About us
“Leadership is enabling others to achieve shared purpose in the face of uncertainty.”
—Marshall Ganz
Our People
We are movements, organizations, leaders, organizers, researchers, educators, practitioners and institutions from 75 different countries who consolidate, grow and sustain our power. Adopting and adapting part or all of the community organizing practices across the globe. Together turning our stories into sources of power, dreaming of a more just world and working internationally and strategically towards it with a solid relationship fabric.
Our compass
Vision
A vibrant global community of organizing practice and learning that develops leadership across borders and generations to build people power towards a far more just, sustainable and democratic world.
Mission
To further the knowledge, capacity and leadership of community organizers by connecting ideas, building learning spaces and developing relationships to create organized people power.
Goals
Building the momentum to restructure political, economic, and cultural institutions to secure a more democratic, just, and sustainable world.
Our values
We stand for freedom and justice as our guiding values, and work towards building agency, courage, and solidarity for a more just, democratic and sustainable world.
Our core purpose towards that is enabling people power by developing leaders who can organize their communities for change in ways that center people’s stories and aspirations.
Our work stems from a deep belief in interconnectedness that strives and organizes for freedom and justice collaboratively and collectively, until everyone is free.
We act with utmost thoughtfulness, empathy and courage at all times, ensuring we make courageous choices and committing to meaningful, quality and nuance in all our work.
We constantly and actively learn on this journey by constantly evaluating our work, learning from our failures, and learning from and with each other.
We do all of this with a spirit of joy, generosity and hope, celebrating each others’ success, encouraging growth and leadership even when going gets tough, and facilitating global solidarity and support with a spirit of unabashed and active hopefulness.
Our story
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How it all started
In 1964, a year before he was due to graduate, Marshall Ganz left Harvard University to volunteer for the Mississippi Summer Project, an effort to support the work of African American organizers fighting for the right to vote across the U.S. South. There, he learned about race, power, and politics in America—and that change won’t come unless the people facing problems can author change. Such authorship depends on turning existing resources into the power needed to win change.
For a community to act together with such solidarity, however, there needs to be trained leadership—not just one person, but many. This is organizing. It is about justice, not charity. In Mississippi, it became Marshall’s calling.
Marshall returned home to Bakersfield, California, where Cesar Chavez had launched his campaign to organize the United Farm Workers union. Although he had grown up in the world of the farm worker, Marshall had been oblivious to it. It took his new ‘Mississippi eyes’ to see another community of people of color who also lacked political rights and economic protection—evidence of California’s own rich history of racial discrimination. Mississippi turned out not to be an exception in America, but an aspect of America that needed to change.
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After a 28-year ‘leave of absence’ organizing communities, unions, and electoral campaigns, Marshall returned to Harvard to complete his undergraduate degree, earn an MPA at the Kennedy School, and a PhD in sociology. While working on his doctorate, he was asked to develop a course on organizing. In this way, he had the opportunity to integrate his life experience with social science in a pedagogical engagement: it was an opportunity for a conversation with the future.
On the faculty full-time since 2000, Marshall was drawn back into the world of practice by his students, beginning with the 2003–4 Howard Dean for President Campaign, a three-year project improving Sierra Club groups’ effectiveness, and launching Camp Obamas to organize volunteers in Barack Obama’s 2007–8 campaign for president.
After the Obama campaign, interest in this method of enabling people to begin learning how to translate their values into effective action emerged in education, health care, environmental action, and immigration reform. Three collaborations in particular, with the DREAMer movement, the New Organizing Institute (NOI), and the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) anchored the budding network’s U.S.-based work. At the same time, Marshall’s students and collaborators went on to adapt the organizing pedagogy in communities around the world. In 2011 in Amman, Jordan, for example, Nisreen Haj Ahmad and Mais Irqsusi launched Ahel, a training institute that developed a core of 47 educators, trained some 3,000 people in organizing, and coached some 24 campaigns in the region.
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The same year, Marshall launched an online course at Harvard called Leadership, Organizing, and Action: Leading Change to share this approach with emerging leaders around the world. In the Balkans, for example, the leadership of ‘Serbia on the Move’ adopted the Leading Change Network (LCN) pedagogy as their main theory of change and ran over 10 campaigns in Serbia fighting for medical reform, maternal benefits, and other policy changes. They have since trained more than 3,000 people and developed over 30 educators.
Creating the Leading Change Network
The idea for the Leading Change Network (LCN) emerged from conversations with leaders active across diverse domains in multiple countries, who identified a need for a global community of practice to enable organizers, educators, and researchers to learn from one another, improve their practice, and engage others in their work.In 2012, LCN convened its first Global Gathering of some 100 participants from 20 countries. Ever since, online and offline gatherings have continued to create opportunities for learning, growth, and development. LCN is committed to a culture of craft, evaluation, and learning across institutional, cultural, and geographical boundaries. We have grown to become a community of organizers, educators, and researchers from more than 30 countries who are active in some 36 countries and lead trainings in 30 different languages.
