Elizabeth helps nonprofit organizations and foundations develop the organizational capacity they need to meet their social missions. She brings a "systems" perspective to assist organizations in resetting aspirations and strategy, and evaluating and developing key capacities, including leadership and management, fund-raising, and marketing and governance. She is often hired to assist with strategic planning and long-term organizational change efforts.

She has experience working with organizations that are making the transition from entrepreneurial to professionally managed organizations. She enjoys working with organizations that are making this developmental shift and are in the process of building the organizational infrastructure and management systems to support their missions.

In addition to a specialty in nonprofit and foundation administration and management, Elizabeth brings an interest and background in working with women's organizations, developed over a five year-period of training with Alexandra Merrill, a pioneer in the study of women's group process. This training informs her values and approach to working with groups in general, and women's groups specifically.

She has spent the past 16 years working in journalism and nonprofit and foundation administration and management. Most recently, she served as Director of Marketing and Communications for the Maine Community Foundation, responsible for creating a strategic marketing program, and for raising money to build eight rural, endowed funds that covered the most rural parts of the state.

In addition to her work with nonprofits and foundations, Elizabeth just bought a farmhouse on the Maine coast, where she plans do a lot of reading and cooking this winter, and will develop vegetable and perennial gardens come spring. She is also an avid outdoor enthusiast, and hikes, snowshoes and skis regularly.

Ann Hansen
East Tennessee Community Foundation
Knoxville, Tennessee

Ann Hansen is serving her third term as a member of the East Tennessee Foundation Board of Directors. She was the Board representative for the Foundation during the first round of the Ford Foundation's Rural Development Community Initiative effort. Her recent efforts for the Foundation has been leading the Task Force of Board and staff to develop the guidelines and grant criteria for the Opportunity Fund of the Foundation. This Fund will enable the Foundation to provide grants targeted at community building and social capital formation throughout the Foundation's service area as well as extending the Foundation's capacity and ability to serve its constituents.

Ann is a native East Tennessean. She is a nuclear engineer by profession and is the founder of an engineering consulting firm in Oak Ridge Tennessee that specializes in risk assessment and regulatory strategy development and implementation for the Department of Energy and its subcontractors. She currently serves as Chair of the Board and Chief Executive Officer of her company, H&R Technical Associates, Inc. She also serves on the Vestry of her parish, is active in the process facilitation program with Leadership Knoxville and serves on corporate and nonprofit boards in the Knoxville-Oak Ridge area. She also serves on the Board of Trustees of Florida Southern College in Lakeland, Florida.

Ann holds a summa cum laude degree in Mathematics and Physics from Florida Southern College, a cum laude Master's degree in Physics from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, and a magna cum laude degree in Nuclear Engineering from Carnegie-Mellon University. When not working and supporting the East Tennessee Foundation, Ann's interests include sculling and sweep rowing, orchid raising and gardening, hiking, reading and watching women's basketball, particularly the University of Tennessee Lady Vols. She and her husband, Grant, live with the orchids in Knoxville.

Terry Lynn Holley
East Tennessee Foundation
Knoxville, Tennessee

Terry Lynn Holley is Vice President for Programs and Rural Development for the East Tennessee Foundation. The East Tennessee Foundation is a community foundation serving 24 counties of East Tennessee with a mission to build permanent resources to enrich lives and strengthen communities in East Tennessee. The Foundation's total assets are in excess of $54 million with annual grantmaking activities for the year 2001 totaling over 14 million dollars from its 290-plus funds and supporting foundations. The main areas of interest include community development, arts and culture, youth at risk, and education.

Terry began her tenure with the Foundation in 1991 as a Program Officer. Over the course of the last ten years, she has managed the Foundation's grantmaking activities and the following national initiatives: Neighborhoods and Rural Communities Small Grants Programs, a program initiated through a partnership with the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation which provides technical assistance and project funds to low-income community-based neighborhood organizations and rural communities; the Rural Development and Community Foundations Initiative, an initiative in partnership with The Ford Foundation and Aspen Institute that focuses on building the capacity of community-based groups to plan and implement strategies for increasing the economic security of disadvantaged families while enhancing community viability; and the East Tennessee Collaborative on Violence Prevention, an initiative in partnership with the National Funding Collaborative on Violence Prevention.

