Board members
New World Foundation leads by example. Our Board is made up of social justice practitioners, past and present grantees, movement thinkers and leaders.
The Board's finance committee includes non-Board members who bring financial expertise to the management of the foundations assets.
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BoardChairJulia Classen is co-founder of Aurora Consulting. She has been a leader on numerous nonprofit boards of directors for more than 30 years, serving organizations that are national, regional and local in scope. Currently, she serves as the chair of the board of directors of the Minneapolis Charities Review Council. She is an expert in a variety of arenas, including nonprofit governance, strategic management, and facilitation. She has conducted workshops and training sessions at state, local and national conferences.
United StatesMinnesota -
BoardVice ChairMaria Echaveste is a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress and a co-founder of the Nueva Vista Group. She served as Assistant to the President and Deputy Chief of Staff to Bill Clinton from 1998-2001, managing domestic policy initiatives on education, civil rights, immigration and bankruptcy reform. From 1993-1997 Echaveste was the administrator of the Wage and Hour Division of the Department of Labor.
United StatesDistrict of Columbia -
BoardTreasurerFred Azcarate (Chair) has been a social movement leader for 20 years. For over 12 years he has been the Executive Director of Jobs with Justice, a national coalition campaign for workers' rights, social and economic justice. Jobs with Justice works with coalitions leading the fight on workers' rights, economic and social justice and global justice in more than 40 cities in the United States.
United StatesDistrict of Columbia -
BoardSecretaryLisa Abbott is Director of Organizing and Leadership Development of Kentuckians for the Commonwealth. She received a Master’s Degree in Public Policy from the University of Maryland in 2001. Lisa Abbott was also a Program Associate at the Grassroots Policy Project in Washington DC from 1999-2000. She serves on the board of the Progressive Technology Project in Minneapolis, and was recently elected to the policy-making board of the local elementary school of her two children.
United StatesKentucky -
BoardMemberAndrew D. Gillum, a Florida A&M University graduate, former FAMU student government president and Board Trustee was elected to the Tallahassee City Commission in February 2003. He currently serves as Mayor Pro Tempore, lead commissioner for the Financial Viability Target Issue Committee; co commissioner, Health and Human Services Target Issue Committee; and chair, Joint Planning Board for Human Services Partnership. Andrew is the National Director of Youth Leadership Programs and the Young Elected Officials (YEO) Network with People For the American Way Foundation offering elected officials age 35 and under leadership, personal development training, and public policy support. Andrew is a Board Director for the Schott Foundation for Public Education and a Board Trustee for the Florida League of Cities – Florida Municipal Investment Trust.
United StatesFlorida -
BoardMemberAnthony Thigpenn has been involved in neighborhood organizing and public policy advocacy for 30 years. He is the founder and president of Strategic Concepts in Organizing & Policy Education (SCOPE), a social justice organization based in South Los Angeles. Mr. Thigpen also founded the Alliance of Local Leadership for Education, Registration, and Turnout (ALLERT), a community/labor coalition. He currently leads California Calls, an alliance of 31 organizations in 11 key counties working to win an economic justice agenda for all Californians.
United StatesCalifornia -
BoardMemberBill Dempsey has twenty-five years of experience developing new strategies to organize and empower low-income families and working class communities to advance economic and racial justice. He currently serves as the Senior Vice-President and Program Director for the Nathan Cummings Foundation. Prior to that, he directed the Capital Stewardship Program for the United Food and Commercial Workers Union (UFCW), one of the largest and most diverse private-sector unions in North America. Prior to UFCW, Bill worked at the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) as the Deputy Director of SEIU’s Capital Stewardship Program. Bill co-founded the CtW Investment Group (www.ctwinvestmentgroup.com), which advises public and private sector pension funds sponsored by a variety of unions affiliated with the Change To Win Federation.
United StatesNew York -
BoardMemberBrenda Hyde is the Assistant Director of Southern Echo, a training and education organization working to build strong grassroots leadership and organizations in Mississippi and throughout the southern region.
