MAYA AJMERA

CEO & Founder
Global Fund for Children

Maya Ajmera is the founder and president of the Global Fund for Children. Maya’s vision for the Global Fund for Children and its books was influenced by her personal experience as a South Asian American girl growing up in eastern North Carolina.

Reflecting on her upbringing, Maya said, “I have always considered myself to be a global citizen. I am an American but also South Asian. I was raised in Greenville, North Carolina. I had the incredible opportunity to visit my grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins in India when I was a young girl. I spoke English and Hindi. I grew up eating French fries and pizza and puris [fried bread] and chicken curry. . . . Most of the time I would wear blue jeans and dresses, but on special occasions I would dress in a salwar kameez [a long shirt and long baggy pants worn with a colorful scarf]. The two very different experiences made me develop a strong curiosity about other people and cultures.”

Maya received a bachelor’s degree in biology from Bryn Mawr College and a master’s degree in public policy from the Sanford Institute of Public Policy at Duke University. She also studied and traveled in Southeast Asia as a Rotary scholar. Her previous professional positions include special assistant to the president of the Population Institute and consultant for Family Health International.

She serves on the boards of directors of Echoing Green, the Frank Porter Graham Child Development Center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and the Washington Area Women's Foundation, and on the advisory boards of Youth Philanthropy Worldwide, Whole Child Initiative, Global Philanthropy Forum, the American India Foundation, and the Emerging Markets Foundation.

CHRISTINE GRUMM

CEO & President
Women's Funding Network

Christine Grumm, President and CEO of the Women’s Funding Network, has more than three decades of experience as a leader in effecting social change through civil society, and especially through women’s philanthropy. Chris passionately believes in the power of women and girls’ solutions and is dedicated to helping unleash that potential to help transform the world.

As President and CEO of the Women’s Funding Network, Chris has shown dynamic leadership in guiding over 140 women’s and girls’ funds, in the U.S. and abroad, through an ambitious program of expansion towards a goal of $450 million in assets by 2008. Chris has also raised awareness of the make-a-difference philanthropy practiced by women’s funds that emphasizes the active role of women as donors and grantee partners. The results speak for themselves: in 2000, Network membership numbered 70; today it has more than 140 member funds. In 2000 women’s funds held $150 million in assets; today that number exceeds $450 million, while giving away $60 million annually.

Visionary partnerships have also grown, including Women Moving Millions (WMM), a partnership between an extraordinary group of visionary donors, the Women's Funding Network, and its member funds. WMM represents a wide spectrum of women who share a powerful vision of the world, in which justice, equality and safety are experienced by all women and girls and their families in every corner of the earth. This groundbreaking campaign beat its goal of raising $150 million in gifts of $1 million and more by April 2009 by raising more than $176 million. This achievement tips the collective grantmaking and assets of women’s funds over the $1 billion mark. It also seeks to make a lasting difference to women’s funds’ major fundraising abilities and potential.

Prior to joining Women’s Funding Network, Chris served as Executive Director of the Chicago Foundation for Women. Under her leadership, CFW increased its grant-making to one million dollars annually and completed an endowment campaign surpassing its $5 million goal.

CAROL JENKINS

President
Women's Media Center


Carol Jenkins is President of the Women's Media Center and a Founding Member of its Board of Directors. An Emmy award-winning former news anchor and correspondent who covered presidential politics as well as international issues, Ms. Jenkins leads the Women’s Media Center’s online publication and its advocacy initiatives.

She is a national spokeswoman for women and the media, arguing the case for inclusion of women throughout the media: in ownership positions, at the highest levels of management and creativity, as well as the telling of women's stories in television and film, radio, print, and online.

As president of the Women’s Media Center, Ms. Jenkins has testified before Congress and the FCC, and written about what she calls The Invisible Majority—the 51 percent of the population (women) who occupy only 3 percent of "clout" positions in media.

As a media and political analyst, she has appeared as a guest and in debates at top national outlets. Her commentary, written for www.womensmediacenter.com, has appeared in The Nation.com, The Huffington Post, Television Week, and other print and online sources. A frequently sought speaker and moderator, she also conducts media training seminars and private sessions for women across the country.

Ms. Jenkins enjoyed a 30-year, award-winning tenure with several New York City news departments, including 23 years at WNBC-TV, where she co-anchored the pivotal 6 p.m. newscast. She was most identified with her reporting of national political stories, including from the floor of Democratic and Republican national conventions that yielded Presidents Carter, Reagan, Bush, and Clinton. From South Africa she reported on the release of Nelson Mandela after 27 years in prison, and anchored and co-produced an Emmy-nominated prime time special on apartheid. She hosted her own daily talk show, Carol Jenkins Live, on WNYW-TV.

