Terms Of Reference Podcast

Farzeen Ferdous Alam is the Founding President of OGGRO, a development organization based in Bangladesh. He started OGGRO while in high school and subsequently dropped out and continued his studies privately in order to dedicate time to OGGRO during its infancy. 

His risk paid off when OGGRO won the prestigious Youth Solidarity Fund award of the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations (UNAoC) in 2009. The following year he was honored by MTV Staying Alive Foundation UK for “outstanding achievement in HIV/AIDs awareness”. Farzeen has developed numerous social business models in order to transform OGGRO from a fund-dependent organization to a self-sufficient one. 

A graduate in Economics from the University of Dhaka, Farzeen is also the Chairman of Ferdous Biotech Pvt. Ltd, which uses tissue culture to produce various agricultural products for local and foreign markets.

Kathleen Cronan is Executive Director of Earthlinks, a Denver, Colorado non-profit organization that provides a paid-work program offering low-income and homeless people an opportunity to learn skills and create eco-friendly products, which are sold to support the program. She has extensive experience working with Denver’s nonprofit community, both as a volunteer and in various leadership roles, and in addition, has practiced law for more than 30 years in the Denver area.

Nida'a Nasser is Youth Leadership Project Coordinator at Baladna—the Association of Arab Youth, and research assistant at Mada al-Carmel - Arab Center for Applied Social Research. She was awarded a degree in Social Work from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem in 2008, and an M.A. in Research of Conflicts and Struggles at the College of Social Sciences. Nida'a has worked as a project coordinator in a number of civil society organizations, including the Society of Public Advocacy in Jerusalem, the Project against Early Marriage in Kufr Manda, The Menara Society to Support Friends with Disabilities in the Arab Community, and the el-Hawakeer Association for Agricultural and Community Development.

Development consultant Jason Wares splits his time between the non-profit and for-profit worlds as Managing Director of North Carolina’s Community Nutrition Partnership, devoted to increasing access to fresh, local, affordable food, and Managing Director of Safe Water, a company that provides sanitation and disinfection solutions in a wide range of industries. Wares has development experience on five continents as a strategic and financial management consultant for organizations including the Fair Labor Association, Global Education Partnership, CHF International and RTI International.

Francine Pickup is Strategic Planning Advisor, Asia-Pacific, for the UNDP. She has 15 years of experience in humanitarian and development organizations in the Middle East, Central Asia and Russia.

In her current role, she developed the regional priorities in the UNDP Strategic Plan 2014-17, and leads the planning, monitoring, reporting and communication of results and performance achieved by the UNDP’s Asia-Pacific bureau.

She worked as Head of the Research and Analysis Unit of OCHA in the occupied Palestinian territory, and at the outset of her career, worked in a number of roles for NGOs.

She obtained her Ph.D. in Development Studies from the London School of Economics in 2002.

Mansoor Abbasi is the Executive Director and co-founder of The Intercivil Society - a not-for-profit company that works to reduce poverty, protect the environment and improve community relationships. The Intercivil Society creates opportunities to help people improve their own situations, whether economic, social or environmental.

Mansoor is experienced in training, group facilitation and dispute resolution – both community and workplace – with specific expertise in facilitating “difficult” conversations. He also works as a community projects advisor and as a consultant designing, delivering and project managing peace-building programs in conflict areas (where the focus is on strengthening civil society through developing intercultural community leadership, conflict management skills, capacity development and improving intercultural and interfaith dialogue and cooperation). 

Mansoor has worked with a range of partners and clients, including the European Parliament, West Yorkshire Police, UN Alliance of Civilizations, local and national governments and local community groups.

Ian Philp is the Director of The Clean Energy Institute, a Canadian public-private partnership that aims connect high potential energy technologies with international market opportunities and to establish a flagship position in the global clean energy economy.

Previously, Ian worked with a boutique investment bank focused on energy efficiency investments, and as an international trade lawyer defending Canada’s renewable FIT program. Ian was also a UN legal and constitutional advisor to the Iraqi Government from 2005-2007. He is an Atlantic Council Emerging Leaders in Environment & Energy Policy (ELEEP) Fellow, and was a 2011- 2012 Action Canada Fellow.

Richard Catherall is Executive Director of Cyprus-based Katarsis Ventures, which works primarily in transition states and post-conflict zones to help make social change happen by enabling big money to connect with big, undiscovered ideas. Catherall also has a U.K. focus, through Radical Capital, which aims to shape the UK social investment market.

Catherall says, "I am investing and actively involved in nurturing the conditions for innovation, supporting leadership through enterprise and encouraging investment in the social economy. The social economy is growing in the space between how the market provides, where the state intervenes and the increasing expectations and aspirations of people. In this space social entrepreneurs seek to solve problems, realize opportunities, shape and create markets through their products and services."

Charles McJilton is the CEO and founder of Second Harvest Japan, and came to Japan for the first time in 1984 with the U.S. military. He returned in 1991 to conduct research at Sophia University as part of his undergraduate studies at the University of Minnesota. 

During that time he lived in San'ya, a low-income area that many Japanese would not recognize as a part of Tokyo, or Japan, and in an effort to better understand the challenges facing the area’s residents, many of whom live below the poverty line, McJilton lived in a “cardboard” shelter alongside the Sumida River from January 1997 to April 1998. 

In 2000, he became co-chair of a coalition of groups working together to share resources among food distribution programs, and two years later, he incorporated Second Harvest, the first food bank in Japan. Second Harvest Japan collects food that would otherwise go to waste from food manufacturers, farmers, and individuals, and distributes it to people in need such as children in orphanages, low-income households, and the homeless.

BeCause Global Consulting CEO Nadine Hack has advised leaders of Fortune 500 companies, heads of state, and other organizations globally on clarifying and achieving their goals. She has served as a non-executive director on for- and not-for-profit boards, including as chair, vice chair and committee chair for governance and nominating.

She was the first woman to serve as Executive-in-Residence at IMD Business School and continues to work in executive education programs providing guidance to senior executives in many capacities.  She distilled decades of her work with clients on engagement leadership and its framework Strategic Relational Engagement (SRE™) into teachable lessons on improving stakeholder engagement within organizations and among sectors to increase productivity, profitability and sustainability.

Hack has advanced degrees from Harvard and The New School and has received numerous awards including International Outstanding Achievement, Woman of the Year, and Inspiration Award for lifetime achievement presented at the Säid Business School Oxford University. She is a Fellow at New Westminster College, created and taught graduate courses at NYU and SNHU and has guest lectured at many other universities.

She has been a speaker at meetings and conferences globally. She’s had articles written about or published by her including in The Financial Times, Forbes, Huffington Post, ReWiring Business, The New York Times and UN Chronicle. She’s appeared on television, radio, Internet, at a TEDx event and is on an international on-line database of women experts, SheSource.