United StatesMississippi -
Blog author, BoardMemberDavid Harrison serves as the McCormick family representative on the New World Foundation Board. He has served previously in this capacity from 1982-1991. He currently runs his own law practice in San Francisco devoted exclusively to criminal defense. David has also served as a Staff Attorney, specializing in housing, for the San Francisco Neighborhood Legal Assistance Foundation and a distinguished Reginald Heber Smith Fellow at the Legal Aid Foundation of Long Beach
United States -
BoardMemberDon Hazen is executive director of the Independent Media Institute and executive editor of AlterNet. The former publisher of Mother Jones magazine, he has edited several books, including, most recently, Start Making Sense: Turning the Lessons of Election 2004 into Winning Progressive Politics. Don conceived of and organized the two Media & Democracy Congresses that took place in San Francisco and New York City in 1997 and 1998, and has managed political campaigns in New York City for Ruth Messinger and David Dinkins. He holds an MA in counseling from the University of Massachusetts and a BA in politics from Princeton University.
United StatesNew York -
BoardMemberJonathan Glionna is a Director and senior fixed income research analyst at Barclays Capital, where he is responsible for analyzing the U.S. banking industry. He also sits on the Board of Directors of Project STEP in Boston, a charitable organization that prepares talented music students of color to enter the profession of classical music.
United StatesNew York -
BoardMemberKent Wong is director of the UCLA Center for Labor Research and Education,
where he teaches Labor Studies and Asian American Studies. He previously was
staff attorney for the Service Employees International Union in Los Angeles .
Kent has also served as national president of the Asian Pacific American Labor
Alliance, and the United Association for Labor Education.United StatesCalifornia -
BoardMemberNsombi Lambright (Chair) is the Executive Director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Mississippi. She is the first African American to hold this position. Previously, she worked for Southern Echo, a training and education organization working to build strong grassroots leadership and organizations in Mississippi and throughout the southern region.
United StatesMississippi -
BoardMemberPeggy Saika is the President/Executive Director of Asian Americans/Pacific Islanders in Philanthropy (AAPIP). From 1993 to 2000, Ms. Saika was the founding executive director of the Asian Pacific Environmental Network and from 1983 to 1991 the executive director of the Asian Law Caucus. Spanning a 30-year period of community involvement and leadership in philanthropy, she helped to create and direct non-profit organizations in Sacramento, California and New York City.
United StatesCalifornia -
BoardMemberVincent Warren is the executive director of the Center for Constitutional Rights. He spent seven years as national senior staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), where he led national constitutional and impact litigation to advance civil rights and civil liberties. In that capacity, he litigated Gratz v. Bollinger, the companion to the landmark case upholding affirmative action in college admissions. Beyond the courtroom, he is a leading African-American voice for affirmative action
United StatesNew York
Financial Advisors to the Board
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BoardAdviser to Finance CommitteeDavid Neubert has worked in international finance for over 15 years. He developed a methodology while trading index derivatives in Brazil that uses technology and quantitative methods to automate proprietary trading systems. Since leaving the corporate world in 2005, David has dedicated his energies to writing, teaching, and helping foundations understand investments. He also sits on the board of PS122 in New York City.
United StatesNew York -
BoardAdviser to Finance CommitteeDon Galante is Managing Partner and founder of Gala Capital Management LLC. Previously, Don served as the COO and executive vice president at Mizuho Securities USA. He has extensive trading and management experience in the global fixed income markets. Over the course of his career he has established highly successful finance and arbitrage trading operations at Dresdner Kleinwort Benson, Barclays Bank, and Citicorp.
Mr. Galante has served on the Trading Practices Committee for the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association as well as on multiple advisory committees representing the Futures Industry Association.
United StatesNew Jersey -
BoardAdviser to Finance CommitteeJulie Goodridge is President and founder of NorthStar Asset Management in Boston. She is a financial advisor and a very active member of the Social Investment Forum. She was Assistant Vice-President at Dean Witter Reynolds, and a stockbroker at EF Hutton and Merrill Lynch. Julie was a lead plaintiff in a legal case that won marriage rights for same-sex couples in Massachusetts. She served on the New World Board for 6 years, and was its Treasurer for 5.
United StatesMassachusetts

