Who We Are
Dr. Sara Meléndez has over 30 years of experience in education and in the nonprofit sector. She has been a teacher, professor and education administrator, and CEO of two nonprofit organizations, most recently, for eight years at Independent Sector. She also taught in the nonprofit management program at the George Washington University. She has worked with nonprofits, corporations, foundations, and government officials in Eastern Europe, Israel, and Latin America on building the capacity of nonprofit organizations. The work has encompassed strategic planning, fund raising, message development, developing partnerships and collaborations, building board capacity and governance policies. She has consulted on multicultural issues and diversity in the corporate sector.
Brigitte Savage has accumulated over 30 years of experience in fund raising and has been instrumental in raising over $100 million for nonprofits. She has worked with organizations in the arts, women’s and human rights, and was VP for Development and Membership at Independent Sector. She is CFRE certified and expert in all phases of development — needs assessment, case statement development, prospect research and cultivation, proposal writing, planned giving, direct mail fund raising, membership recruitment and retention, and conference and event planning.
All partners serve on multiple nonprofit boards and Sara Meléndez served on corporate boards.
Mary M. Grimm is a certified fundraising executive (CFRE) with over 25 years experience in the corporate, foundation, and nonprofit sectors. She was instrumental in developing an award-winning contributions program for Maxwell House Coffee Company and raised funds for the Duval County Public Schools in Jacksonville, FL, as executive director of the Duval Public Education Foundation. Mary served as director of development for the National Trust for Historic Preservation at Woodrow Wilson House; director of development at Independent Sector; and director of foundation relations at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies. Mary now uses her successful experience consulting with nonprofit organizations to help them secure the resources that will increase their sustainability and their capacity to serve their clients and communities.
Janice Petrovich’s career has focused on improving the life chances of those most vulnerable in societies around the world. She has pursued these goals locally, nationally and internationally in a variety of ways: as policy researcher, evaluator, grant maker, nonprofit and foundation manager. Through her work, she has sought to increase public understanding and implement programs that help to overcome structural obstacles to societal inequities faced by girls, women and racial/ethnic minorities. Petrovich was Director for eleven years of the Ford Foundation's global work in the fields of education and scholarship; sexuality and reproductive health; and religion, society and culture. This involved developing and implementing global strategies and the administration and oversight of annual grants in excess of $75M. She also served as CEO of ASPIRA, a national organization that works to develop Latino youth leadership and their educational achievement. She now dedicates the wealth of experience and skills she has accumulated to help nonprofit organizations and foundations strengthen their programs and evaluate their effectiveness to better serve their clients and causes.
Bob Russell most recently served as Senior Science Advisor for the Self Reliance Foundation, where he also directs a number of informal science programs designed to increase Hispanic participation in the sciences. With over twenty years of rich and varied experience in education and research, including cross-cultural, educational, and evaluation research, Mr. Russell has served as University Professor and Director of two museums, The Omaha Children’s Museum and the Impression 5 Science Museum. He further served as Program Director for the National Science Foundation's $35 million a year Informal Education Program. After obtaining his doctorate in developmental psychology at Cornell University, Bob dedicated himself to strengthening children’s mathematical thinking and enjoyment of the sciences most often by involving the whole family in the process. An expert in program evaluation and impact assessment, Bob frequently offers workshops in federal proposal writing and in program development. A skilled and respected convener he is adept at building coalitions of science educators and practitioners and recently organized the first-ever national informal science conference for Hispanics
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