In her current capacity, Terry has responsibility for management and oversight of the Foundation's grantmaking activities, the coordination of technical assistance programs, the development of regional affiliate funds for rural communities and donors, and the management of the Community Partnerships for Cultural Participation Initiative in partnership with the Wallace-Reader's Digest Funds.

Other professional activities that capture Terry's imagination include her work as a consultant for The Ford Foundation's Africa Foundation's Learning Groups which provides for endless adventures on the "Dark Continent," and her service as a faculty member of the Asset-Based Community Development (ABCD) Institute, a project of the Institute for Policy Research at Northwestern University under the direction of John McKnight and Jody Kretzmann.

Prior to joining the staff of the East Tennessee Foundation, Terry served for 13 years as executive director of Project Art Builds Learning Experiences, Inc. (Project ABLE). Project ABLE, a nonprofit venture, collaborated with Head Start programs and public schools in twenty-six rural Appalachian counties of East Tennessee to provide an integrated approach to early childhood education through the use of the performing arts.

Terry is Louisiana born, South Carolina raised and a self declared Tennessean. She lives on a farm where she enjoys the companionship and comic relief of her dogs Yankey and Shoemaker. A lover of the great outdoors, Terry can be found embracing her "seasonal favorites", splitting firewood, critter watching, hiking, kayaking, and swimming.

Gregory Ben Johnson
Greater New Orleans Foundation
New Orleans, Louisiana

Gregory Ben Johnson (Ben) is President & CEO of The Greater New Orleans Foundation. Since joining the Foundation in 1991, the Foundation's assets have grown from $11 million to $100 million. As President & CEO, Ben has focused the Foundation on three goals: 1) to create a legacy of permanent endowments for our region's future generations, 2) to connect donors to nonprofits they care about in the region so they can build living legacies, and 3) to partner with local nonprofits to enhance the quality of life of the Greater New Orleans region.

The Greater New Orleans Foundation has participated in three Ford Initiatives under Ben's leadership: The Ford-MacArthur Leadership Program, Changing Communities, Diverse Needs Program and the Ford Rural Economic Development Initiative.

Ben was a founding board member and served as secretary of the Second Harvesters Food Bank and presently serves as an advisor to the New Orleans Neighborhood Development Collaborative and the New Orleans Jobs Initiative. He also serves on the Regional School-to-Work Regional Governance Board, the Junior League Advisory Board and the Executive Committee of the Council for A Better Louisiana (CABL). Ben is chairman of the New Orleans Regional Leadership Institute (NORLI) and on the national board of Community Foundations of America.

Since 1993, Ben has been a Faculty Fellow in Economics for the Foundation for the MidSouth. In 1995 he was honored as a Peaceful Liberator by the New Orleans Museum of Art and in 1996 was selected as a Role Model by the Young Leadership Council.

Prior to joining The Greater New Orleans Foundation, Ben served as Executive Director of the Archdiocese of the New Orleans Social Apostolate Poverty Program. He was responsible for a USDA Food Program for 60,000 mothers, children, infants and senior citizens, distributing 29 million pounds of food per year for Second Harvesters Food Bank and a Summer Education Program working with 2,000 inner-city children and eight multi-purpose Social Service Centers. He also supervised the annual $1 million fund drive that provided seed monies for these community initiatives.

Ben has a Bachelor's Degree from St. Columban's in Oconomowoc, Wisconsin and a Masters of Business Administration from Tulane University. He is married and has two very active teenagers.

Heather Larkin Eason
Arkansas Community Foundation
Little Rock, Arkansas

Heather Larkin Eason is a native of Charleston, Arkansas (definitely rural Arkansas with a population of 1,500!). She attended Hendrix College in Conway, Arkansas, and while at Hendrix, she competed in several sports including volleyball, cross-country, track, and basketball. She graduated magna cum laude and with distinction in Economics and Business. She then went to work for Ernst and Young, LLP and became a Certified Public Accountant. After working at Ernst and Young for a couple of years, she returned to the academic arena and graduated from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock School of Law. While at the UALR School of Law she served as Survey/Comments Editor for the UALR Law Journal.