Carol Jenkins is the author, with her daughter Elizabeth Gardner Hines, of Black Titan, A.G. Gaston and the Making of a Black American Millionaire. The life story of Ms Jenkins' uncle, it was selected by the Black Caucus of the American Library Association as one of the best non-fiction books of 2004. She is an executive producer of the PBS documentary, What I Want My Words To Do To You, which won the Freedom of Expression Award at the Sundance Film Festival in 2003.
Among Ms. Jenkins' interests is promoting the cause of the women and children of war ravaged Africa. She serves on the USA board of AMREF, the African Medical and Research Foundation. Founded 50 years ago as The Flying Doctors, AMREF is the largest African health organization working on the continent. Ms Jenkins has visited AMREF projects in South Africa, Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda, and has written about the former girl soldiers of Uganda.

Ms. Jenkins, a second-generation journalist, is working on her next family memoir, a historical look at women and people of color in the media. She has written articles for More, Ms, and Opportunity Journal and her essay, “Standing By: Women in Broadcast Journalism” appeared in Sisterhood is Forever: The Women's Anthology for a New Millennium. She has served on the boards of the Ms. Foundation for Women and the Feminist Press, among others.

MILBRY POLK

Executive Director & Co-Founder
WINGS Worldquest

A Fellow of The Explorers Club, Fellow of the Royal Geographic Society,and Honorary Fellow of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society,Polk is the author of 10 books including Egyptian Mummies (Dutton Penguin, 1998), co -author with Mary TiegreenWomen of Discovery (Clarkson Potter, 2001) andco-editor with Angela SchusterThe Looting of theIraqi Museum (2005 Abrams) and is a contributing editor(book reviews) for The Explorers Journal. She lectures frequently and serves on the boards of museums, theater, news and arts organizations.Polk graduated from the Madeira School and Harvard College. She was a photojournalist.Her own explorations have been in the Middle East and Asia ( North Africa, Arabia, Yemen, Iran, Pakistan, India, Nepal, Laos, Burma) and more recently in the Arctic and Tibet. Her work now focuses on supporting, through theorganizationshe founded with Leila Hadley Luce, Wings WorldQuest, the work of women explorers. She is creating educational programs to engage young people in science and exploration. Polk lectures frequently.

JENNIFER BUFFETT

Co-Chair & President
NoVo Foundation

Jennifer Buffett is the Co-Chair of the NoVo Foundation with her husband musician and composer Peter Buffett.

NoVo (Latin for “to change, alter, invent”) is a philanthropic organization focused primarily on the empowerment of women and girls.Jennifer is responsible for the strategic direction of NoVo and chairs its Grants Committee.NoVo is based in New York, and its 2009 granting will exceed $40 million. NoVo’s vision is to support a paradigm shift in global society from a culture of domination and exploitation to partnership and collaboration.

In September 2008, Jennifer and Peter Buffett received the Clinton Global Citizen Award for their “visionary leadership and sustainable, scalable work in solving pressing global challenges.”Presenting the award to the Buffetts, Former President Bill Clinton said, “The Buffetts are leading an inspirational campaign to improve the status of women and girls across the globe. Their innovative approach to philanthropy has leveraged the capacity of existing organizations to affect real, positive change.”

Among various investments Ms. Buffett has guided at NoVo are a $30 million, five-year program with the International Rescue Committee (IRC) to help rebuild educational systems and address root causes and end violence against women and girls in post-conflict West Africa.NoVo has also partnered with the Nike Foundation on a $100 million granting partnership entitled “The Girl Effect,” which is focused on ambitious goals to advance the economic empowerment and well-being of adolescent girls in the developing world to break the cycle of poverty.

Ms. Buffett’s other efforts at NoVo include a capacity building program for Women for Women International, a recipient of the Conrad Hilton Prize for Humanitarian Organizations that helps women in war-torn countries rebuild their lives and their communities. The NoVo Foundation is also working on an initiative to advance the science and practice of social emotional learning for all children K -12 in schools in the United States.

She travels around the world on behalf of the foundation and serves on the board of the Nike Foundation, the advisory councils of the International Center for Research on Women (ICRW), the Women’s Media Center, and BRAC USA.
Jennifer’s work in philanthropy began in 1997 when her in-laws, Susan and Warren Buffett, placed Jennifer and Peter in charge of a charitable fund.Their early work was focused primarily on the environment, arts, and social services in Wisconsin.During this time, Jennifer helped launch the Wisconsin Infant and Early Childhood Mental Health Association to advance practice and policy around healthy social emotional development for young children.In 2006, Warren Buffett sparked a major increase in the foundation’s assets with a pledge of more than $1 billion in Berkshire Hathaway stock, and the Buffetts commenced a strategic planning process that led to a new focus on empowering women and girls.

Jennifer completed her undergraduate studies in journalism and communications at the University of Wisconsin and earned her own way through college.