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On July 27, 2013, the Leading Change Network (LCN) convened its second Global Gathering – a 3.5-hour-long online organizing conference of 140 people from 29 countries for plenaries, one-on-one meetings, breakout sessions, and discussion groups. The session was organized by a leadership team of ten organizers.
On November 15, 2014, LCN convened its third Global Gathering – a 4-hour-long online conference. That enabled 89 social change practitioners from 23 countries working in 11 different sectors to come together to learn from the experiences of others and forge a shared consciousness.
In 2015, LCN convened its first Global Affiliates Gathering, in Andrevlje, Serbia. It was held over three days, March 27–29, and brought together community organizing practitioners, trainers and coaches from across the globe to discuss trends and challenges in community organizing, and to shape the path for future activities of Global Affiliates. The meeting was attended by professor Marshall Ganz, Senior Lecturer in Public Policy at Harvard University, John F. Kennedy School of Government; Rawan Zeine, Leading Change Network Board Member; Nisreen Haj Ahmad, Project Coordinator for Global Affiliates; and Sung E Bai, Leading Change Network Executive Director.
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The meeting was also attended by sixteen representatives from the following Global Affiliates member organizations: Serbia on the move (Serbia), Ahel (Jordan, Syria, Palestine, Lebanon), New Organizing Institute (USA), United We Dream (USA), Planned Parenthood (USA), Community Organizing Japan (Japan), Tatua Kenya (Kenya), Haiyya (India) and ReThink Health (USA). The GA Gathering established that members have jointly trained over 32,000 people in approximately 350 trainings and have coached and/or led over 200 campaigns. In total, over 2 million people have been engaged through their campaigns. Between 2016 and 2018, LCN became less active as a network organization.
The LCN community decided to relaunch LCN in 2018 in response to growing challenges to democracy around the world, our desire to turn these challenges into opportunities, and an urgent need to acquire and master the skills needed to turn motivation into successful collective action. LCN was launched as an online conference in 2018 attended by 350 people from 24 countries. This also marked the official start of LCN membership for both individuals and organizations. Between 2018 and 2019, LCN curated 50 learning events, with over 2,900 people attending.
In 2020, the world faced a pandemic, and with it deteriorating health systems, erosion of workers’ rights, and the silent pandemic of domestic violence came into sharp focus. It was a set of realities that made it critical to rethink our priorities and what role LCN could have in supporting organizers worldwide. A series of Covid sessions were launched that truly engaged a global community of 600 people from 69 countries, with participants sharing their learnings and supporting each other through the Covid pandemic.
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With lockdowns and restrictions on physical meetings, the landscape of organizing has changed. It prompted LCN to think strategically about its future direction and by the end of 2020, Mais Irqsusi had assumed the leadership of LCN. Doing what we espouse – LCN started by tackling the most important question: who are our people? Identified the constituency and formed an international and diverse advisory board to rethink the strategic direction of LCN.
At the beginning of 2021, the new team began work framing the future of LCN, starting with internal reflection and then a listening drive in the spring of 2021 that reached over 500 people from our community.
LCN focuses on supporting and building leadership capacity for effective community organizing through advancing the framework, giving access to knowledge, coaching campaigns, workshops, support seeding hubs globally, and by convening a community of practice.
Board of directors






LCN team












Our supporters
The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative CZI | Marshall Ganz | ImpactAssets | Jennifer McCrea | Anthony Barash & Terri Hanson | Lisa Renstrom & Robert Perkowitz | Rebecca Henderson | The Conway Family Charitable Fund | The Omidyar Group | Kelsey Wirth & Samuel Myers
Mais Irqsusi

Sweden/Jordan
The Leading Change Network takes immense pride in its brilliant, multitalented executive director, Mais Irqsusi.
Mais has been founding and growing community organizing entities across the world for 13 years, embodying the value of global empowerment.
A pioneer of community organizing , co-founder of Ahel, the distinguished organizing institute in Jordan and later as founder of Community Organizing Europe in Sweden, Mais brings rich experience adapting practices of leadership development, organizing and campaigning to widely diverse geographic, institutional, cultural and political settings.
She has become an active contributor to LCN since its inception in 2012.
Passionate about leadership development, Mais is determined to support changemakers to organize and lead campaigns that oppose unjust systems and strive for human rights and freedom.
