Speakers — World Communities Forum

Adwoa Kwateng-Kluvitse

Head of Global Advocacy and Partnerships, Forward UK

Adwoa Kwateng-Kluvitse has been a long standing member of FORWARD. Starting in 1986 working in different capacities on the Board of Trustees, finally becoming a staff member (Director) in 2000. She left FORWARD in 2007 to work as the Country Director for ActionAid Ghana. Returning to UK in 2014, Adwoa re-joined FORWARD and is currently Head of Global Advocacy and Partnerships. In her current role of Head of Global Advocacy and Partnerships (FORWARD), Adwoa manages FORWARD Africa projects implemented in Sierra Leone, Ghana, Uganda, Tanzania, Ethiopia and Somaliland — in all these countries social norms on VAWG include the acceptance of female genital mutilation (FGM), child marriage among others. Her role also includes working with UK diaspora communities on issues that impact them and their home counties and undertaking advocacy to change policies that negatively impact them. Adwoa has a Bachelor’s degree from the George Washington University (Washington DC) and a Master’s in Clinical Psychology from the University of Ghana, Legon. She is currently a member of the General Assembly of ActionAid Greece.

Ai-jen Poo

Co-founder & Executive Director, National Domestic Workers Alliance

Ai-jen Poo is the co-founder and Executive Director of the National Domestic Workers Alliance, a non-profit organization working to bring quality work, dignity and fairness to the growing numbers of workers who care and clean in our homes, the majority of whom are immigrants and women of color. In 12 short years, with the help of more than 70 local affiliate organizations and chapters and over 200,000 members, the National Domestic Workers Alliance has passed Domestic Worker Bills of Rights in 9 states and the city of Seattle, and brought over 2 million home care workers under minimum wage protections. Ai-jen believes the future can be glimpsed in the margins of our economy and society — both the potential threats on the horizon and the solutions. Ai-jen Poo is also a leading voice in the women’s movement. In 2019 along with Ceclie Richards and Alicia Garza, Ai-jen co-founded SuperMajority, a new home for women's activism, training and mobilizing a multiracial, intergenerational community who will fight for gender equity together. Ai-jen serves as a Senior Advisor to Care in Action, a nonprofit, nonpartisan group dedicated to fighting for a civic voice for millions of women of color, particularly domestic workers in the United States. She has been recognized among Fortune’s 50 World’s Greatest Leaders and Time’s 100 Most Influential People in the World, and she has been the recipient of countless awards, including a 2014 MacArthur “Genius” Award.

Bianca Santana

Journalist & Activist, UNEafro Brasil

Bianca Santana is a journalist and writer, with a master in Education and a PhD in Information Science at the University of São Paulo. She is also columnist of the magazine Gama and ECOA-UOL. She has been working on the development of Sueli Carneiro House, a space to gather memories of anti-racist fight in Brazil. As a member of UNEafro, she collaborates with the Black Coalition for Rights and is now dedicated to develop a new organization called Peregum Black Reference Institute.

Cecile Richards

Co-founder, Supermajority

Cecile Richards is a co-founder of Supermajority, an organization fighting for gender equity. She was president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America and Planned Parenthood Action Fund from 2006 to 2018 and before that, served as deputy chief of staff to Nancy Pelosi. In 2004, Richards founded and served as president of America Votes, a coalition of national grassroots organizations working to maximize registration, education, and voter participation. Author of the New York Times best-seller “Make Trouble” and a frequent speaker and commentator on politics and progressive issues, she was named one of TIME’s 100 Most Influential People in the World in 2011 and 2012.

Chelsea Clinton

Vice Chair, Clinton Foundation

As vice chair of the Clinton Foundation, Chelsea Clinton works alongside the Foundation’s leadership and partners to help create economic opportunity, improve public health, and inspire civic engagement and service across the United States and around the world. In particular, Chelsea focuses on promoting early brain and language development through the Too Small to Fail initiative, and uplifting/empowering female entrepreneurs and women-led businesses around the world through initiatives like the Caribbean-focused Women in Renewable Energy (WIRE) Network. In addition to her Foundation work, Chelsea also teaches at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health and has written several books for young readers. Chelsea holds a Bachelor of Arts from Stanford, a Master of Public Health from Columbia’s Mailman School of Public Health, and both a Master of Philosophy and a Doctorate in international relations from Oxford University. She lives with her husband Marc, their children Charlotte, Aidan and Jasper, and dog Soren in New York City.

