2016 National Conference

As a Program Officer in the Organizational Effectiveness program at the Packard Foundation, Jamaica manages organizational development grants to Foundation grantees, helping the Foundation’s core partners strengthen their leadership, management, and operations. She also develops network and field-level capacity building efforts in the U.S., Asia, the Western Pacific, and Latin America and leads learning explorations on emerging topics related to social sector capacity building. Previously, Jamaica spent 11 years at California Environmental Associates (CEA), where she provided strategic and organizational guidance to nonprofits, foundations, and businesses. Jamaica lives in San Francisco with her husband, son, and two pet rabbits.

Susan Misra is the CoDirector of Management Assistance Group, which strengthens social justice leaders, organizations, and networks in building movements to create a more just world.  Susan catalyzes alignment with values through inclusive, participatory, and analytically rigorous processes. She has strengthened over 200 nonprofits, foundations, and networks around complex adaptive strategy, leadership development, and financial sustainability. She has also designed and evaluated several capacity-building initiatives and learning communities, and has facilitated movement network and collective impact efforts to shift systems (e.g., Baltimore’s Promise and the Assets & Opportunity Network).  She co-authored Doing More with More: Putting Shared Leadership into Practice.

Allan Best, PhD is Managing Director, InSource; Associate Scientist, Vancouver Coastal Health Research Institute; and Clinical Professor Emeritus; University of British Columbia. InSource is a Vancouver-based health services and population health research group with expertise in knowledge translation and exchange, systems thinking, and communications. It serves health systems decision makers, offering innovative “whole systems” research, planning, and evaluation tools to support large-scale organizational change. Allan served as the founding Chair of the Department of Health Studies at the University of Waterloo in Canada, the world's first interdisciplinary department inte­grating the biological and behavioural sciences to study health promotion.