She has pursued her mission of developing leadership, building civic capacity, and campaigning for social justice by leading over 100 workshops; coaching 15 organizing campaigns, and building organizational infrastructure to sustain, improve, and expand on this work
Within the LCN team, Mais is our go-to person for overview global insight, strategic questions, partnerships, programs design and bringing innovation and community spirit to our work!
Juman Abujbara
Chief Operating Officer
Salma Sameh
In house Workshops Coordinator
Community organizer in the core heart! Leadership, storytelling, and community organizer trainer & campaigns coach. Harvard Kennedy School Teaching Fellow in LOA and Head Teaching Fellow in Public Narrative program. History of leading and enabling 600+ university students impacting 7000+ youth to improve their political, educational and social conditions. Coached more than 10 campaigns across MENA that varies between elections, cooperative/social campaigns & pressuring campaigns on governmental & institutional level, all wins.
Currently carrying my calling in LCN working as In house Workshops Coordinator – LCN Academy. Salma is our go to person if you need someone to listen actively, and support, yet challenge you, when needed.
Caty Villanueva Mátar
Communications Coordinator
Mexico
Caty works as Partner Relations Coordinator at LCN. In her role, she fosters and maintains relationships with our partners to collaborate on projects that align with LCN’s mission and values. Her role also includes driving strategic initiatives that contribute to the organization’s growth and community impact. Her role encompasses a range of activities aimed at enhancing organizational membership, engagement, and collaboration.
Aligned with LCN’s core purpose, Caty believes in empowering leaders to catalyze community-driven change that honors people’s stories and aspirations. For her, this value embodies equipping individuals with tools to transform communities through shared narratives and impactful actions.
Within LCN, Caty is the linchpin for forging partnerships and maximizing engagement. Colleagues frequently turn to her for her expertise in analyzing dynamics, strategic planning, and connecting stakeholders.
Caty holds a Master’s degree in Business Administration with a focus on Innovation. Caty has over a decade of experience as an educator and has worked in community outreach in different countries.
Mariana Garza
Learning Development CoordinatorMexico
Outside of her academic and professional career, she finds joy in the kitchen, experimenting with new recipes as a way to nurture community connections and share stories around the dining table.
Masha Burina
Hubs & Individual Membership
Germany
Masha is responsible for Seeding Global Structures. Here she helps leaders expand their practice of public narrative and organizing frameworks through geographic or thematic hubs of activity.
Born in Bosnia and Herzegovina, she had the understanding from a young age what happens when cruel forces divide us. Like then, and now more than ever – we need what we at LCN preach: the connection of our hearts, the wisdom of our minds, and the action of our hands.
To do that, we center what matters to us: our people and our planet. We come together to see each other’s humanity and our shared values – and realize that another world is possible. And if we create the right conditions, we can make it more probable!
Masha’s the go-to person for members who want to put the organizing framework into practice through the work they already do, or establish new groups with like-minded organizers.
Over the past two decades, she’s organized fast food workers in the “Fight for $15”, young people in their quest for truth and reconciliation in the Balkans, public transport riders in NYC, Berliners in support of refugee rights, and Seattle communities for global economic trade justice.
She has a Bachelor of Arts in Economics & International Studies from University of Washington, and Master of Public Policy from Harvard Kennedy School where she was a teaching fellow for Marshall Ganz.
Pilar Garza
Administration & Support
Mexico
Pilar is the Administrative Assistant at LCN, providing support in scheduling meetings, planning, communications, and tech.
Driven by the power of stories, Pilar pursued a bachelor’s degree in Journalism and Media and enjoys working in an environment filled with passionate people dedicated to building positive change in the world.
Within the LCN team, Pilar is the go-to person if you need assistance scheduling a meeting with an LCN team member or an extra hand in tech support during an LCN event or learning session.
Sachiko Osawa

Sweden/Japan
As the Membership Engagement and Community of Practice Coordinator, Sachiko is the maestro behind the Leading Change Network’s beautiful orchestra!
Passionate about building people-powered, intersectional movements for a more humane, democratic and just world, Sachiko has been practicing and teaching LCN’s organizing and narrative practices for the past 8 years! She has also co-founded Chabujo, a Tokyo-based feminist grassroots organization, has led campaigns against sexual violence and discrimination, and trained and coached various youth-led campaigns across Japan.
She enjoys learning about all the amazing campaigns, innovations, and adaptations happening in the community to share with others, while also leading the newly relaunched Coaching & Support program.
Within the LCN team, Sachiko is our go-to person for ideas on learning sessions, connecting people, designing and coordinating events, and bringing thoughtful reflection and learning to our work!
Reem Khashman
Managing the Leading Change Network’s resource center is no easy feat, but with our brilliant Resource Center Coordinator, Reem, we can always rest assured that our resources are handled and kept up-to-date with the utmost proficiency.