Cheryl Dorsey

President, Echoing Green

Cheryl L. Dorsey is the president of Echoing Green, a global nonprofit that supports emerging social entrepreneurs and invests deeply in their ideas and leadership. A social entrepreneur herself, Cheryl received an Echoing Green Fellowship in 1992 to launch The Family Van, a community-based mobile health unit in Boston. Cheryl has served in two presidential administrations and currently serves on several boards including The Bridgespan Group and Skoll Foundation. She has received numerous awards, including the Pfizer Roerig History of Medicine Award, the Robert Kennedy Distinguished Public Service Award, and the Manual C. Carballo Memorial Prize. Cheryl has been named one of “America’s Best Leaders” by US News & World Report and the Center for Public Leadership at Harvard Kennedy School and one of The Nonprofit Times’ “Power and Influence Top 50.” She has a medical degree from Harvard Medical School and her master’s in public policy from Harvard Kennedy School.

Darren Walker

President, Ford Foundation

Darren Walker is president of the Ford Foundation, a $13 billion international social justice philanthropy. He is co-founder and chair of the Presidents’ Council on Disability Inclusion in Philanthropy. Before joining Ford, Darren was vice president at Rockefeller Foundation, overseeing global and domestic programs. In the 1990s, he was COO of the Abyssinian Development Corporation, Harlem’s largest community development organization. Educated exclusively in public schools, Darren was a member of the first Head Start class in 1965 and graduated from The University of Texas at Austin. He has been included on Time’s annual 100 Most Influential People in the World, Rolling Stone’s 25 People Shaping the Future, Fast Company’s Most Creative People in Business, and OUT Magazine’s Power.

Edgar Villanueva

Author, Activist and Founder of the Decolonizing Wealth Project

Edgar Villanueva is an award-winning author, activist and expert on issues of race, wealth, and philanthropy. Villanueva is the Principal of Decolonizing Wealth Project and Liberated Capital and author of the bestselling book Decolonizing Wealth (2018, 2021). He advises a range of organizations including national and global philanthropies, Fortune 500 companies, and entertainment on social impact strategies to advance racial equity from within and through their investment strategies. Villanueva holds a BSPH and MHA from the Gillings Global School of Public Health at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is an enrolled member of the Lumbee Tribe and resides in New York City.

Eugene Young, Jr.

President & CEO, Wilmington Urban League

Eugene Young has a background of working in the non-profit community, city, state, and federal government. Currently, he is the CEO & president of the Metropolitan Wilmington Urban League. Eugene co-founded Delaware Elite, a youth leadership development program that provided inner city youth with academic enrichment, leadership training, and access to college. As a result, he has received global recognition and training from the Clinton Global Initiative University and the World Economic Forum’s Global Shapers Program. Working for former Mayor and current United States Senator Cory Booker provided Eugene firsthand knowledge of how to overcome the challenges cities face. In Fall 2015, Eugene initiated the My Very Own Library project where he brought together private investors and the nonprofit community to promote childhood literacy by providing free books to 6,000 children across the state of Delaware. After his run for Mayor of Wilmington in 2016, finishing second in a crowded field by 234 votes, Eugene co-founded Network Delaware, a nonprofit that leverages citizen-led community empowerment, research analysis, and leadership development to enact lasting socioeconomic change.

George Gachie

Programme Assistant, UN-Habitat (Participatory Slum Upgrading Programme)

George has over 7 years of experience in the Development field having worked as a project officer with UN-Habitats’ Participatory Slum Upgrading Programme (PSUP), where he contributed to the success of piloting of the Community Managed Funds aimed at empowering women and youth economically, the success of the project has been replicated in other PSUP countries. George leads the community engagement of the PSUP. With a background in development studies and growing up in one of Nairobi’s biggest slum he has a good understanding of the slum dwellers’ needs and acceptable approaches to slum upgrading projects. He recently led UN-Habitat’s COVID-19 response activities in Mathare and Kibera Slums and is currently piloting the smart planet app with slum communities in Nairobi.

Glenisse Pagán Ortiz

Executive Director, Filantropia Puerto Rico

Upon graduating from University of Puerto Rico’s Mayagüez campus, Glenisse began working with Kodak and later with Motorola, who granted her a scholarship for a Master’s at Georgia Tech. For the next 17 years, Ms. Pagán worked at Lucent Technologies and Cisco Systems in a career that started as Systems Engineer and ended as a Business Developer Manager in charge of teams throughout all of Latin America. In 2011, Glenisse refocused her energy by offering personal and business consulting for clients in the construction, legal, retail and philanthropy sectors. She is the co-founder of Harimau Conservation, a nonprofit focused on empowering communities through conservation and education programs in Indonesia and Puerto Rico. Harimau won the Innovation prize at Fundación Banco Popular’s hackathon and contributed to Puerto Rican communities devastated by Hurricane María in 2017 through the installation of 41 water purification towers. Glenisse has been a consultant to NetHope, a humanitarian organization working with the community-based initiative of Information as Aid. In 2018, she began working as Chief Operating Officer for Filantropía Puerto Rico and in 2019 she was named its Executive Director.

