Janis Burger received her Masters in Public Health from the School of Public Health at the University of California at Berkeley. She worked for Alameda County Health Care Services Agency for 15 years with a focus on maternal, child and adolescent health within a context of systems change. Since 2000, Janis has worked as deputy director of First 5 Alameda County, the agency that receives Proposition 10 Tobacco Tax funding to support child development and family support programs during the first five years of life.

Ellen Friedman most recently served as Executive Vice President of Tides. At Tides, Ellen oversaw the day-to-day operations of the network of entities that compose the organization: Tides Center, Tides Foundation and Tides Shared Spaces. She also maintains an advisory role with Community Clinics Initiative, a partnership between Tides and the California Endowment to strengthen community health centers throughout California. She brings a long history of advising individual donors on issues of philanthropic planning, violence against women, Jewish Spirituality, and environmental issues.

Barbara Sargent is co-founder of New Field Foundation. She is also founder and executive director of Kalliopeia Foundation, which contributes to the continuing evolution of world cultures that honor the underlying unity at the heart of life's diversity, through grant-making in support of the inner life, indigenous cultures, and through fostering a global consciousness of the oneness of humanity.

Muadi Mukenge is the Regional Director for Sub-Saharan Africa at the Global Fund for Women. She brings 13 years of program management and communications experience in African affairs in the non-profit sector and academia. Prior to joining the Global Fund in April 2004, she served as program officer for Africa at the Pacific Institute for Women's Health, where she managed training and evaluation projects with women's NGOs; she also managed the Pacific Institute's grant-making program and communications initiative. From 1993-1997, Muadi worked at the African Studies Center at the University of California, Los Angeles, where she assisted research initiatives, organized international conferences and the teacher training program, and produced research publications on political transition in Africa. She also worked as a reporter/researcher at U.S. News and World Report for one year. Muadi holds a Master's Degree in African Studies from UCLA with a concentration in political science and political economy and earned a Bachelor's Degree in Political Science from Davidson College. She is originally from the Democratic Republic of Congo and is active in volunteer organizations focused on African immigrant rights, African development and human rights, and foreign policy toward Africa.

Tom Sargent is co-founder of New Field Foundation. He is a real estate developer and city planner specializing in urban infill projects and the conversion of underutilized real estate assets into innovative, community-oriented development projects. Over the past 20 years, he has been involved throughout the United States in the development of complex projects with a creative mix of uses and financing sources. He is currently a principal at Equity Community Builders, LLC, where he has managed several historic rehabilitation projects that involve non-profit partners and tenants including the Thoreau Center for Sustainability and the Retreat at Fort Baker.

Barbara Sieck Taylor is the executive director of Grantmakers of Western Pennsylvania, a professional association of philanthropies including community and private foundations, corporate foundations and corporate contributions programs. A graduate of Swarthmore College, her background in the nonprofit sector includes stints as a program officer for the DeWitt Wallace Fund (now part of the Wallace Foundation) and The Greenwall Foundation. Barbara served as the director of development for Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, and subsequently directed the fundraising for all of National Public Radio's cultural programming between 1993 and 2000.