With over six years of research and practical experience in the development sector, in addition to vast experience in grassroots organizing and mobilizing, Reem is a passionate feminist organizer for justice and women’s rights in Jordan.
In 2018, Reem learned the public narrative framework at the “Female Leadership programme in Jordan” with Ahel organization, followed by the Leadership Organizing and Action course, at the Harvard Kennedy School with Marshall Ganz in 2019.
She went ahead to organize a group of youth in the Jordan valley to work on women’s rights in the agriculture sector, and took part in creation of the Arab Fact-Checkers Network AFCN by ARIJ.
Since 2020, Reem taught, trained and coached Public Narrative and Organizing with LCN, HKS and Ahel.
Within the LCN team, Reem is the go-to person when one needs to share or search for rich resources
Haruka Sano
Haruka Sano
Japan
As Resource Center Coordinator, Haruka ties in her demonstrated skills in project management and analytics, with her passion toward enabling others to learn about community organizing, to ensure that the Resource Center effectively supports LCN members’ learning.
Since getting involved in Community Organizing Japan as a high school student a decade ago, Haruka has been inspired by the story-centered approach of community organizing, especially unique to her Japanese culture. At Pomona College, she organized her choir members in establishing a gender-neutral concert attire, and was an active member of on-campus student activism around race, gender, and immigration.
Haruka currently leads KIKOOP: KIKO Organizer Program (Climate Organizer Program), designing community organizing training and coaching sessions for more than 150 people across Japan, who want to create teams, build strategies, and run campaigns on climate crisis. Through this work, she finds deep joy when she sees people taking the courage to share their stories with their communities and inspiring others to join their campaigns, and when she witnesses people gaining self confidence through finishing a campaign and recognizing the growth of their communities, not just the campaign results.
Within the LCN team, Haruka is the go-to person if anyone has any thoughts on what to add to the Resource Center (any exciting new training material or case study?) or how to improve the Resource Center so that it supports your learning better!
Jafrin Akhtar
Social Media Coordinator
India
With an impressive keenness to learn and a quick-witted attitude, Jafrin takes up the role of the Leading Change Network’s Social Media Coordinator and Administrative Assistant, displaying multitudes of eagerness, team spirit, and multi-tasking!
As a grassroots community organizer and social worker, Jafrin believes in the power of community building and safe spaces, especially when they center the personal narratives and experiences of marginalized communities, as she applies in her work with her village and nearby areas of Assam, a North-Eastern state of India.
Jafrin brings a vibrant portfolio of experiences aboard, being involved in community work from their early teenage years. Since 2018, she has been leading a feminist youth collective called Spread Love And Peace, focusing on the intersections of issues on health, gender, sexuality and leadership building.
Over the years, they have also been involved with a number of prominent organizations, such as Haiyya, YP Foundation, Khoon, Xomonnoy, Guftagu Therapy, Youth Ki Awaaz and Circles of Feminist Politics.
Within the LCN team, she’s the go-to person for social media curation, prepping the backend resources for events, and keeping track of communications, always dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s for the LCN team!
Alyssa Constant

United States
At the Leading Change Network, we never fear the seemingly confusing numbers and complex financial issues, because we always know that our genius finance and accounting lead, Alyssa, has our back!
With a bachelor and Masters degrees in accounting from The University of Texas, Alyssa carries an impressive set of financial skills through which she has kept LCN on track financially since September 2019.
Alyssa enjoys being in an environment filled with such passion and dedication as LCN, inspired everyday by the amazing hard work performed and the positive change resulting from it.
She strives to support more non-profits, seeking to add further value and meaning to both her personal and professional lives.
Within the LCN team, she’s the go-to person for any finance-related issue: invoicing, paying bills, and tracking unrestricted and restricted contributions, as well as a variety of other accounting and financial matters!
Benedict Hugosson
Chief Operation Officer
Sweden
As Chief Operating Officer, I oversee the day-to-day operations of our organization. I work with my team to ensure that we are all aligned on our goals and that we are working towards them effectively. I am also the go-to person for creating structure and order, and for finding creative solutions to problems.
In my previous role, I was responsible for membership development for the Swedish Social Democrats. I worked to increase membership and develop new members into active leaders. I am also an expert in election campaigning, and I have used data to drive results and prove that people are the keys to creating change.
I am also an active member of LCN. I have been part of the leadership team for LCN Europe. I am passionate about sharing the practice of organizing with others, and I am always looking for new ways to bring these practices to more people.
I am personally motivated to empower others to make a difference in the world. I believe that everyone has the potential to make a positive impact, and I am committed to broadening the democratic process and helping people find their agency to take action.
As a dedicated leader, a creative thinker, and a passionate advocate for democracy, I am excited to continue working with the LCN team to make a difference in the world.
