The Learning Conference 2013

Melissa Extein is Director of Strategic Learning, Research and Evaluation for International Programs at American Jewish World Service, where she has worked since 2007. She brings over ten years of consulting and teaching experience, including involvement in courses on leadership and group dynamics at The Wharton School and School of Social Policy and Practice at the University of Pennsylvania. Melissa earned her B.A. in Psychology from Yale University and her Psy.D. in Organizational Psychology from the Graduate School of Applied and Professional Psychology at Rutgers University, where she based her dissertation on her experience as an AJWS Volunteer Corps member in Thailand.

Victoria Dunning serves as the Vice President for Programs of The Global Fund for Children (GFC), with oversight of an annual $4.5 million global grants portfolio supporting community-based organizations. This program addresses the most pressing global issues faced by children and youth, including trafficking, forced labor, displacement and migration, and access to education for the most marginalized groups. She has been instrumental in defining and developing GFC’s GrantsPlus capacity-building grantmaking model, its accompanying metrics framework, and the streamlined Grantee Pathways to Success - “GPS” – grants management systems and analytics. Ms Dunning has MPH from Columbia University and a BA from Mount Holyoke College, with language proficiency in French, Spanish, Wolof and Swahili.

With deep roots and proven expertise in the community benefit sector, Melody inspires new ways of thinking and brings a thoughtful perspective to investing in local organizations. Her leadership sparked the “Ah-Ha Project; Creative Solutions to Real Problems” and launched a new approach to the way the Lancaster County Community Foundation engages with its grantee partners. Melody brings over 25 years of for profit and community benefit experience to her work as VP of Programs and Initiatives. Her latest endeavors include building a cohort learning model into Ah-Ha Funds and initiating an Organizational Fellowship Program for the 2013 grant cycle.

Phillip Chung is the Assistant Director for Research, Evaluation and Strategic Learning at The Colorado Trust. In this role, Phillip manages the development and implementation of evaluation initiatives, designs approaches to assess the progress and results of grant strategies and oversees internal and external strategies to foster systematic opportunities for learning. Previously, Phillip was an evaluation consultant with the University of Colorado Denver where he focused on issues of health access. As well, he has worked at The Wallace Foundation where he monitored multiple national grant programs focused on improving education leadership practices and policies.

Casey Johnson is the founding Executive Director for GreenLight Fund Bay Area, launching GreenLight’s expansion beyond Boston to the San Francisco Bay Area in March 2012. Prior to GreenLight, Casey completed a fellowship at Room to Read, an international NGO focused on literacy and girls education in developing countries. Casey’s background has been working with literacy and education-focused nonprofit organizations in California, Massachusetts and Washington, DC, including Raising A Reader, a GreenLight Fund portfolio organization in Boston. Casey earned master’s degrees in education from the University of San Francisco and in English from Brooklyn College.

Jessica Mancini is a program officer for the Local Grantmaking Program at the David and Lucile Packard Foundation with responsibility for grantmaking in Santa Cruz and San Benito Counties and for the Local Program’s evaluation efforts. Prior to working with the Foundation, Mancini worked in the nonprofit sector as a business analyst for small social enterprises in the San Francisco Bay Area, most recently for New Foundry Ventures in San Francisco. She has experience in both the corporate and nonprofit sectors through her work as a consultant with Accenture and as a high school teacher in Namibia, where she also managed the construction of a village kindergarten. Mancini holds a bachelor's degree in civil engineering from Cornell University and an master's of business administration with a focus on social enterprise and nonprofit management from the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley.