Board of Directors

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  Nnimmo Bassey

  Voting Member Since January 2011

  Nnimmo is a Nigerian human/environmental rights activist. He is the executive director of the Environmental Rights Action (ERA), – Nigeria’s foremost environmental rights advocacy group, and chair, Friends of the Earth International – the world’s largest federation of grassroots organizations fighting for environmental and social justice. Nnimmo is a member of the international steering committee of Oilwatch International. He is also a practicing architect in Nigeria as well as a published writer and poet. Nnimmo is a longtime advisor on the West Africa Advisory Board and served on the strategic planning committee.

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  Jake Beinecke

  Independent Voting Member Since January 2011

  Jake is a recent graduate of New York University School of Law, where he studied environmental law and the legal implications of social enterprises. He is a former Executive Director and founding board member of the Law and Social Entrepreneurship Association, and was a legal intern at Acumen Fund during law school. Jake has professional experience in sustainable food and agriculture, environmental activism, energy conservation, and traditional philanthropy. Jake currently serves on the Young Patrons Steering Committee of Lincoln Center Theater, the New York Regional Board of Indego Africa, and is actively involved in the grant-making activities of the Prospect Hill Foundation.

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  Maxine A. Burkett

  Board Vice Chair - Independent Voting Member Since January 2010

  Maxine is an Associate Professor of Law at the William S. Richardson School of Law, University of Hawaii and serves as the inaugural Director of the Center for Island Climate Adaptation and Policy (ICAP), a Sea Grant College Program. Professor Burkett attended Williams College and Exeter College, Oxford University, and received her law degree from Boalt Hall School of Law at the University of California, Berkeley. Professor Burkett’s courses include Climate Change Law and Policy, Torts, Environmental Law, Race and American Law, and International Development. She has written in the area of Race, Reparations, and Environmental Justice. Currently, her work focuses on "Climate Justice," writing on the disparate impact of climate change on poor and of-color communities and the ethical and legal obligation owed to these communities. She has presented her research on Climate Justice throughout the United States and in West Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Caribbean.

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  Helen Gemmill

  Independent Voting Member Since January 2010

  Helen has a background in international development (B.A., Middlebury College, International Studies and French Literature, 2000) and environmentalism (M.A., Naropa University, Environmental Leadership, 2005). She has taught French and Spanish to high school students at a Waldorf School. She also founded and quadrupled the annual revenue for the Individual Giving program at Global Greengrants Fund from 2005-2009. She is currently focusing on pursuing research on how communities heal after conflict, by surveying major conflicts (wars and genocides) of the 20th-century an the ensuing outcomes decades later. Helen currently sits on the boards of the Women Donor Network, the Community Foundation Serving Boulder County, and the White House Project, in addition to Greengrants. She resides in Boulder, Colorado, and is a native of New Hampshire.

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  Larry Kressley

  Board Secretary/Treasurer - Independent Voting Member Since January 2010

  Larry was the Executive Director of the Public Welfare Foundation in Washington D.C. from 1991-2006. He joined the Foundation’s staff in 1982 as a program officer and progressed to senior program officer. His program work at Public Welfare included environmental justice and international human rights. He is a graduate of Goddard College and received a master’s degree in organization management from Antioch New England. Larry currently serves on the board of directors of Stop It Now! and The Hesperian Foundation, and also serves as a trustee of Goddard College. He has served as a board member and co-chair of the National Network of Grantmakers; as a board member and vice chair of the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy; as a member of the Committee on Inclusiveness of the Council on Foundations; on the steering committee of the Working Group on Funding Lesbian and Gay Issues; and as a director of the Washington Regional Association of Grantmakers, the Center for Economic Justice and the Share Foundation.

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  Michael Lerner

  Independent Voting Member Since January 2011

  Michael is President and founder of Commonweal, a health and environmental research institute in Bolinas, California, and of Smith Farm Center for Healing and the Arts in Washington, D.C. He is also co-founder of the Collaborative on Health and the Environment, www.healthandenvironment.org, an international partnership for people interested in or working at the interface between the environment and human health. Michael's most recent project is The New School at Commonweal, www.commonweal.org, which explores the interface between ecology, culture and the inner life. Michael sits as president on the Board of Directors for the Jennifer Altman Foundation.

