CLIMA FUND - Key Persons

Job Titles:

• Director of Communications at Global Greengrants Fund

B de Gersigny is the Director of Communications at Global Greengrants Fund. B is a communications professional and community organizer from South Africa. For two decades they have amplified messages and movements for transformative social change. B served as Director of Communications at Astraea Lesbian Foundation for Justice for seven years, leading strategic communications efforts to build capacity and resources for LGBTQI communities, globally.

Job Titles:

• Communications & Development Manager

As a human rights activist, advocate, and lawyer, Gargi has been involved in the feminist and environmental movement in South Asia for over twelve years. She is committed to decolonising the social justice movement and believes in mobilizing people power to create lasting social change. She graduated from Leiden University with an Advanced LLM in European and International Human Rights Law in 2018. Gargi lives in Haarlem, where she spends her free time exploring the city's many museums and biking around North Holland.

Job Titles:

• Learning & Evaluation Manager

Hannah is an activist educator, curriculum designer, writer, project manager, and connector of people, with a background in supporting grassroot social movements across Europe and Southeast Asia on food sovereignty and land access - including resisting land grabbing and extractivism and their roots of racism and colonization. She is passionate about creating spaces for people to reimagine and shape their futures toward a just and greater collective purpose, by connecting them with tools, perspective shifts, and movements. In doing so, she seeks to highlight the interlinkages between the personal and political, by raising awareness of how we embody and replicate patterns of oppression - from patriarchal value systems to racism -through our relationships to each other and the earth. Understanding how extractivist thinking creates separation and domination and cultivates ecological and social injustice is central to decolonizing these relationships, enabling healing, and promoting justice. Hannah holds a BA in Development Studies from Brown University and an MSc in Refugee and Forced Migration Studies from the University of Oxford.

Job Titles:

• President & CEO of Global Greengrants

Laura Garcia is the President & CEO of Global Greengrants. Laura is a Mexican feminist who has advocated for human rights, social justice, and civil society throughout her career. Before joining Global Greengrants, Laura served for seven years as the Executive Director of Fondo Semillas, a Mexican nonprofit organization that finances grassroots organizations to achieve gender equality. Laura has vast experience in grassroots philanthropy, human rights, and movements for social justice, and she has co-created networks to promote community philanthropy in the Global South. She holds a Master's Degree in International Peace and Security, from King's College, London. She currently serves on the boards of Oxfam Mexico, Justicia Transicional MX, and El Día Después.

Job Titles:

• Director

Lindley is dedicated to building solidarity for grassroots movements advancing just and regenerative solutions to climate change. In addition to coordinating the CLIMA Fund, Lindley is the Co-Founder of Blue Heart, an organization that organizes millennial donors to give to frontline organizations in the U.S. In these roles she is working to advance accountable philanthropy, and to elevate the stories of grassroots organizations building political power. Lindley has a M.S. in Earth System Science and a B.A. in Human Biology from Stanford University. Lindley is also a PhD candidate at the University of Vermont; loves watercoloring and partner dancing; and joyfully tends land along Squalicum Creek in Lummi/Nooksack territory near Bellingham, Washington.

Job Titles:

• Hub Committee

Rajiv provides overall leadership of the Philanthropic Partnerships Program at Thousand Currents, overseeing donor engagement, the Thousand Currents Academy, Learning and Evaluation, the Buen Vivir Fund, and Diaspora Partnerships. He currently serves on the Board of the Management Assistance Group and on the Stewardship Circle of Thrive East Bay. Rajiv has a Bachelor's in English and History from Newman University in Wichita, KS, and a Master's in history from The Ohio State University.

Job Titles:

• Director of Global Philanthropy at Grassroots International

Saulo Araujo is the Director of Global Philanthropy at Grassroots International, mobilizing financial and other resources to initiatives led by grassroots organizations and social movements worldwide. He has served as a philanthropic advisor for the International Planning Committee on Food Sovereignty (IPC) - a coordination space of social movements and allies on global policies around food, biodiversity, peasant and indigenous rights, and the livelihood of fishing, pastoralist and peasant families. He also worked as the director of the Global Movements Program at WhyHunger and the Latin America Program Coordinator at Grassroots International. Saulo is a senior fellow of the Environmental Leadership Program and has served as a board member and advisor for many organizations, including The Food Project, New England Grassroots Environmental Fund, and Justice at Work.

Job Titles:

• Executive Director of Thousand Currents

Solomé Lemma is the Executive Director of Thousand Currents. With over 15 years of experience in philanthropy and social change, Solomé Lemma is committed to community-owned and -determined social transformation. Solomé joins Thousand Currents most recently from Africans in the Diaspora (AiD), an initiative she co-founded and led for four years before its merger with Thousand Currents. She is also one of the founders of Africa Responds, a diaspora-led humanitarian initiative that was created to galvanize support for grassroots organizations that fought the Ebola outbreak in parts of West Africa. Previously, she served as Global Fund for Children's Senior Program Officer for Africa for over five years, managing a portfolio of over 100 grassroots organizations in about 25 countries. Solomé has also worked with the UN Development Programme in Ethiopia, Human Rights Watch in New York City, and the International Rescue Committee in Liberia. She received a Master's in Public Policy from the Harvard Kennedy School and a Bachelor's in International Relations from Stanford University. Solomé was recognized as a White House Champion of Change for her work with diaspora communities and has been featured in both Forbes and the Washington Post. She was also named as one of Foreign Policy Magazine's "100 women to follow on Twitter" at @innovateafrica.