Since August 1998, Heather has been with the Arkansas Community Foundation where she works with donors, professional advisors, and Affiliate Community Foundations to build philanthropic funds for the benefit of Arkansas (the absolute best job in the world – helping other people gift their money to wonderful causes around this great state!). In 2001, Heather was named a Hull Fellow and attended the Hull Leadership Program, a program to nurture and inspire the Southeast's next generation of philanthropic leaders.

Heather is a member of various organizations including Arkansas Association of Women Lawyers, the Arkansas Bar Association, Arkansas Society of CPA's, and Arkansas Women Executives. She is a Board member of the Central Arkansas Estate Council, and Secretary of the Arkansas Chapter of the National Committee on Planned Giving.

She is married to Greg Eason and they live in Little Rock. They enjoy camping, hiking, cycling, and competing in various adventure races and ultra sports. They have travelled to Nepal and will be going to Vietnam this spring.

Marion Kane
Barr Foundation
Boston, Massachusetts

Marion is the Executive Director of the Barr Foundation, a new private family foundation serving the greater Boston region. Over the past year, the Foundation has been engaged in thinking and planning around a unique strategic premise: what if foundations are really in the knowledge business more than the dollars business. Applying this principle has meant designing a foundation that centrally positions knowledge creation and sharing and transitioning/aligning staffing, programming and grantmaking practices to support knowledge-based goals.

Marion began her career as a journalist at ABC in New York. She later became the outings editor of the Sierra Club Magazine in San Francisco and then moved to Mt. Desert Island, Maine in 1972 with her husband Dan and two young children to start a new college with a focus on human ecology (Any time you have trouble defining "community foundation", try explaining a degree in Human Ecology) In Maine, she worked as a feature writer and editor for the Bar Harbor Times and Director of Public Relations for the College before leaving her job to help start the Maine Community Foundation.

With no previous experience in philanthropy, she and the founding executive director learned the foundation business from the ground up. Among other roles, Marion set up the foundation's accounting system, IT system, grantmaking program, development office, investment program and public relations function. She eventually presided over 7 software conversions for the accounting and grantmaking systems! In 1989 she became President of the Foundation and led its growth from $4 million dollars in assets to $85 million in 1999, and from two staff to 14. She also founded the Maine Grantmakers Association and the Maine Grants Information Center which promote the development of philanthropy in Maine and serve the funding and nonprofit community.

Marion graduated from Wellesley College with a BA in English literature in 1966. A confirmed country girl who has canoed every stream and climbed every mountain in north coastal Maine, she now lives (somewhat reluctantly) on the waterfront in Boston and gets back to Maine as often as possible. Her most recent travels have taken her to the Kalahari Desert in Namibia where she spent a week living with a Kalahari Bushman family.

Leslie Lilly
The Foundation for Appalachian Ohio
Nelsonville, Ohio

Leslie Lilly is the President and CEO for the Foundation for Appalachian Ohio. She is past Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of the Mississippi-based Foundation for the Mid South; served as Director of Community Development at the North Carolina Rural Development Center, was founder and Executive Director of the Southeast Women's Employment Coalition in Kentucky, and is past Director of the Southern Appalachian Leadership Development Program. Leslie found her path to rural pursuits when she married a farmer in central Florida and discovered that peanuts grow below rather than above the ground. This epiphany made it possible for her to begin a lifelong exploration of things not always as they appear to be, or if things appear a certain way, to question if the appearance is, indeed, the reality. She never runs out of subject matter. Although weakened by age, she confines her inquiries to fewer topics and a more disciplined pedagogical approach.

