’re not just lying around on the surface.” — Ken Robinson
Christopher Welch
Renee Karibi-Whyte
“Someone is sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.” – Warren Buffett
A. Nicole Campbell
A. Nicole Campbell specializes in creating peace of mind. She has provided strategic legal, governance, and operational guidance as a senior advisor for two of the world’s most prominent philanthropists, and has spoken on and trained senior management teams and board members in nearly every region of the world in grant making, governance, and organizational design.
Berit Ashla
“I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” — Maya Angelou
Based in San Francisco, Berit Ashla leads Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors’ West Coast advisory work, manages client engagements and works with a range of individual, family and corporate donors. She holds a wealth of experience in grantmaking, foundation governance, social justice, arts and sustainability. She is a frequent contributor to national and regional philanthropic conferences and events. To maintain Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors’ recognized leadership in the field of philanthropy, Berit utilizes her expertise in a range of issue areas to provide tailored strategic support to clients.
Berit’s nonprofit career spans over two decades working with public, private and community foundations. As Senior Advisor at Tides, she developed grantmaking programs, led donor engagement, and managed the Threshold Foundation. She was the Philanthropic Director of Foundation Source leading advisory services in the West and she served as Executive Director of the David Brower Center, an innovative arts and sustainability center. Earlier in her career, she worked at the Marin Community Foundation, KQED Public Television and the United Nations Environment Program in Paris, France.
Berit has a B.A. from Amherst College and serves on the boards of the Institute for the Future, Berkeley Rep, Berkeley Haas Business School’s Center for Social Sector Leadership, and UC Berkeley Art + Design. Previously, she served on the boards of Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Abundance Foundation, Nia Community Fund, Schott Foundation for Public Education, and Mal Warwick/Donor Digital. Berit is married and mother to two sons who share her love for travel, art, and civic engagement. With her close friends, she enthusiastically explores Bay Area hiking trails.
Donzelina Barroso
Donzie’s favorite part of her job is having the opportunity to work with donors around the world who are creative and open to new ideas.
Cordell Brown
Cordell believes that the foundation for success comes from creating connections across people, process and planning.
Heather Grady
Heather’s lifelong experience in supporting social progress and economic development define how she helps foundations, philanthropists and impact investors craft effective pathways to sustainable, effective and rewarding systems-level change.
Amy Holmes
Amy believes that giving can create meaning for donors, inspire generosity in others, and build connections between people.
Mae Hong
“I’m not saying I’m gonna change the world, but I guarantee that I will spark the brain that will change the world.” — Tupac Shakur
Olga Tarasov
"Each day we go to our work in the hope of discovering." — Nikola Tesla
Sheila Thélémaque
"You must be the change you wish to see in the world." — Mahatma Gandhi
Sarah Aasbo
“Freedoms are not only the primary ends of development, they are also among its principal means.” — Amartya Sen
Meenakshi Abbi
"If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away." — Henry David Thoreau
Segilola Adeola
“True wisdom comes to each of us when we realize how little we understand about life, ourselves and the world around us.” ― Socrates
Alex Alberti
Alex proudly utilizes his background in the arts and humanities as a tool to forge strong and collaborative relationships between grants management and programmatic functions, which in his experience leads to the most effective philanthropy.
Le Anne Alexander
Le Anne believes you are not able to be truly philanthropic unless you are thoughtful—that mindfulness and thoughtfulness spur true love of humanity.
Shirley Alvarez
“You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, 'I lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.'" - Eleanor Roosevelt
Henrietta Bankole-Olusina
"If you are going to achieve excellence in big things, you develop the habit in little matters. Excellence is not an exception, it is a prevailing attitude." - Colin Powell (Retired General)
Shermane Bilal
Shermane relishes her RPA role as a “philanthropic matchmaker,” connecting thoughtful grantmakers with effective grantseekers around common areas of interest.
Patrick Briaud
Patrick believes a flourishing donor is the seed of social good—within the individual, then in the world.
Lillian Wambui Chege
There is no passion to be found in playing small – settling for a life that is less than the one you are capable of living. - Nelson Mandela
Nick Chen
Nancy Delgado
Cheikh Diop
“In every day, there are 1,440 minutes. That means we have 1,440 daily opportunities to make a positive impact.” - Les Brown
Kelly Diggins
Cassandra Douglas
“We are what we repeatedly do, excellence then is not an act but a habit.” — Aristotle
Elizabeth Droggitis
Elizabeth is motivated on a daily basis by the wide array of projects she supports that are working towards positive social change.
