The Board

Profiles

Brian A. Brink, MD, Chair
As Senior Vice President: Health at Anglo American plc, the largest listed company in South Africa, Brian Brink, MD advises Group companies on the funding and delivery of health care benefits as well as on occupational health and community health issues. Dr. Brink has been with Anglo American for 20 years, and has been actively involved in HIV/AIDS issues since the mid-1980s. He is responsible for guiding Anglo American's response to the HIV/AIDS epidemic—among other achievements, the company currently has the largest employer-sponsored AIDS treatment program in the world, with over 2,000 employees receiving free antiretroviral therapy. Anglo American has also invested in several community-based initiatives to prevent the further spread of HIV, including a partnership with loveLife that focuses on healthy sexuality and reproductive health for young South Africans. Dr. Brink is actively involved in addressing the particular challenge the HIV/AIDS epidemic poses to business in Southern Africa and internationally. He advises the Nelson Mandela Foundation on the strategic response to HIV/AIDS in South Africa and currently serves as alternate board member for the Private Sector delegation on the Board of the Global Fund to fight AIDS, TB and Malaria. Dr. Brink is also involved in various national initiatives to enhance the role of the private sector in broadening access to sustainable, quality healthcare for all the citizens of South Africa. He is a director of Discovery Health, the largest health insurer in South Africa.

Debora Diniz is one of the founders of Anis: Institute of Bioethics, Human Rights and Gender, one of the key feminist groups dedicated to bioethics in Latin America. An anthropologist by training, she is now a professor of bioethics at the University of Brasilia. As a documentarian, her films received more than 50 prizes and one of the documentaries was the first film to be exhibited at a Supreme Court public hearing on abortion. She has a strong advocacy experience in working with the Brazilian Supreme Court on hard cases, such as gay marriage, abortion and stem cell research. Her research interests are reproductive and sexual rights, human rights, disability and research ethics. She has written many academic books and papers on bioethics, feminism and human rights in several languages. She now lives in Brasília, Brazil. 

Ann Unterberg, Vice Chair
Since she retired from investment banking in the eighties, Ann Unterberg has dedicated herself to various nonprofit organizations and the family's philanthropy with a commitment to women’s rights and health.  For a decade Ann has served as a Trustee of NARAL ProChoice America, where she has held many roles including Finance Chair, Vice Chair and most recently Chairperson of the Board. She also chairs the Lincoln Center Institute Board of Trustees, and is a Trustee of Planned Parenthood of NYC and the New York Community Trust. In New Jersey, Ann chairs the Monmouth Health Care Foundation Board of Trustees. 

Catherine A. Gellert, Secretary/Treasurer, is a member of IWHC's President's Council and New Leadership Council, as well as Co-Chair of the 2009 Gala. Kate serves as a Director at United Continental Corporation & Windcrest Partners and is President of the Grand Street Settlement House. She began her career at Cable News Network as an Associate Producer/Guest Booker and Assignment Editor. Kate received her BA in Fine Arts from Harvard University and an MBA in Finance from Columbia Business School. Kate is very involved with her alma mater. She serves as Co-Chair of the Harvard College Fund, Elected Director of the Harvard Alumni Association, Class of 1993 Co-Chair, Co-Chair of the Harvard University Art Museums, and member of the Board of Managers for the Harvard Club of New York City.  

Babatunde Ahonsi has expertise in sexual and reproductive health, focusing on gender and youth-related policy and programming issues. He holds a first-class honors B.Sc. in sociology from the University of Lagos and a Ph.D. in population studies from the London School of Economics and Political Science, which he undertook as a Commonwealth Scholar.

Ahonsi is the Associate II & Country Director at the Population Council. He oversees the Council’s Nigeria operations and projects, including the Men’s Health Network Nigeria, Nigeria’s first comprehensive HIV prevention intervention targeting men who engage in high-risk sexual practices and their partners, and a reproductive health portfolio focused on expanding the adoption of low-cost interventions for reducing maternal morbidity and mortality by the primary and secondary health care delivery systems.

Babatunde was a senior program officer with the Ford Foundation in West Africa for 11 years during which his grant-making and technical assistance helped to catalyze the provision of comprehensive sexuality education for young people in Nigeria, the empowerment of persons living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHAs) in national responses to the epidemic, and the inter-linking of reproductive health education for poor youth and women with economic empowerment approaches.


Holly S. Andersen, MD is an expert in cardiovascular health. She is an Associate Professor of Medicine and Attending Cardiologist at the New York Presbyterian Hospital-Weill Cornell Medical Center. She is also the Director of Education and Outreach for the Ronald O. Perelman Heart Institute. She is dual board certified in Internal Medicine and Cardiology, is a Fellow of the American College of Cardiology and the American College of Sports Medicine. Dr. Andersen is a past Board Member of the Arthur Ashe Athletic Association, and currently serves on the Board of Trustees for the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research, the Women and Science Council of Weill Cornell Medical College and the leadership council of the American Heart Association’s Go Red campaign. Holly Andersen graduated from Dartmouth College where she was the Ernest T. Saeger Memorial Scholar in the premedical sciences. She graduated with Honors from the University of Rochester School of Medicine where she was elected to the Alpha Omega Alpha Honor Society and awarded the Janet M. Glasgow Memorial Achievement Award from the American Medical Women’s Association. Castle Connolly and New York Magazine have selected Dr. Andersen as one of New York’s Best Doctors. She speaks extensively on preventive cardiology, cardiovascular disease in athletes and in women, and has been an on-air medical consultant to shows such as ABC World News Tonight, The Today Show, and Good Morning America. Dr. Andersen is married to Douglas Hirsch.  They live in New York City with their two children.