Abdelrahman ElGendy
Content Writer and Editor
Egypt
A firm believer in the power of storytelling, Abdelrahman is the writer and editor of the Leading Change Network, utilizing the magic of words to craft our compelling narratives and communication texts!
Through the lens of a writer and a passionate human rights advocate, he sees global people empowerment embodied in counter-narratives that serve to expose untold stories, resist prevalent propaganda of oppressors, and enable marginalized communities to be heard and empowered.
Abdelrahman has been part of countless campaigns aiming at freeing Egyptian political prisoners, and is featured on a number of prominent platforms in the Arab world and the US, such as Mada Masr, Raseef22, Daraj Media, and Newlines Magazine.
Within the LCN team, Abdelrahman is our go-to person when seemingly disconnected ideas need to be given a voice and a story, to stem from our hearts, and right to the hearts of our readers.
Sakher Ghaben
Data & Web Analytics Specialist
Jordan
As the IT Specialist within our dynamic team, I bring a wealth of experience and expertise to ensure seamless technological support for LCN members. With a strong foundation in information technology and a passion for optimizing processes, I am committed to enhancing the digital infrastructure that empowers our community.
From my early exposure to technology during my formative years, I have honed my skills in various IT domains, allowing me to effectively navigate the evolving landscape of digital tools and systems. Whether troubleshooting technical issues or implementing innovative solutions, I thrive on the challenges that come with leveraging technology to support our mission.
Collins Santhanasamy
Project Leader: Annual Community Meet-Up
Sweden / Malaysia
Community empowerment & capacity building are core aspects of Collins’ work. He has a decade of experience working with youth across Asia and Europe on projects related to health & peacebuilding. He is passionate about the development of sustainable solutions and the power that young people bring to the arena as vanguards of change.
As Lead for the Annual Community Meet-Up, Collins aims to create a dynamic, engaging, safe, and inclusive space for amazing leaders to connect and share insights that ultimately reflect into tangible and impactful action for the various communities that we collectively serve across the globe.
Collins is a Global Atlantic Fellow for Health Equity in Southeast Asia and an Asia Foundation Development Fellow. He also serves as an Ambassador for UNLEASH and One Young World and is an Associate Fellow of the Royal Commonwealth Society.
Cynthia Jaramillo
Cynthia Jaramillo Carvallo
Mexico
Since 2023 when she graduated from LOA, she has been a passionate and active LCN member, now as the Global Partnerships Lead Cynthia will be driving LCN’s Snowflake strategy, strengthening and expanding our affiliate and partner organizational members.
She is a true believer of the power of stories to bring people together around common purposes and organize to make changes happen. For over a decade she has designed, implemented and evaluated social and educational innovation projects to ensure that youth and women’s empowerment needs are met, and potential is unlocked through organizational development, expansion strategies and strong alliances with organizations in Mexico and Central America.
Within LCN, Cynthia is a coach and a hub leader, who is currently leading the Women’s Empowerment Hub (which has a snowflake plan in place 😉) and is part of the broader effort/conversation to launch the Latin America Hub. Cynthia’s the go-to person for members and affiliates who want to replicate and expand the organizing framework into their countries and regions, or to start new alliances with like-minded organizers.
Marshall Ganz
Rita E. Hauser Senior Lecturer in Leadership, Organizing, and Civil Society
Faculty Director, Practicing Democracy Project
As Rita E. Hauser Senior Lecturer in Leadership, Organizing, and Civil Society at the Kennedy School of Government, Marshall Ganz teaches, researches, and writes on leadership, narrative, strategy and organization in social movements, civic associations, and politics. He grew up in Bakersfield, California where his father was a Rabbi and his mother, a teacher.
He entered Harvard College in the fall of 1960. He left a year before graduating to volunteer with the 1964 Mississippi Summer Project. He found a “calling” as an organizer for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, and, in the fall of 1965 joined Cesar Chavez in his effort to unionize California farm workers. During 16 years with the United Farm Workers he gained experience in union, political, and community organizing; became Director of Organizing; and was elected to the national executive board on which he served for 8 years.
During the 1980s he worked with grassroots groups to develop new organizing programs and designed innovative voter mobilization strategies for local, state, and national electoral campaigns. In 1991, in order to deepen his intellectual understanding of his work, he returned to Harvard College and after a 28-year “leave of absence” completed his undergraduate degree in history and government. He was awarded an MPA by the Kennedy School in 1993 and completed his PhD in sociology in 2000.
He has published in the American Journal of Sociology, American Political Science Review, American Prospect, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Stanford Social Innovation Review and elsewhere. His newest book, Why David Sometimes Wins: Leadership, Organization and Strategy in the California Farm Worker Movement was published in 2009, earning the Michael J. Harrington Book Award of the American Political Science Association. In 2007-8 he was instrumental in design of the grassroots organization for the 2008 Obama for President campaign. In 2010 he was awarded an honorary doctorate in divinity by the Episcopal Divinity School. In association with the global Leading Change Network of organizers, researchers and educators he coaches, trains, and advises social, civic, educational, health care, and political groups on organizing, training, and leadership development around the world.
