IMPACT VENTURERS - Change-makers Share their Stories

Joyce Coffee is the founder and President of Climate Resilience Consulting, a company that has developed Climate Resilience Strategies for or in collaboration with institutions such as the EPA, US Climate Alliance, National Association of Realtors and others. Joyce is also the Chair of Anthropocene Alliance, the nation's largest coalition of frontline communities fighting for climate and environmental justice. Anthropocene supports over 100 American communities and leads partnerships with national organizations like Thriving Earth Exchange, US Army Corps of Engineers Silver Jackets and others. 

Val Okaru-Bisant is a social entrepreneur with over 15 years of high-level advisory & work experience in economic development, business, trade, water and gender sectors. She is the CEO, Founder and General Counsel at Afrocosmo Development Impact, LLC, Maryland, USA. She has over 15 business and scholarly publications & has private sector & World Bank experience. She was one of the pioneering members of Jean-Roger Mercier’s initial World Bank project environmental review team that categorized and reviewed project compliance with Bank procedures. She & her team started the process of formulating World Bank operational policies, including OP 7.50 (international waters), OP 4.01 (environmental assessment and OP 4.12 (involuntary resettlement). She & her World Bank team (Pauline and Mike) also monitored & supervised the $300 multi-donor financed RUSAFIYA water supply project & within the framework of the project, they introduced the concept of community based participation to World Bank management (as referenced in Maggi Black, Learning What Works, A Twenty Year View on International Water & Sanitation Cooperation). Her 2011 published law review article also spearheaded the concept of corruption risk insurance coverage which some prominent Banks adopted in their portfolios. 

Jamel Robinson is the founder and Chief Executive Officer of Foster Youth Impact (FYI). Based in Harlem, New York City, FYI is a social justice nonprofit, disrupting the status quo, innovating opportunities, and creating equitable solutions that reimagine and advance foster youth wellness, opportunity and success.

Alex Peay is the Founder and "Chief Trouble-Maker" of Ones Up (onesup.org) , a non-profit organisation based in Philadelphia, which is focused on helping black and brown youth from disadvantaged backgrounds address issues in their community while gaining access to employment, education and entrepreneurship opportunities. Alex has over thirteen years of experience in the field of public service and was an Echoing Green Fellow from 2016 to 2020. 

Carolyn Johnson does not sleep... and if she does, it is not clear how she manages to find time for her cultural touring company, 'Welcome to Harlem', her musical event company, 'Harlem Jazz Boxx', and the toy she is producing, 'Harlem-opoly', on top of being Senior Project Leader in the Legal Division of the New York Liquidation Bureau!!! One thing is for sure: Carolyn lives, eats, walks, talks, observes, listens and thinks Harlem 24/7, and has done so ever since she was a girl in the sixties and seventies, back when living in Harlem was not necessarily ... "Cool" yet. Her passion for this amazing neighbourhood is relatively easy to understand for those of us who have visited or lived there and have ended up loving it. However, there is something special about her relationship with it, similar to the that of Tesla with electricity. In this episode, we discussed Harlem, as the focus of her business, as well as its development, from centre of the African-American 'Harlem Renaissance', to today's on-going gentrification. (Btw ... Check www.WelcomeToHarlem.com)

Hayley Hoverter is an Aspiring Social Entrepreneur with a passion for reducing waste from food products. In this episode she is sharing her vision for the development of edible sugar packaging, and discusses her journey and goals. 

Carolina Pozo is the Founder and Executive Director of Avanti Ecuador, a non profit organisation based in New York, NY and Quito, Ecuador. Avanti is an educational non-profit organisation, founder in 2009, which designs and implements social innovation projects to generate sustainable development in small villages of Ecuador. She is also CEO of Muze Cacao, a social enterprise working alongside AVANTI, and producing organic, vegan and bean-to-prism chocolate crafted at origin. Muze works together with farmers and their families to help them rise out of poverty and generate sustained growth. 

Zuleka Henderson is the Director of the Center for Black WellBeing, an arm of Graymatters (Graymattersmd.com), focused exclusively on revealing and healing the pain and suffering of African Americans. Zuleka holds a PhD in Social Work from Howard University. 

Anna Bruni Sabhaney spent 8 years as a civil engineer at major international engineering firms aligning different public and private stakeholder interests, until she decided to transition to the world of Non Profits. She founded The Confluencers Ltd in 2018 with the vision of amplifying Non-profits’ missions by helping them powerfully communicate their impact. She has been working with non-profits through her online coaching programme ever since, helping tens of leaders transition to Relational Impact Based Fundraising; make communication of complex impact fun and attract trust based long term core funding. Check out https://www.theconfluencers.com/case-study to find out more!

Kristin Van Busum is the Founder and CEO of Project Alianza, a 501(c)3 organization, which has developed a community-led scalable model that employs local women as educators to improve literacy outcomes and increase school retention among girls. To date, Project Alianza has supported 19,000+ children living in isolated farming communities in Nicaragua, Guatemala, and El Salvador, and they continue to grow their impact.