She is a current board member of Communities by Choice, based in Berea, Kentucky and the Dairy Barn in Athens, Ohio and has also been active as a volunteer regionally and nationally in numerous other organizations, including: Southeastern Council of Foundations (SECF), past board member and former chair of the SECF Legislative Committee; Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation, Little Rock Arkansas, former trustee and Vice President, from 1983 to 1991; Women and Foundations/Corporate Philanthropy, New York, past board member from 1986 to 1990; Highlander Research and Education Center, Knoxville, Tennessee, past board member, from 1996 to 2000; Southern Rural Development Initiative (SRDI), board and founding member from1993-1999; Southern Regional Council, Atlanta, board member, from 1989 to 1994.

Lilly is the recipient of numerous national awards and fellowships, including appointment for three years as a John Hay Whitney Fellow and a three-year recipient of a W.K. Kellogg International Fellowship to support her work on behalf of building philanthropy in rural and underserved communities. She also was selected in 1999 as a Salzburg Fellow to participate in an International Seminar on Rural Development in Global Communities in Salzburg, Austria. She is waiting for her MacArthur genius award but she is not betting her retirement on it. She wisely did not invest in Enron.

Madeleine McGee
The Community Foundation Serving Coastal South Carolina
Charleston, South Carolina

Madeleine McGee is President of The Community Foundation Serving Coastal South Carolina (TCF). TCF is a community foundation serving eight counties along the coast of SC with a mission of meeting community needs by fostering philanthropy through customized services to donors and the community. The Foundation's current assets are in excess of $55 million with grants for the fiscal year 2000-2001 totaling over $3.4 million from its 300-plus funds and supporting foundations. Its six main areas of interest include arts, education, human needs, health, conservation and preservation and neighborhood and community development.

Madeleine began her tenure with TCF in 1996 as Donor Services Director. Over the course of the last five years, she has been part of the TCF's efforts to become a regional community foundation as it has expanded its service area from three to eight counties (pop. 800,000. 70/30 -white/black population). The region is fairly diverse with communities that range from gated, island retreats for wealthy retirees to small rural towns struggling to survive.

TCF has participated in the Neighborhoods and Rural Communities Small Grants Programs, a program initiated through a partnership with the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation which provides technical assistance and project funds to low-income community-based neighborhood organizations and rural communities, and the Rural Development and Community Foundations Initiative, an initiative in partnership with The Ford Foundation and Aspen Institute that focuses on building the capacity of community-based groups to plan and implement strategies for increasing the economic security of disadvantaged families while enhancing community viability.

Prior to joining the staff, she worked for 13 years in the fields of real estate, nonprofit management and economic development. Madeleine was born and raised in Charleston. She attended the University of Virginia, where she earned a BA and MBA. She lives on Sullivan's Island where she enjoys the beach and gardening.

Peter Pennekamp
Humboldt Area Foundation
Bayside, California

Peter Pennekamp is executive director of the Humboldt Area Foundation, located in Bayside, California. Peter's parents came as refugees to this country. He has been lost since birth. Since then he has been executive director of the Humboldt Area Foundation in California since 1993. Prior positions include vice-president of National Public Radio and program director for the National Endowment for the Arts, both in Washington D.C.

Peter's current service on boards of directors includes the California Endowment, one of America's ten largest private foundations, board chair of the Internews Network, the largest global nonprofit media organization, and the Coalition of Community Foundations for Youth. He is a founding member of the League of California Community Foundations. He has often been a policy or grants panelist, including for the Ford, Rockefeller and David and Lucile Packard Foundations and for the National Endowment for the Humanities, Corporation for Public Broadcasting and Independent Television Service.

George Foster Peabody Awards have been presented to two radio series that Mr. Pennekamp was instrumental in developing, Heat, with John Hockenbery and Wade in the Water, with Bernice Johnson Reagon. In 2001 he was presented with the Award for Exemplary Contributions to the Arts in California from the California Arts Council.