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  Elmer Lopez

  Independent Voting Member Since January 2011

  Elmer is an advisor on the Greengrants Central America Advisory Board and a founding member of the Instituto para el Desarrollo Rural, based in Guatemala City. He is an agronomist by training, Elmer began his career as an environmental activist in 1991, when he and his wife joined the Municipal Environmental Commission of Coatepeque in order to help save Guatemala’s largest mangrove forest. He worked as a Central American Greenpeace campaigner until 1998, when he became the Greenpeace international representative for Latin America on coastal marine issues. He has worked on mangrove protection and shrimp farming issues, and he helped create REDMANGLAR, a Latin American network working to protect costal marine ecosystems. He was the Regional Area Vice President Latin America & Caribbean for World Neighbors.

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  Terry Odendahl

  Ex-Officio, Executive Director & CEO, Global Greengrants Fund

  Terry joined Global Greengrants Fund as Executive Director and CEO in 2009. Her vision and leadership have grown out of her three decades of experience in philanthropy, including stints teaching, writing, and organizing. Prior to Greengrants, Terry served as President of the New Mexico Association of Grantmakers. She has also been Executive Director of two women’s funds, the Business and Professional Women's Foundation and the Women's Foundation of Colorado, and Program Director at the Santa Fe Community and Wyss Foundations. For a decade in the 1990s, she served as Executive Director of the National Network of Grantmakers where she led a campaign to increase foundation payout. In 2004-5 she was Neilsen Chair in Philanthropy at the Georgetown University Public Policy Institute. She served on the faculties of Yale University’s Program on Nonprofit Organizations and the University of California, San Diego Women’s Studies Program.

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  Stephen Pittam

  Independent Voting Member Since January 2012

  Stephen has worked at Joseph Rowntree Trust since 1986 and has been the Trust Secretary since 2001. While at the Trust he has overseen the expansion of the Trust's work from Northern Ireland into Ireland, and the setting up of a local Racial Justice programme in West Yorkshire. Before joining JRCT in 1986 he spent 10 years in local government in London in roles involving liaison with the voluntary sector and support for community development. Previous to this he worked in community development projects in Ireland, Jordan and in the UK. Stephen is now responsible for the Power and Responsibility programme of the Trust. He represents the Trust at the Network of European Foundations and is chair of the European Policy Centre steering group on multicultural Europe. He is also a member of the working group – Philanthropy for Social Justice & Peace.

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  Nonette Royo

  Voting Member Since January 2010

  Antoinette Royo is a lawyer, specializing in defending indigenous peoples, natural resources and land rights in Southeast Asia. In the Philippines, she co-founded advocacy organizations for indigenous peoples and women’s rights. In Indonesia, Nonette helped foster environmental justice movements, including Greenpeace in Asia and a local network for community-based forest management. She has promoted community participation in natural resources management and land use planning frameworks. With the Samdhana Institute, Nonette helped develop the Indigenous People’s Support Fund, in tandem with the Greengrants Alliance of Funds in Brazil and Mexico. This program nurtures local indigenous organizations in protecting key biodiverse landscapes in the region. It provides funding, support, and the foundations for social/cultural/economic rights among local people. Nonette is the Research and Social Outreach Vice President of the Ateneo de Cagayan University in Southern Philippines. She also remains a member of the Integrated Bar of the Philippines, since 1991, practicing environmental and Public Interest Law.

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  Mele Lau Smith

  Board Chair - Independent Voting Member Since January 2009

  Through her work with the San Francisco Department of Public Health’s Tobacco Free Project, Mele funds local groups and coordinates a coalition of community based organizations fighting the tobacco industry in San Francisco and internationally. She serves on the board of Corp Watch and is an ex-officio board member of the Chinese Progressive Association. Formerly she worked for the New York City Department of Health and has taught school in San Francisco and Nepal.

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  Chet Tchozewski

  Independent Voting Member Since July 2011

  Chet has been involved with environmental community organizing, peace, and social justice for more than 30 years. He is the founder of Global Greengrants Fund, a co-founder of Grantmakers without Borders, and was on the initiating committee of the Global Philanthropy Forum. He currently serves on the Council on Foundations Board of Directors and as the Chair of Global Philanthropy Committee. He also serves on the Global Philanthropy Leadership Initiative—a joint effort of the Council on Foundations, the European Foundation Centre, and the Worldwide Initiatives for Grantmaker Support to lower barriers and increase incentives for global giving. Prior to founding Greengrants, Chet was the Regional Director of Greenpeace in San Francisco. In the 1970s and 1980s, while serving on the staff of the American Friends Service Committee and the Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center, he helped organize the successful campaign to close the Rocky Flats Nuclear Weapons Plant in Colorado.