MARY ELLEN ISKENDERIAN

CEO & President
Women's World Banking

Mary Ellen Iskenderian is President and CEO of Women’s World Banking (WWB), the world’s largest network of microfinance institutions and banks. Ms. Iskenderian leads the WWB global team, based in New York, in providing hands-on technical services and strategic support to 40 top-performing microfinance institutions and banks in 28 countries in Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe, Latin America and the Middle East. WWB’s network members consistently rate among the top three microfinance institutions in their countries and 74 percent of their clients are poor women entrepreneurs.

Ms. Iskenderian, who joined WWB in 2006, has more than 20 years of experience in building global financial systems throughout the developing world. Ms. Iskenderian is a leading voice for women’s leadership and participation in microfinance, and a strong advocate for the role of capital markets in the sector. She has spoken widely on microfinance at Harvard, Yale, Stanford, and Wharton and at numerous industry and banking forums including the Clinton Global Initiative Annual Meeting; the Council on Foreign Relations and the ResponsAbility Microfinance Conference in Zurich, Switzerland. She has been profiled in Forbes magazine and the Wall Street Journal and is frequently quoted in the media, including Newsweek, Time, BBC News, and Voice of America.

Prior to WWB, Ms. Iskenderian worked for 17 years in senior management at the International Finance Corporation, the private sector arm of the World Bank, where her numerous leadership positions included Director of Partnership Development, Director of the Global Financial Markets Portfolio and Director of the South Asia Regional Department. Previously, she worked for the investment bank, Lehman Brothers.

Ms. Iskenderian currently sits on the advisory boards of the Dignity Fund, Kiva and Trickle Up as well as the Board of Directors of the ASA Foundation. She is a member of the Women’s Leadership Board of Harvard University and the Council on Foreign Relations. She holds an MBA from the Yale School of Management and a Bachelor of Science in International Economics from Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service.

JACKI ZEHNER

Media Commentator,
Blog Author of Purse Pundit
Founding Partner, Circle Financial Group
Former Partner, Goldman Sachs (Youngest woman to be invited into the partnership at Goldman Sachs)


In 1996, Jacki Zehner was the youngest woman, and first female trader, to be invited into the partnership of Goldman Sachs. After leaving the firm in 2002, she became a Founding Partner of Circle Financial Group, a private wealth management operation consisting of a small group of women committed to effectively managing their families’ assets and philanthropic activities. She is an active member of Golden Seeds, an angel investing network that invests in women-led ventures, and an Advisory Board Member of the philanthropic voice of New York, Contribute magazine. An impassioned philanthropic visionary committed to the economic empowerment of women, she serves on the boards of The Women’s Funding Network, The Breast Cancer Research Foundation, The Center for Work Life Policy, her alma mater The University of British Columbia, and is President of The Jacquelyn and Gregory Zehner Foundation. She is a frequent media commentator on women’s success in the workplace, women and wealth, investing, current market events, and high-impact philanthropy.

Throughout her fourteen-year career at Goldman Sachs, she remained one of very few senior women traders on Wall Street and actively participated in numerous recruiting and mentoring activities aimed at both attracting and retaining women professionals. In 1999 Ms. Zehner left her role as manager of the mortgage-backed trading desk for an executive office appointment in which she assumed a broad human capital management role. She assumed responsibilities in the areas of leadership development, diversity, performance evaluation, promotion, succession planning and recruitment. She served on multiple internal committees including the firm’s Partnership Committee, Diversity Committee, Compliance and Control Committee, and Pine Street, Goldman’s Leadership Development Initiative. Her vision of creating community among high-impact women led to the creation and launch of Goldman’s ASCEND Initiative, a Leadership Exchange which connects, educates, and empowers the firm’s most influential women clients.

Ms. Zehner has been recognized as a “Wall Street Trailblazer”; a “next-generation role model” for women navigating the complex constellation of work, family, and civic service; and is the recipient of multiple leadership awards. Her work continues to be informed by her own journey from humble beginnings to Wall Street success. She learned early on the power of the dollar working as a cashier in her father’s grocery store. Twenty-five years later the journey continues at Circle Financial Group, where eighteen high net worth women work together to thoughtfully direct their time, treasure and talent to make a difference in the world. The group also serves as a think-tank, attracting diverse thought leaders on matters of investing, current affairs, and social responsibility.

Through multiple platforms, Ms. Zehner leverages her unique access and expertise by bridging knowledge and resources across the corporate, philanthropic, and nonprofit sectors. Her strong belief in women’s need to individually and collectively assert their economic clout fuels her ongoing engagement across these realms.

She lives in Connecticut with her husband, Greg Zehner, and two young children. Greg - a retired Goldman Sachs Partner, recent Yale Divinity Graduate and now acting pastor - shares his wife’s commitment to social activism.