Liz Sak became the second Executive Director of the Cricket Island Foundation in 2008, overseeing all aspects of the Foundation’s management including finance, program development, grantmaking, and field-building. As a result of listening to CIF grantees, Liz began to reach out to colleagues to try to amplify what they were learning about funding leadership transitions.

Shireen Zaman is a program officer on the BUILD team at the Ford Foundation, working to advance the foundation’s efforts to support and develop stronger, sustainable, and more effective social justice organizations and networks across the globe. Through her own work in the philanthropic and nonprofit sectors, she believes strongly that if funders focus on transparency and trust, planning, attention to equity, and support, then leadership transitions can be a healthy and normal part of an organization’s life cycle. Prior to the Ford Foundation, she was the director of the RISE Together Fund, a donor collaborative at the Proteus Fund, where she worked to identify, invest in and build the capacity of grassroots organizations from Black/African, Arab, Middle Eastern, Muslim and South Asian communities in the US. Shireen has been recognized as a White House Champion of Change for her work as an Asian-American woman leader. Full bio here

Jessica Williams-Szenes is Director of the Gender and Reproductive Equity Portfolio for Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Philanthropies. Among other responsibilities, she leads GRE’s grantee capacity building program which has focused on organizational development, leadership coaching and pipeline creation, and grantee safety and security, ensuring the GRE team is responsive to grantee needs and field evolutions. Through this work and in other roles, she has seen in practice that when there is adequate resourcing and capacity, leadership transitions can be exciting opportunities for creativity, innovation and celebration. Most recently, Jessica was the Program Director at the Overbrook Foundation, where she oversaw grant portfolios across reproductive and LGBTQ rights and justice, U.S. democracy, and human rights in Mesoamerica while leading Overbrook's rapid response grantmaking. When not at work, Jessica loves exploring nature with her family and cultivating a writing practice. Full bio here

Holly Bartling is the Director of the Worker Justice and Dignity Fund, a fund that invests in organizations and leaders working to end worker exploitation, bring about structural change, and create conditions for everyone to live and work in dignity. She has long been an advocate for trust-based practices in leadership transition funding. Previously, she was the Senior Program Officer at the General Service Foundation where she managed the Building Voice and Power program, a movement building portfolio that supported organizations working at the intersection of racial, gender and economic justice. She also directed GSF investments in leadership development and healing justice. Holly is the first woman in her family to attend college, and she is passionate about paying back that investment by mobilizing resources for leaders and movements to bring about a more just world. Full bio here.

LEADING FORWARD COORDINATOR

Bipasha Ray is a human rights and social justice advocate with a passion for supporting the resilience and capacity of activists and movements working towards a more just and equitable society. She enjoys working with equity-minded philanthropies and nonprofits to design human-centered leadership and organizational development and fellowship programs. She has a particular interest in sustainable leadership transition support after running and learning from the New Executives Fund at the Open Society Foundations. Bipasha combines nearly 20 years of experience in political philanthropy, fiscal sponsorships, human rights, journalism, and policy research at Panorama Global, the Open Society Foundations, and The Associated Press.