Jennifer McCrea
A frequent speaker, educator, and writer.
Jennifer McCrea is a frequent speaker, teacher, and writer on the topic of money, meaning, and social change and the co-author of the best-selling book, The Generosity Network. For more than 30 years, Jennifer has partnered with philanthropists, board members, and social change leaders to think more creatively and collaboratively about ways to align strategic direction and resources. She was a Senior Research Fellow at Harvard University for over a decade and has worked with more than 500 organizations, foundations, U.N. and government agencies, and movements across the globe.
Some of the organizations Jennifer’s worked with include DonorsChoose.org, Grameen America, Southern Poverty Law Center, ACLU, Council on Foreign Relations, Teach for America, NAACP Legal Defense Fund, Alliance for Youth Organizing, charity: water, Witness, Kiva, IDEO.org, X Prize Foundation, Creative Commons, Solutions Journalism Network, Emerson Collective, Stavros Niarchos Foundation, The Gates Foundation, The World Bank, The World Health Organization and many others.
Jennifer was also the co-founder and CEO of Born Free Africa, a private sector-led global philanthropic initiative working to end the transmission of HIV from mothers to their children, and was a Vice Chairman at the United Nations. She’s been a speaker and led seminars for, among others, Ashoka, Skoll World Forum, TED, Board Source, Social Venture Philanthropy, Draper Richards Kaplan, Open Society Foundations, New Profit, Echoing Green, Harvard Business School, Wharton, and Oxford University. Jennifer is on the Leading Change Network board and the advisory board of the MIT Media Lab and the Blue School. She is an Ambassador for Pioneer Works and is a Henry Crown Fellow at the Aspen Institute.
Ian Simmons
Co-founder & Principal of Blue Haven Initiative
President of the Foundation for Civic Leadership
Ian Simmons is Co-Founder and Principal of Blue Haven Initiative, where he oversees a portfolio focused on investments that generate competitive financial returns and address social and environmental challenges. This portfolio spans asset classes, including private and public equity, fixed income, direct investments, alternative investments and philanthropic programs.
A champion and practitioner of impact investing for two decades, Ian advances Blue Haven’s investment, research and policy strategies. He is particularly passionate about pursuing solutions to complex challenges, such as clean energy and affordable housing. Ian also advocates for policies that facilitate long-term investing and promote corporate and political transparency and accountability.
Committed to initiatives and corporations that advance investing and strengthen democracy, Ian is the President of the Foundation for Civic Leadership. He also serves on the board of directors of the U.S. Impact Investing Alliance, Social Finance, Issue One, the National Advisory Board for Public Service at Harvard College, and Karibu Homes, an affordable-housing company in Kenya.
Ian graduated with honors from Harvard College in 2000. He lives in the Boston area with his wife, Blue Haven Co-Founder Liesel Pritzker Simmons, and their daughters.
Samar Dudin
Theatre Artist, Educator, Community Organizer
Focused on Youth Leadership, Neighborhood Action, and Emancipatory Education,
Regional Director & Head of Programs at Ruwwad
Samar Dudin is The Regional Director and Head of Programs at Ruwwad Al Tanmeya, a Community and Youth Empowerment Organization where she leads and designs youth empowerment programs and organizes and coaches community-led campaigns. Samar has been a pioneer of Drama and Theatre in Education in Jordan and a lifelong cultural and social activist since the 90ies. In 2006 she founded the youth empowering initiative Takween Open Spaces in Amman Jordan and has developed several innovative and multi-disciplinary initiatives that integrate education, development, and the arts targeting mainly children, youth, and their caretakers in local communities.
She is a theatre director with a repertoire of 17 youth and child plays that developed through the co-authorship and co-creation methodology. Samar served as Amman City Council Member -from 2003-2006- where she enabled the creation of the Child Protection Committee and the Executive Agency for a Child-Friendly City which launched Greater Amman Municipality’s first Child Municipal Councils elections. Samar has extensive experience in Community Organizing, she coached campaigns that combat violence and enabled Youth movements in Amman Jordan on leadership, public narrative, and organizing. Samar graduated from Santa Clara California with a Bachelor’s Degree in Theatre Arts in 1985, She is a founding board member of Al Balad Theater, An Advisory Committee member at Al Shams Theatre, A board member of Zad Al Founoun at The Arab Cultural Society, An Arab Ashoka Fellow on Social Entrepreneurship, a Fellow of the International Women s Forum Leadership program.