Innocent Magambi

Founder, There Is Hope

A refugee from birth, Innocent spend the first 27 years of his life in five refugee camps in four Eastern and Southern Africa. Despite facing much hurt along his journey, he never allowed the adversity to define him or to determine his destiny. Instead, he became a change agent for fellow refugees and the host community in Malawi. Against all odds, he founded There is Hope, an organization that aims at mitigating the effects of long-term displacement among refugees and generational poverty among Malawians by providing access to education (secondary school sponsorship for girls, university bursaries and vocational training), job creation through social enterprise Kibebe, leadership development and advocacy for refugee rights. In 2015, Innocent wrote his memoir, Refugee for Life. On 26th January 2020, the African Diaspora Network awarded Innocent “Builders of Africa’s Future Award” in recognition of his organization’s effort to address issues affecting Africa.

Kennedy Odede

Founder & CEO, SHOFCO

Kennedy is one of Africa’s best-known community organizers and social entrepreneurs. The oldest of eight children, he became a street-child at the age of ten and dreamed about changing his community. In 2004, he had a job in a factory earning $1 for ten hours of work. He saved 20 cents and used this to buy a soccer ball and start Shining Hope for Communities (SHOFCO). Although he was entirely informally educated, Kennedy received a full scholarship to Wesleyan University, becoming one of Kibera’s first to receive an education from an American liberal arts institution. Kennedy was awarded 2010 Echoing Green Fellowship and was named to FORBES “30 under 30 lists” for top Social Entrepreneurs in 2014. He won the 2010 Dell Social Innovation Competition and is a member of the Clinton Global Initiative. His work has been featured by President Bill Clinton, Madonna, Beyonce, and on multiple occasions by Nicholas Kristof in The New York Times and his book A Path Appears. Kennedy’s own writing has appeared on the op-ed pages of The New York Times, CNN and Project Syndicate. Kennedy previously served as the youth co-chair for the United Nations International Commission for Financing of Global Education Opportunities. He currently serves on the Wangari Maathai Foundation board and Chaired the Varkey Foundation Alliance for Girls’ Education. Kennedy speaks six languages, is a senior fellow with Humanity in Action, and an Aspen Institute New Voices Fellow. Kennedy is a Young Global Leader (YGL) at the World Economic Forum and an Obama Foundation Africa Leader.

Dr. Mosoka P. Fallah

Founder & CEO, Refuge Place International

Dr. Fallah is the founder and executive director of Refuge Place International, and NGO in Liberia founded to address the issues of access to quality affordable health care that impacts maternal and infant mortality among poor urban and rural dwellers. He was awarded the USAID Liberia Health Worker and the Development Person of the Year 2017 award for his work with Refuge Place. He is the former director general of the National Public Health Institute of Liberia (NPHIL), co-founded in 2017 and developed as a consequence of the 2014/2015 Ebola outbreak. For his work building community-level trust in the Ebola response, Dr. Fallah was named a TIME Magazine Person of the Year in 2014. In total, Mosoka’s extensive experience includes more than ten years’ experience in development work with consultancies to the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), Chemonics, the President’s Malaria Initiative (PMI), the World Health Organization, the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), Doctors without Borders, and Action Against Hunger. He has won several prestigious national and international awards.

Nelly Slebo Cooper

Director, West Point Women for Health and Development Organization (WPWHDO)

Nelly Slebo Cooper is a Liberian native born in Firestone Harbel, Liberia. Very early in her childhood she started to stand against injustice and human rights violations, and was always helping those in her community. In 2002, she contributed to establishing the West Point Women for Health and Development Organization (WPWHDO), to which she was elected to serve as President in 2005. While serving as President and Project Coordinator, she has supervised the implementation of many groundbreaking and forward thinking programs, and maintained oversight of operations while being the main spokesperson of the institution towards the media, government, donors and other stakeholders. Nelly now serves as the Director of WPWHDO

Nicholas Kristof

Columnist, The New York Times

Nicholas Kristof has been a columnist for The New York Times since 2001. He grew up on a farm in Oregon, graduated from Harvard, studied law at Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar, and then studied Arabic in Cairo. He was a longtime foreign correspondent for The New York Times and speaks various languages. Mr. Kristof has won two Pulitzer Prizes for his coverage of Tiananmen Square and the genocide in Darfur, along with many humanitarian awards such as the Anne Frank Award and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. With his wife, Sheryl WuDunn, he has written several books, most recently “A Path Appears” (September 2014) about how to make a difference. Mr. Kristof and Ms. WuDunn are the parents of Gregory, Geoffrey and Caroline. Mr. Kristof enjoys running, backpacking and having his Chinese corrected by his children.

