EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

Tony Balis  Tisbury, Massachusetts USA      
Founder of The Humanity Initiative, Tony was editor and publisher of our journal, humanity, in the 1990’s. Previous positions include Associate Publisher of WorldPaper and Executive Director of the National Advertising Review Board. He was chairman of the British American Educational Foundation (New York City and London) from 1975 to 1980 and served as a trustee for twenty-one years. Tony also was a lecturer in international marketing at Babson College. He holds a BA in English from Wesleyan University and an MALD from The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. 

BOARD OF ADVISORS

Justen Ahren  Tisbury, Massachusetts USA     
Justen worked for three years in the 1990’s as an editor on the premier and second issues of our journal, humanity. He also ran our volunteer intern program and established our folklore initiative. Justen lives on Martha’s Vineyard where he creates gardens and teaches poetry. He has an MFA in Creative Writing from Emerson College in Boston. His poetry has appeared in several literary journals including, most recently, Fulcrum and Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review.  Justen is founder and Director of The Martha’s Vineyard Writers Residency, providing established and emerging writers of poetry, fiction and non-fiction with the time and space to create. He also is co-director of the Summer Festival of Poetry at Featherstone Center for the Arts. 

Gregory B. Craig  Washington D. C. USA   

Currently a Partner at Skadden Arps in Washington D.C., Greg has extensive government experience as well, serving as Senator Edward M. Kennedy’s senior adviser on defense, foreign policy and national security issues, as Director of Policy Planning at the State Department under Madeleine Albright, as Assistant to the President and Special Counsel in the Clinton White House, and as President Obama’s White House Counsel. Mr. Craig also has served on the boards of many non-governmental organizations and foundations, including The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (vice chair); the International Human Rights Law Group (chair); the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial; and the American Security Project. Greg graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Harvard University in 1967 and from Yale Law School in 1972.

Kylie Janssens  Johannesburg, South Africa     

Kylie recently left her post as Director of Education and Training Quality Assurance for Media Works  –  a multi-media adult education and training company in her hometown of Johannesburg, specialising in the implementation and managing of literacy and numeracy programmes  –  to become an independent consultant. She works on a variety of skills development initiatives involving management and learner liaison, conducting and managing skills audits, and developing and aligning learning material to national standards. Kylie previously worked as a training consultant at Learning Resources, as a project manager at Devtrain, and at Morakapula Santho Adult Education Centre as an ABET facilitator. In addition, since 2009 Kylie has served on the Umalusi Adult Educational and Vocational Training Committee. She earned both a BA in Education and a BA with Honours in Publishing from the University of the Witwatersrand.

Sheila Kinkade  Baltimore, Maryland USA     

Writer, filmmaker, and communications consultant, Sheila captures the stories of grassroots visionaries whose innovative solutions to local challenges transform communities. Her work has taken her from villages in northern Thailand to schools in Serbia, from the rain forests of Costa Rica to farming communities in Uganda. Sheila’s past clients include the African Development Foundation, International Youth Foundation, Nokia, United Nations Foundation, and The World Bank. She co-authored Our Time is Now: Young People Changing the World, a book profiling young heroes in 20 countries, and has written four nonfiction children’s books. She recently produced a documentary chronicling a pioneering effort to transform school food in Baltimore. A graduate of Duke University and the Columbia School of Journalism, she is on the board of the Corfu Foundation and a member of Women in Film & Video.

Dr Sandra Pralong   Bucharest, Romania     

Sandra is currently running for the Senate in Romania. She most recently was head of the Romanian Public Relations Association and, before that, the Gender and Civil Society Advisor for UNFPA in Romania. A native of Romania, she set up and ran the Soros Foundation in Bucharest between 1990 and 1993, served as advisor to Emil Constantinescu when he was President (1998-2000), and also served UNDP in various capacities at the regional and local levels. In addition, Sandra has been involved in giving young Romanians a taste for ethics through the work of the SynergEtica Foundation which she established in 2006. In New York, before returning to Romania in 1990, Sandra was the Promotion Director for Newsweek. She earned her Ph.D in Paris, has an M.Phil from Columbia University and an MALD from The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. She writes extensively on ethics and the development of civil society.