Yaremis Felix
“We are all actors: being a citizen is not living in society, it is changing it.” - Augusto Boal
Kalyah Ford
“You write in order to change the world ... if you alter, even by a millimeter, the way people look at reality, then you can change it.” - James Baldwin
Johanna Grande
“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel” - Maya Angelou
Cristina Guerrero
"Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much." — Helen Keller
Emmanuel Guerrero
Austin Jarred
“Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood.” - Marie Curie
Ronald Joe
Tina Joh
Tina loves helping clients find meaning, strategy and fun with their philanthropy, and she is inspired by quotes like this: “Do your little bit of good where you are; it's those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world” — Desmond Tutu
Dana Joyce
“It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop.” – Confucius
Maddie Kinzie
Maddie is motivated by the opportunity to ensure good ideas become good solutions that can lead to positive social change and sustainable philanthropic impact.
Andres Lema
“Little drops of water, Little grains of sand, Make the mighty ocean And the pleasant land” – Julia Abigail Fletcher Carney
Sunie Lewis
Sunie loves what she does because of the unique role Human Resources plays in contributing to the overall success of an organization.
Dean Morris
Germain Ngaba
As Senior Associate, Germain works with the Sponsored Projects and Funds team by supporting assigned sponsored projects, and is responsible for assisting the other SP&F team members with project management, contracts, payments, and grants management. He collaborates with our internal partners (HR, Finance, and Operations) for projects, and provides administrative support to the team, as assigned. Germain reports directly to Cordell Brown, Director of Sponsored Projects and Funds.
Prior to joining RPA, Germain interned as a Human Resources Assistant at the College of Mount Saint Vincent, and was an Administrative Assistant at Sudler and Hennessy, an advertising, marketing & communications firm in the healthcare industry. Germain worked with RPA in a temporary capacity from February until officially joined the Sponsored Projects & Funds team in August 2019. During his time as a temp at RPA, he gained familiarity with the nonprofit sector, specifically fiscal sponsorship and grantmaking.
He has a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration with a minor in Healthcare, from the College of Mount Saint Vincent. His outside interests include competitive sports and music production.
Michelle Ng
“The results of philanthropy are always beyond calculation” — Miriam Beard
Deji Oguntonade
"It's kind of fun to do the impossible" - Walt Disney
Jesse Ostroff
Jesse loves the moment where months of planning and thought come together to make true change that stretch philanthropic dollars for years to come.
Rena Peng
Naamah Paley Rose
The philanthropist Naamah most admires is Julius Rosenwald (d. 1932), a child of German Jewish immigrants who created the Sears Roebuck empire and practiced “giving while living” when he funded nearly 5,000 schools for African American children across the rural Jim Crow South.
Liza Primeau
“How wonderful that no one need wait a single moment to improve the world.” — Anne Frank
Jon Quinn
“If we are honest with ourselves today, we will acknowledge that the ideal of Democracy has never failed, but that we haven't carried it out, and in our lack of faith we have debased the human being who must have a chance to live if Democracy is to be successful.” – Eleanor Roosevelt
Greg Ratliff
Greg is a Vice President at Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors’ New York office beginning in 2019 and manages client engagements with a range of individual, family and corporate donors.
Tricia Ragoonanan
Sebastian Roldan
Joanne Schneider
Joanne appreciates working with passionate, thoughtful philanthropists—helping them to engage meaningfully in their giving. She also enjoys connecting nonprofit organizations with the resources they need to thrive.
Michelle Shum
“We have forgotten how to be good guests, how to walk lightly on the Earth as its other creatures do.” —Barbara Ward
Camille Serrano
‘The arc of the moral universe is long,’ he said, but ‘it bends toward justice,’ if there is a steadfast commitment to see the task through to completion. – Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg
Caroline Suozzi
Donita Volkwijn
Donita loves having the opportunity to work with the macro and micro components of philanthropy—witnessing both the grand scope and theory of what philanthropy can accomplish as well as the faces for whom philanthropy has made a difference.