Bill Pratt
Montana Community Foundation
Helena, Montana

For almost six years Bill has served as the Program Director for the Montana Community Foundation. He provides staff support for the Foundation'sProgram Committee and administers its affiliate development program, which has created 49 local community foundations. Bill assists the Foundation's nine regional committees in building their capacity. In addition, he works with nonprofit organizations across Montana to start and build endowments. Bill is MCF's liaison to the Governor's Task Force on Endowments and Philanthropy, which created Montana's highly successful Endowment Tax Credit, and was critical for its initial passage and extension to 2007. He led the effort to build the Montana Fund for Tolerance, which provides grants for community and statewide project grants to promote tolerance, increase awareness about discrimination and combat bigotry and racism.

Working with MCF's Development Director, Bill helped raise matching funds for a $300,000 Challenge Grant. He researched and designed the Foundation's Socially Responsive Investment Portfolio, in which the Fund and other endowments are invested. Pratt also administers the Foundation's Web Site and publishes MCFNet Notes, its electronic newsletter, which each month provides 500+ subscribers with information about affiliate development and the availability of human, financial and information resources.

Bill even promoted endowments in Montana prior to working with the Foundation and created a Fundamentals of Endowment Development seminar, which he presented nationally. While Director of Organizational Services and Community Arts Coordinator for the Montana Arts Council from l979 to l996, Bill administered grant programs distributing $550,000 annually, managed Montana's Challenge Grant program that created endowments of $3.5 million, and obtained $970,000 in grants to support rural art's activities. He provided technical assistance in nonprofit management to Montana's 500 nonprofit arts and cultural organizations, supervised the Council's Rural Arts Specialist, and initiated rural nonprofit organizations and networks using innovative strategies for organizational, resource and endowment development. Bill has served as a panelist and evaluator for National Endowment for the Arts and State Arts Agencies, conducted workshops on rural development, endowments and computer networking nationally, and helped direct Art Beyond Boundaries, a five-state conference for rural arts organizations. He has served on the steering committees of Arts Wire, a national communication system for the arts and the Benton Foundation's Open Studio project.

Born and raised in suburban New York he wandered west to New Jersey receiving a B.A. from Rutgers University and later to the University of Wisconsin obtaining an M.S. in Sociology with a minor in film making. Proud of his checkered employment past, Bill has also been a craftsman in forged iron, an adobe plasterer and living history blacksmith at Bents Old Fort National Historic Site, a university researcher and a documentary film maker. After a number of years in Denver and rural Colorado Bill found himself in Montana where on his time off he gardens (the eatin' kind), putters in his woodshop, paddles the lakes and rivers of Montana in his kayak, cross country skis when it snows and generally tries to forget about rural development work. He finds himself back east three to four times a year to visit his parents who though elderly are still live in their own home.

Carla A. Roberts
Arizona Community Foundation
Phoenix, Arizona

Carla A. Roberts, is Vice President of Affiliates for the Arizona Community Foundation with responsibility for managing five field personnel who provide service to a statewide network of 12 affiliates and several community funds across Arizona. The affiliate network includes more than 160 board members and volunteers engaged in the development of community foundations from fundraising to grant making. In addition to working closely with the field personnel, Ms. Carla draws upon more than 25 years of not for profit management experience to provide internal consulting services, such as board development and strategic planning for each affiliate community.

Prior to joining the Foundation, Carla was the Executive Director of Atlatl, National Service Organization for Native American Arts for seven and a half years. In this capacity, she provided consulting, training, and technical assistance services to indigenous cultural organizations nationally and internationally, including Mexico and Australia.

Carla holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Studio Art from the University of Alaska in Fairbanks and a Master of Fine Arts in Arts Administration from the University of Iowa in Iowa City. She was a National Endowment for the Arts Fellow with the Division of Human Rights in 1981. Carla is a published author and public speaker with special skills in group facilitation and consensus building. Her professional associations include Native Americans in Philanthropy, National Planned Giving Roundtable of Arizona and the community foundations affinity groups for advancement and affiliate professions within the Council on Foundations.

Carla bought a home in Central Phoenix a decade in advance of the rush for urban infill and lives in a community that has almost too much social capital at times. In the summer she can usually gather a salad from her urban garden in the back yard. Carla enjoys boats and water sports—that's why she lives in the desert!