Francie Randolph  Truro, Massachusetts USA     

Francie is a visual artist whose work explores the patterns, structures and cycles of the natural world. Her work has been exhibited internationally, has won multiple awards and has been reviewed in The New York Times, Harvard Magazine, and ArtHouse Magazine in Korea, among others. After receiving a degree in Visual and Environmental Studies from Harvard, Francie traveled through Papua New Guinea on a Radcliffe grant, exploring the interrelationship between culture and village arts. She settled in Australia, later returning to the USA to teach at Harvard for seven years and received an MEd in Visual Arts and Technology. She lives with her husband, painter Thomas A. D. Watson, and their two children in an eighteenth-century farmhouse on Cape Cod. Francie was head of the THI intern program in 1990. (www.francierandolph.com)

Michelle M. Sullivan  Sheridan, Wyoming, USA     

Michelle is principal of Sullivan & Associates, a private firm that assists philanthropists, private foundations and nonprofits to maximize their effectiveness. She recently has served as president of the Ucross Foundation, as director of Wyoming operations for the Daniels Fund, and as a senior associate at the Aspen Institute’s Community Strategies Group and Global Interdependence Initiative. Currently Michelle serves on the Wyoming State Board of Education and as a trustee of the Homer & Mildred Scott Foundation. In 1997 she was awarded a three-year Kellogg National Fellowship, during which she examined the leadership issues that emerge out of cross-cultural conflict. She was a Loeb Fellow at Harvard University in 1995 & 1996 and also was awarded an honorary doctorate from the Colorado College for her work to develop the Snake River Institute in Jackson Hole in 1988. Michelle is married and has three children.

Dr Shashi Tharoor  New Delhi, India  

Jacqueline Wigglesworth London, U.K.    Half English, half Venezuelan, Jacqueline has worked for environmental and humanitarian projects on 6 continents. She lived recently in the Yasawa islands of Fiji, teaching English, drama and sports, as well as installing fresh rainwater tanks and working on a dolphin research projects for Global Vision International. Previous overseas experience includes managing The Book Bus for children in Zambia, Malawi and Ecuador, working in an orphanage in Nepal, teaching English and sustainable development in Mexico, and on a marine project with Philippe Cousteau. Jacqueline has also led 4 expeditions in South America for VentureCo, where she learned the local languages, worked on community projects and trekked to Machu Picchu and through Patagonia. She is a yoga teacher and personal trainer as well. She has a BA Hons from Exeter University in English and Drama, and a diploma with distinction from the Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art. Her love of travel, adventure and giving back, and her belief that essentially we are all one influence her life choices, and she’s delighted to be a member of Team Humanity.

Professor Wu Ningkun  Reston, Virginia USA    
Professor Emeritus of English at the International Institute of Beijing, Ningkun spent 22 years in internal incarceration in his native China. During the 1980’s he held visiting fellowships at Cambridge University, Northwestern University and the University of California. In 1990 he was awarded a Doctor of Humane Letters from Manchester College. Ningkun published his memoir, A Single Tear, in 1993 and now lives and writes in Virginia with his wife of sixty-one years, Li Yikai.

EXTERN PROGRAM, DIRECTOR

Michael Benowitz  New York City, USA     

Mike currently is the Assistant Director at the Historical Society of the Courts of New York, where he works to preserve not just the history of the law, but of the judges, lawyers and citizens involved in crafting it. He joined THI in the summer of 2010 and, among other responsibilities, has developed new initiatives on education and on travel-for-positive-change. He also serves as head of our extern program (see below), coordinating the efforts of our other volunteers. Mike is a native of Marblehead, Massachusetts and graduated from Colgate University in 2010 with honors in History and a minor in Peace & Conflict Studies.

Externships