A member of the Board for the Youth Leadership Center Ministry of Youth -Jordan. She dedicates her time to developing Ruwwad Al Tanmeya’s Programs and Regional Expansion in the Arab World.
Kathryn Perera
Director within the National Health Service (the NHS). Leads NHS Horizons.
Kathryn leads NHS Horizons, which works with leaders and organisations across the health and care system in England and internationally using movement-based approaches to change.
Until May 2023, Kathryn was the national Director of Improvement Capability-Building and Delivery for the NHS in England. She acted as the Programme Director of a national review of improvement and delivery commissioned by the NHS Chief Executive, which reassessed how the NHS could lead post-pandemic recovery across the service and which led to the creation of NHS Impact. Kathryn coaches, consults and facilitates change work across the wider public-sector both in England and more widely. With Professor Christopher Pietroni, she co-leads the Faculty of the Leadership Centre’s flagship systems leadership programme,
Future Vision. Before joining the NHS, Kathryn spent eight years working in politics and community
organising, including as the Chief Executive of Movement for Change, a social enterprise which worked with communities to organise and win change on a range of issues, from workers’ rights to better housing conditions. A practising barrister (lawyer) by background, Kathryn is a US-UK Fulbright Commission scholar and former visiting fellow at the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. In addition to LCN, Kathryn is a trustee of the UK-based social enterprise Act Build Change, and she sits on the advisory board of the History Faculty at the University of Oxford.
Mariali Cárdenas
Founding member of Via Education- Nationwide nonprofit organization based in Mexico
Founding member of Via Educacion (2005), a nationwide nonprofit organization based in Mexico focused on generating social sustainable opportunities through the design, implementation and evaluation of educational strategies.
She has done work to expand educational opportunities for underprivileged children in different contexts, rural, indigenous and urban settings. Her particular interest of research is the understanding of how children and youth can develop citizen skills and democratic practices through participatory methodologies within the formal educational context and how they can improve their lives as they become agents of change in their communities.
She has a Master degree from the Harvard Graduate School of Education where she learned about teaching and learning, design of education policies and community organizing.
Combining innovative education theories based on the research of Harvard’s Project Zero and Marshall Ganz’s Organizing framework, she has worked with educators and social leaders to generate spaces of genuine children and youth’s participation in development and environmental care.
Her work has being applied throughout the Civics and Ethics National Curriculum and she has very much enjoyed working in the Northern Mountains of Durango and the Tarahumara indigenous communities in Mexico.
She also has served as a specialized advisor for UNESCO-Latin America for the Target 4.7 Global Citizenship and Sustainability of the Sustainable Development Goals.
More recently, she organized a Campaign that successfully helped to reinstate Children’s right of education during and after the pandemic mobilizing more than 90 organizations, that included non-for-profit, private sector, academia and parent based associations that changed the course of education opportunities for children in the state of the country where she lives.
Junko Yoda
Organizing and public narrative trainer and a community organizing campaign coach.
Since 2013 she has trained and coached more than 40 organizing workshops for civic leaders in Japan and ASEAN countries to activate local social changes. Her interest is in social justice especially in the area of gender and climate change. She is a founder of CLinked that trains local community leaders in Asia to organize and promote gender equality. CLinked was launched as a part of campaign project for professor Marshall’s Ganz’s “Organizing: People Power and Change” class while she was an Advanced Leadership Initiative fellow at Harvard University.
She is also a founding member of Community Organizing Japan which trained over 4000 people all over Japan in community organizing. In this capacity she is currently working on organizing training and climate change campaign in Japan. In 2017 she was a teaching fellow for Harvard Kennedy Schools executive course “Leadership, Action and Organizing”. Junko is a graduate of Columbia University’s master in business administration and worked globally in Singapore, Tokyo and New York.
over 150 trainers in community organizing, public narrative and human trafficking prevention in 5 countries (Vietnam, Indonesia, Singapore, Myanmar, Cambodia) in Asia through CLinked, a 5013c she co-founded in 2011. She launched Clinked as part of a campaign project for professor Marshall’s Ganz’s “Organizing: People Power and Change” class while she was an Advanced Leadership Initiative fellow at Harvard University. CLinked coached a successful campaign to create community childminders amongst financially disadvantaged women in Singapore.
She is a founding member of Community Organizing Japan which trained over 4000 people all over Japan in community organizing. In this capacity she is currently working on a climate change campaign and training in Japan. In 2017 she was a teaching fellow for Harvard Kennedy Schools executive course “Leadership, Action and Organizing”. Junko is a graduate of Columbia University’s masters in business administration.