Patricia Vasbinder
Brooksville, Maine (summer)
Concord, New Hampshire (winter)

Patricia Vasbinder has 25 years senior management experience in the business and not-for-profit sectors, during which time she was the architect of national and international quality management initiatives. In addition, she created nationally disseminated models to coalesce corporate and community leadership in behalf of critical community needs.

Ms. Vasbinder was Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of the New Hampshire Charitable Foundation, one of the country's largest community foundations with assets over $200 million. Prior to being named Chief Operating Officer, she served as the Foundation's Chief Financial Officer. Before joining the Charitable Foundation, Ms. Vasbinder was a Vice President of Citibank. She currently serves as a consultant to nonprofits and businesses.

Ms. Vasbinder has served as director of numerous nonprofit organizations in the arts and economic development, as well as those working to assist low-income individuals achieve economic independence. She most recently has served as Chair of the Concord Community Music School Board of Trustees, Incorporator of the Capital Center for the Arts, Director of the New Hampshire Community Loan Fund, and member of the national advisory council of the Friends of Women's Rights National Park. She was a founding Director of Quality Care Partners, a paraprofessional healthcare cooperative in New Hampshire.

Ms. Vasbinder is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Bucknell University, and earned a M. Ed. from the College of William and Mary. She has served on the faculty of the Consumer Bankers Association Graduate School of Bank Management at the University of Virginia, and the Pacific Coast Banking School at the University of Washington.

Ms. Vasbinder and her husband, Victor Montana, live in New Hampshire in the winter, and on the coast of Maine the rest of the time. They are currently living in the midst of a major construction project at their Maine home, so should you get bored at this workshop, you might consider shaking Ms. Vasbinder to see if you can get sawdust to emerge from her person.

Ms. Vasbinder skis in the winter, and sails her little cat boat, "Sweet Pea", in the summer. When not functioning as an over-achiever, she dotes on her grandchildren: Rebecca-the-Perfect, Eleanor-the-Magnificent, Jack-the-Great and Sam-the-Splendid. She also enjoys Drum and Bugle Corps competitions (of which there are nearly none in New England), and dairy goat shows (better luck on that one). She is currently studying steel drums, and working on her pie crusts.

Jeffrey Yost
Nebraska Community Foundation
Lincoln, Nebraska

Jeffrey G. Yost currently serves as Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer for the Nebraska Community Foundation, Inc. In this capacity Yost manages all development, finance and administrative functions of the Foundation. The Foundation is a nonprofit statewide organization assisting communities, organizations and donors to mobilize charitable giving as a community betterment strategy. The Foundation has affiliated funds in over 175 Nebraska communities and $14 million in assets under management. Over the past four years, Foundation affiliated funds have reinvested over $18 million in Nebraska communities and projects. The Foundation also assists its affiliated funds by providing extensive education/training services, implementing public-private partnerships, fundraising and strategic development assistance.

Other leadership positions and responsibilities Yost presently holds include being a board member for the Nebraska Microenterprise Partnership Fund, serving on the management team for the Nebraska Lied Main Street Program, and providing numerous consulting functions for projects related to local government innovation, building public-private partnerships and fundraising. Yost spent the month of April 2000 providing consulting services throughout Australia on building community foundations and public-private partnerships.

Prior to joining the Foundation, Yost served as a policy advisor and strategic initiative manager for Nebraska Governor E. Benjamin Nelson. In this capacity Yost lead efforts to develop solutions to unfunded mandates, resulting in the creation of the Nebraska Mandates Management Initiative, a multi-agency partnership assisting local governments with environmental issues. Yost also worked extensively on policy issues including devolution/federalism, economic and rural development, and government efficiency.

Yost also works with numerous organizations helping them plan and evolve their organizational mission and activities. Yost currently serves as a member of the Nebraska State Library Advisory Council and is immediate past board chairman of the Cornerstone Interdenominational Ministry on the University of Nebraska-Lincoln campus. In 1997 Yost taught strategic planning, economic development and privatization at a private University in Tajikistan (in the former Soviet Union).

Yost received bachelor's degrees in both economics and agricultural business from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. He has also completed coursework toward a master's degree in economics.