Nsé Ufot

CEO, The New Georgia Project

Nsé Ufot is the Chief Executive Officer of the New Georgia Project (NGP) and its affiliate, New Georgia Project Action Fund (NGP AF). Nsé leads both organizations with a data-informed approach and a commitment to developing tools that leverage technology with the goal of making it easier for every voter to engage in every election. Nsé and her team are also developing Georgia’s home-grown talent by training and organizing local activists across the state. She has dedicated her life and career to working on civil, human and workers’ rights issues and leads two organizations whose complementary aim is to strengthen Georgia’s democracy. Under Nsé’s leadership, NGP has registered nearly 425,000 Georgians to vote.

Dr. Obiageli “Oby” Ezekwesili

Senior Economic Adviser, AEDPI

Dr. Obiageli (Oby) Katryn Ezekwesili is a chartered accountant, former Nigerian Minister of Education, and former Vice President for the World Bank. She was until recently the Senior Economic Advisor to Open Society, aimed at building vibrant and tolerant societies with democratically accountable governments. She currently runs the Africa Economic Development Policy Initiative (AEDPI), which provides policy expertise and advisory support to African Heads of Government and their cabinets. She is Co-Founder of #BringBackOurGirls Movement, Founder and Convener of the #RedCardMovement (RCM), and Founder of #FixPolitics. Dr. Ezekwesili holds a Master’s degree in International Law and Diplomacy from the University of Lagos, and a Masters in Public Policy and Administration from the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. She was recognized by Time Magazine as one of the Time-100 Most Influential People and by New York Times as one of the 25 Women of Impact for 2015. Dr. Ezekwesili is married to Pastor Chinedu Ezekwesili. They have three sons — Chinemelum, Chinweuba and Chidera.

Dr. Quratulain Bakhteari

Founding Director, Institute for Development Studies and Practices

Dr. Quratulain Bakhteari’s over thirty five years of experience in community organization and development resulted in creating University of Community Development based in Balochistan, a province of Pakistan. Her pioneering work in Pakistan to mobilize people for education, sanitation, women empowerment, primary health care, organization building and professional development, by engaging young people excluded from mainstream education and development, impacted the communities at one level and policies at the national level. Thus creating systems of learning that combines professional development in to leadership.

The Institute for Development Studies and Practices, IDSP-Pakistan is her brain child. Based in Quetta, it’s a space which allows young people, to learn, reflect, and practice, community development and understand the local-global nexus. IDSP has impacted the life of 185,531 people since 1998 across Pakistan in community development with local leadership. Approx. half IDSP’s graduates are women from traditional societies of Pakistan.

Besides these pioneering works for which she is nationally and internationally recognized through Skoll Fund for Social Entrepreneur in 2006 and Ashoka’s in 1999. The government of Balochistan has awarded her the “Life Time Achievement Award” in 2016 and she was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2014.

Samantha Power

Former US Ambassador to the UN and Author of the Best-Selling Memoir, “The Education of an Idealist”

Samantha Power is a Professor of Practice at the Harvard Kennedy School and Harvard Law School. From 2013-2017, Power served as the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations and as a member of President Obama’s cabinet. From 2009-2013, Power served on the National Security Council as Special Assistant to the President for Multilateral Affairs and Human Rights. Power began her career as a journalist, reporting from places such as Bosnia, East Timor, Kosovo, Rwanda, Sudan, and Zimbabwe, and she was the founding executive director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at the Kennedy School. Power’s book, “A Problem from Hell”: America and the Age of Genocide won the Pulitzer Prize in 2003. She is also the author of the New York Times bestsellers Chasing the Flame: One Man’s Fight to Save the World (2008) and The Education of an Idealist: A Memoir(2019), which was named one of the best books of 2019 by the New York Times, Washington Post, Economist, NPR, and TIME. Power earned a B.A. from Yale University and a J.D. from Harvard Law School.

Winny Obure

Founder & Director, Teenseed Africa

Winny Obure is a young feminist activist working on Women and Girls sexual reproductive health and rights (SRHR), social justice and grassroots movement building. She has a keen interest in using her advocacy work to influence policies both at the National and Regional levels as well as championing for leaders to be accountable especially on the promises they make. Winny, is the Founder and Director at Teenseed, a community based organisation that works to nurture young people into leadership, giving women and girls the agency, power and voice to articulate their issues and take full control of their lives. Additionally, she coordinates the young women leaders grassroots movement that brings together social justice and female human rights defenders from urban informal settlements and marginalised rural areas to fight patriarchy, give alternative voices to issues of National interest. She has previously worked as a regional lead for Women Leadership, Advocacy and Capacity Building as well as the Athena Network’s Coordinator for the #WhatGirlsWant Project, working with and supporting grassroots young women and girls to spearhead policy formulation and strengthening at the community level. Winny strongly and unapologetically advocates for Sustainable Development Goals no. 5 in addition to 3 and 4. She believes that women at the grassroots level have been the missing link on development conversations and that's why the world still doesn't have sustainable interventions to end gender inequalities and injustices. “We are the solutions we have been waiting for.”