Aaron Xia
Wendy O’Neill
Wendy O’Neill is Chairman of the Asian Cultural Council, where she has been a trustee since 2009.
Peter C. Rockefeller
Peter C. Rockefeller is a managing director with Brock Capital Group.
Adam Wolfensohn
Adam Wolfensohn is Co-Managing Partner of Encourage Capital, an asset management firm focused on profitable and strategic investments to solve critical social and environmental problems.
Ana Marie Argilagos
Anand Babu
Mac Broderick
Mac Broderick is Vice President, Strategy, at Parallax Energy, a liquefied natural gas (LNG)-focused project developer based in Houston, Texas.
Kyungsun Chung
Kyungsun Chung is the Founder and CEO of Root Impact, a nonprofit that focuses on building capacity for the social innovation sector in Korea.
Andrew Dayton
Andrew Dayton is a social entrepreneur with a passion for community development and social equity.
Andrew Dayton is a social entrepreneur with a passion for community development and social equity.
Most recently, Andrew served as the Deputy Director of Legislative and Government Affairs to San Francisco Mayor Edwin M. Lee, leading the city’s wide array of policy and budgetary priorities at the state and federal levels, and overseeing the San Francisco’s lobbying efforts in Sacramento and Washington, D.C.
Andrew is also the co-founder and co-owner of North Corp, the umbrella company behind the transformation of a 130-year-old warehouse in Minneapolis, Minnesota into three award-winning businesses—a restaurant, craft cocktail bar, and men’s clothing store—that collectively employ nearly 100 people.
Andrew earned a law degree from the University of Michigan Law School and a B.A. from Yale University. He is a fifth generation member of the Rockefeller family.
Cathy Frank Halstead
Cathy Frank Halstead serves as a Trustee of the Sidney E. Frank Foundation. She is a co-founder and trustee of the Tippet Rise Art Center as well as of the Adrian Brinkerhoff Foundation, and a member of the Corporation of Brown University.
Cathy Frank Halstead serves as a Trustee of the Sidney E. Frank Foundation, which makes more than 90 annual grants in education, the arts, and the environment throughout the United States and the United Kingdom. Additionally, she is also a co-founder and trustee of the Tippet Rise Art Center as well as of the Adrian Brinkerhoff Foundation. Cathy is also a member of the Corporation of Brown University.
Cathy is an abstract painter and has shown her work internationally for more than two decades. She and her husband, Peter, established the Tippet Rise Art Center on an 11,000-acre ranch north of Yellowstone National Park. The center provides a unique environment for music and theater in the shadow of the Beartooth Mountains. The Adrian Brinkerhoff Foundation focuses on classical poetry and drama, bringing them to new audiences in innovative ways.
Cathy is a returning board member to the Board of Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors. She served three consecutive full terms on the RPA Board from 2007 through 2015.
Juanita James
Juanita James is the President & CEO of the Fairfield County Community Foundation.
Michael Quattrone
Luther Ragin, Jr.
Luther Ragin is the former President and Founding CEO of the Global Impact Investing Network (GIIN).
Ryan L. Rockefeller
Valerie Rockefeller
Valerie Rockefeller Wayne is the Chair of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund.
A former middle school special education teacher specializing in adolescents with learning and emotional disabilities, Valerie taught in East Harlem, New York and Australia. She also served as a confidential assistant to Secretary Richard Riley at the U.S. Department of Education during the first Clinton Administration. Valerie was an International Relations major at Stanford University, and has Masters degrees in Social Studies and Special Education from Teachers College and Bank Street College of Education.
Valerie is Chair of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, and is a trustee of Achievement First, the Asian Cultural Council, D.C. Preparatory Academy, Greenwich Academy, the Gilder Lehrman Institute and Teachers College Columbia University. She was a trustee of Spelman College and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. She lives with her three children in Old Greenwich, CT.
Theo Spencer
Theo Spencer is a Senior Policy Advocate at the Natural Resource Defense Council and a fifth generation member of the Rockefeller family.
Robin Strawbridge
Sarah Teacher
Sarah Teacher is Social Impact Investment Manager at Lendlease, an international integrated property development, construction and investment management business.
Rien van Gendt
Rien van Gendt is the former Executive Director of the Van Leer Group Foundation in Amstelveen, Netherlands.