Yost is a lifelong Nebraska resident growing up on a family farm near Red Cloud (1,100). Yost and his wife Cindy Ryman Yost are blessed to have a three-year old daughter, Elizabeth Grace, and a son, Carter Jeffrey, born last December.

Meriwether Jones
Community Strategies Group
Washington, DC

Mridulika Menon
Community Strategies Group
Washington, DC

Mridulika Menon joined the Community Strategies Group (CSG) of The Aspen Institute in June 2001 as a summer intern before accepting the position of Program Associate in Setember 2001. Established in 1985, CSG strives to have a positive impact on communities by designing, facilitating, and participating in learning opportunities that enhance the efforts of organizations working to achieve more widely shared and lasting prosperity in communities and sustain the impact of funders' investments in those communities. As program associate, Mridulika focuses on CSG's Rural Development Philanthropy (RDP) Initiative. Sponsored by the Ford Foundation, the RDP Initiative is a national initiative focused upon building the capacity of statewide and regional community foundations to do strategic grantmaking and endowment building to enhance the economic security of low-income rural families and the vitality of rural communities. Mridulika develops the website and listserv components of the RDP initiative, produces an RDP Update and assists in peer-learning convenings.

Mridulika graduated in May 2001 with a distinguished masters degree in Communication, Culture and Technology at Georgetown University, Washington, DC. As part of her degree work, she secured a World Bank grant that supported her efforts to connect women's handloom cooperatives in her native India with global markets, using networking technology and other capacity building strategies. Her master's thesis, entitled "The Role of Internet Branding in Preserving the Local in the Global- Using the Case Study of The World Bank Funded ‘Cottage Industry-Global Market' Project," explored the ways the Internet is enabling local industries to contribute toward regional development. As part of her thesis, she developed an economically viable online branding strategy for the "Cottage Industry-Global Market" project. Funded by the World Bank, this project enables the craft cooperatives of Himachal Pradesh, India, to promote their wares internationally.

She has a variety of additional technology and marketing related work experience, including stints with Brandquiver.com, University Information Systems at Georgetown, Skycell Communications Ltd. and Ogilvy & Mather. Mridulika has also served as a cultural consultant, conducting sessions on Indian heritage and culture for public schools and senior citizens through the Meridian International program. She has also been an active volunteer with Beacon House, an after-school program at the Edgewood Terrace community in Washington, DC.

Diane Morton
Community Strategies Group
Washington, DC

Diane Morton is the Program Manager for the Community Strategies Group (CSG) of The Aspen Institute. At CSG, Diane contributes to the program design and planning for the Rural Development Philanthropy Learning Network (RDPLN), as well as writing and editing various reports for the initiative. She is responsible for all the logistical arrangements necessary to convene various RDPLN events and any related communications. She was recently responsible for coordinating communications and logistics for the Social Capital Community Benchmark Initiative, which also involved working with community foundations. In addition, she assists with the day-to-day administrative requirements for all of CSG.

Prior to joining CSG (then the Rural Economic Policy Program) in 1990, Diane has held administrative and management positions working for a small town economic development company, a regional development council encompassing three counties in rural Western Maryland, The Washington Post and a law firm.

Just last summer Diane fulfilled a long-time dream of moving to the country and purchased a tiny home in the equally tiny (pop. 195) rural village of Burkittsville in Western Maryland. She got involved immediately in the South Mountain Heritage Society, attends town council meetings and volunteers for other community events. Diane is an avid reader, a passionate gardener, and ardent knitter. She shares living space with her cat Holmes.

Elizabeth Myrick
Community Strategies Group
Washington, DC

Elizabeth Myrick is a senior associate in the Community Strategies Group (CSG) of The Aspen Institute. Established in 1985, CSG designs peer learning opportunities that enhance the efforts of organizations to achieve lasting and shared prosperity in communities and to sustain funders' investments in those communities. At CSG, Elizabeth designs and manages learning initiatives for rural resource practitioners and community decision-makers that address economic development, resource stewardship and community capacity-building issues.