Andrew Manuel Crespo
Morris Wasserstein Public Interest Professor of Law
Executive Faculty Director, Institute to End Mass Incarceration
Andrew Manuel Crespo is the Morris Wasserstein Public Interest Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, where he teaches criminal law and procedure and serves as the Executive Faculty Director of the Institute to End Mass Incarceration. Professor Crespo’s research and scholarly expertise center on the institutional design, legal frameworks, and power structures of the American penal system. His scholarship has been honored by the Association of American Law Schools and profiled in The New York Times, with his leading articles appearing in the Harvard Law Review, the Columbia Law Review, and the Yale Law Journal. Together with John Rappaport, he is the author of Criminal Law and the American Penal System, an innovative forthcoming casebook that recasts the traditionally required criminal law course as a class about the role law and lawyers have played in building and sustaining American mass incarceration.
Nationally recognized for his expertise on a range of legal issues, Professor Crespo’s public commentary can be found in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, the Journal of the American Medical Association, and online at Lawfare, Just Security, Take Care, and Inquest, where he is a founding editor. He regularly shares opinions and analyses with print, television, and radio journalists, and has appeared on CNN, NPR’s On Point and All Things Considered, and NBC’s Meet the Press.At the appointment of President Biden, Professor Crespo served in 2021 on the Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court of the United States. He additionally serves on the Academic Advisory Board of the American Constitution Society and on the Standing Advisory Committee on the Rules of Criminal Procedure for the state of Massachusetts. He is an elected member of the American Law Institute. Prior to beginning his academic career, Professor Crespo served as a Staff Attorney with the Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia, where he represented over one hundred adults and juveniles charged with serious felonies, ranging from armed robberies, to burglaries, to homicides. As a member of the Harvard Law School faculty he continues to be active in litigation, authoring merits stage and amicus briefs on various issues, often in close collaboration with his students.
Professor Crespo graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law School in 2008, where he served as president of the Harvard Law Review, the first Latino to hold that position. Following law school, Professor Crespo served for three years as a law clerk, initially to Judge Stephen Reinhardt of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, then to Associate Justice Stephen Breyer of the U.S. Supreme Court, and finally to Associate Justice Elena Kagan during her inaugural term on the Court. Following his time as a public defender, Professor Crespo returned to Harvard as an assistant professor of law in 2015. In 2019, he became the first Latino promoted to a tenured position on the law school’s faculty.
Farhan Latif
A philanthropic leader, social entrepreneur and cross sector mobilizer on minority inclusion
President of the El-Hibri Foundation
His work is inspired by democratic values and universal norms shared by faith traditions and his leadership has challenged global extremism and ideologically motivated hate. He is the President of the El-Hibri Foundation, focused on cross sector approaches to foster inclusion across religious and political divides. His work focuses on investing in Muslim leaders in partnership with allies to build capacity and resilience.
Prior to joining the Foundation, he led the think tank Institute for Social Policy and Understanding, where his work included advising White House officials, Homeland Security and other agencies on issues around national security, enhancing religious pluralism and equity. He spent over a decade in higher education focused on inclusion of underrepresented, low-income, and first-generation students. As a social entrepreneur, he founded Strategic Inspirations, a social impact consulting firm. Farhan serves as an advisory member on the Council on Foundations Public Policy Committee and the Executive Committee of the MGP Fund that was launched at Stanford University’s Hasso Plattner Institute of Design (d.school).
As an interfaith leader, Mr. Latif worked with national and local civic organizations to promote religious understanding and inclusion. He is also a fellow of the American Muslim Civic Leadership Institute. He serves as an advisory member on both the Muslim-Jewish Advisory Council and the leadership committee of the ACCESS Campaign to Take on Hate, and is a Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum. Authors Genieve Abdo and Akbar Ahmad have chronicled Farhan’s journey in combating extremism and working towards inclusion in their books Mecca and Mainstreet: Muslim Life in America After 9/11 and Journey into America: The Challenge of Islam. Farhan has appeared on numerous media outlets, including ABC, FOX, BBC, LA Times, New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Voice of America, Gulf Times and USA Today.
Mr. Latif received an MA from Harvard University, where he completed a specialized interdisciplinary program on Social Entrepreneurship, Philanthropy and Education through graduate coursework at the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard Business School and Harvard Graduate School of Education. He also holds a degree in Business Management and Marketing, and completed graduate work in nonprofit management at the University of Michigan Dearborn.
Sarah ElRaheb-Dagher
Head of Academy
Sarah ElRaheb-Dagher is an educator, leadership coach, and pedagogy specialist. With a deep commitment to fostering growth and innovation, Sarah is responsible for leading the strategic development, coordination, and execution of the Leading Change Academy’s goals. Her focus is on driving change and innovation in pedagogy, leadership development, and organizational growth.
Within the LCN team, Sarah is our go-to person for shaping transformative educational approaches, designing impactful strategies, and empowering individuals and organizations to lead with vision and impact.