Born and raised in a family of teachers in the rural community of Guilford, Maine (pop. 1,500), Elizabeth has roots in and a passion for rural communities and people. Prior to joining CSG in 2000, Elizabeth worked first as program officer, then program director for the Maine Community Foundation (MCF), a statewide foundation headquartered in Ellsworth, Maine. While at MCF, Elizabeth led the foundation's assets-based discretionary grant program as well as the County Fund Program—an on-going initiative to build locally-raised, locally-controlled assets in Maine's most rural counties. Through partnerships with private foundations, she designed and facilitated training and capacity-building efforts for the foundation's eight rural advisory committees. In 1999, she managed MCF's strategic planning process and led program team efforts to enhance MCF's grantmaking, performance measurement and administrative systems.

Elizabeth graduated magna cum laude with a B.A. in political science and English from Bates College, Lewiston, Maine (1993), and holds a M.A. in political science from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst (1996). Elizabeth lives with her cat Scout, just east of Dupont Circle in Washington, DC. Since moving to DC from Maine in September 2000, she has served on the Stewardship and Capital Campaign Committees of Foundry United Methodist Church. An all-around sports fan, she is a casual hiker and runner, a gradually improving cross country skier and a perennially disappointed Red Sox fan. Thanks to her two older brothers, Elizabeth is also an enthusiastic (some might say, fanatical) aunt to two nephews in Maine, ages 2 and 4, and, as of October 8, 2001, one more nephew close-by in Northern Virginia.

Janet Topolsky
Community Strategies Group
Washington, DC

Janet Topolsky is associate director of the Community Strategies Group (CSG) of The Aspen Institute. At CSG, Janet helps design or manage a host of learning initiatives for community practitioners and decisionmakers that address economic development, resource stewardship and community capacity building issues. Janet spends the bulk of her time at CSG directing the Rural Development Philanthropy Learning Network (RDPLN).

Sponsored by The Ford Foundation, RDPLN focuses on building the capacity of statewide and regional community foundations to do strategic grantmaking and endowment building that will enhance the economic security of low-income rural families and the vitality of the communities where they live. Besides having worked extensively with eight individual community foundations since 1993, Janet's recent work with community foundations has also included learning design and facilitation for the Africa Foundations Learning Group, a learning cluster of start-up indigenous local foundations from several African nations; the Social Capital Community Benchmark Initiative, a collaboration of 40 community and private foundations that funded a simultaneous "benchmark" measurement of social capital in their respective communities; and various program and strategic planning retreats for individual foundations or foundation alliances. In former work at CSG, Janet helped manage the Community Capacity Building Learning Cluster and worked with seasoned researchers and practitioners to develop written products on a range of rural development topics. While at CSG, Janet has also assisted the Assets Program of the Ford Foundation in designing and facilitating two of its bi-annual worldwide staff meetings.

Prior to joining REPP in 1993, Janet worked independently as a development policy analyst, writer and editor. Her clients included the Commission on the Future of the South, the U.S. Department of Labor, Jobs for the Future, the Association for Enterprise Opportunity, the Joyce Foundation, the Corporation for Enterprise Development, and the National Performance Review. From 1985-1990, she was director of communication for the Corporation for Enterprise Development, a national nonprofit research, consulting and demonstration firm focused on state and local economic and human investment innovation. At CFED, she managed the development of its groundbreaking annual Development Report Card for the States, edited the periodical The Entrepreneurial Economy Review, and helped in the early stage planning of pioneer Individual Development Account programs. In 1983-84, Janet served as special assistant to the director of the Michigan Department of Commerce; and in earlier years, she worked as a political organizer and youth advocate. She holds a B.A. from Michigan State University (1976) and a Master of Public Policy from the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan (1983).

Janet never met a verbal cue that didn't call forward a lyric – and she likely will sing it, whether you like it or not. Her musical genres range widely, although her regular gig is with two African American Catholic gospel choirs based in the Washington DC area. She hails from Detroit, Michigan, and will tout the wonders of that great state at the drop of a hat. She will find the other person in the crowd who appreciates the Wolverine (and Spartan) state.