Stuart C. Burden has twenty years of experience in private and corporate philanthropy, and works as a senior consultant for Monitor Institute. His passion for justice, equality, and human rights fuels his pursuit of lasting solutions to complex social problems. Stuart works out of Monitor’s San Francisco office, and his work concentrates on advancing best practices and next practices in philanthropy -- in the US and globally. Prior to joining the Monitor Institute, Stuart developed and implemented funding strategies as a senior executive, program director, and senior program officer for Levi Strauss & Co., the Levi Strauss Foundation, and the MacArthur Foundation. In addition, he has managed both policy- and community-level initiatives at the Ford Foundation and the New York Foundation. Presently, he serves on the boards of the International Women's Health Coalition, the Stanford Alumni Association, and the National Sexuality Resource Center. From April 2000 to January 2003, Stuart was invited to serve on the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS, crossing both the Clinton and Bush administrations. Stuart earned his bachelor's degree from Stanford University and his master's degree from the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health. 

John E. Craig, Jr., MPA is the executive vice president and chief operating officer of The Commonwealth Fund. Mr. Craig is responsible for the management of the foundation's endowment and administration, and serves also as the Fund's treasurer and corporate secretary. He chairs staff program plan and board proposal review meetings and oversees assessments of the performance of programs and completed grants. In addition to being chairman of the Nonprofit Coordinating Committee of New York City, Mr. Craig serves on the boards of the Greenwall Foundation, the International Women's Health Coalition, the National Center on Philanthropy and the Law, as well as on the investment committee of the Social Sciences Research Council. Earlier he was chairman of the board of The Investment Fund for Foundations and a member of the board of The Picker Institute. Prior to joining the Fund in 1981, he directed the John A. Hartford Foundation's health care reform program, and earlier was a Foreign Service reserve officer of the U.S. Agency for International Development. Mr. Craig writes regularly on foundation endowment investment and management issues; his most recent publication is High Performing Foundations: The Role of Risk Management. A graduate of Davidson College, he received his M.P.A. from Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs.

Maja Daruwala has for the past ten years been the executive director of the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI). An international non-governmental organization, it is headquartered in New Delhi with offices in London, UK and Accra, Ghana. CHRI promotes the practical realization of human rights in the Commonwealth's 53 countries and focuses particularly on issues relating to accountability, transparency, and participation. Its present areas of specialization are access to justice and access to information. CHRI promotes police reform, prison reform, and seeks to ensure citizens are guaranteed the right to access government held information. Ms. Daruwala sits on several governing boards and advisory councils, including the Justice Initiative at the New York-based Open Society Institute and the New Delhi-based Voluntary Action Network, an umbrella organization aimed at strengthening civil society in India. From 1992 to 1996 Ms. Daruwala was a program officer for human rights, women's rights, and social justice at the Ford Foundation in India, Nepal, and Sri Lanka. A barrister by training, Ms. Daruwala has conceptualized and edited reports targeted at the Commonwealth Heads of Government on poverty and the status of the right to information, and most recently police accountability. She continues to produce a body of journalistic work, including a television documentary on prisoners and rights and governance issues in the region.  

Alexander M. Farman-Farmaian is currently Partner, Vice Chairman and Portfolio Manager at Edgewood Management. Alex joined Edgewood Management in January 2006. Prior to that he was at W.P. Stewart & Co. for 19 years. There he was a senior member of the U.S. and Global equity research and portfolio management teams. He was responsible for managing some 20% of the Firm’s overall assets. He chaired the Investment Oversight Committee and managed the bulk of the firm’s Global account assets since their inception. Alex received a B.A. in Economics from Princeton University in 1987.  He was President of the Princeton Club of New York until November 2006 and belongs to the Economics Club of New York. He is a member of the Young Presidents’ Organization (YPO).

Françoise Girard
Françoise Girard became President of IWHC on February 21, 2012. She recently concluded a six-year tenure as the Director of the Public Health Program at Open Society Foundations (OSF). Françoise also was Regional Director for Southern Central and Eastern Europe and Haiti at OSF in the 1990s. From 1999 to 2003, she was Senior Program Officer for International Policy at IWHC. She has played a key role in advocacy in UN agencies and UN Conferences such as ICPD+5, Beijing+5, Special Session on HIV/AIDS and on Children, ICPD+10, and the 2005 World Summit on the MDGs. She currently serves as Chair of the Advisory Committee of the Health and Human Rights Division of Human Rights Watch and was the Chair of the Leadership Programme Committee of the 2010 International AIDS Conference, a 20,000+ participant biannual scientific conference. She has contributed many articles to peer-reviewed journals such as Science, Health and Human Rights, and International Family Planning Perspectives; and her other writings include “Negotiating Sexual Rights and Sexual Orientation at the United Nations,” in SexPolitics: the Front Lines, 2007; and “Advocacy for Sexuality and Women’s Rights: Continuities, Discontinuities and Strategies since ICPD” in Reproductive Health and Human Rights: The Way Forward, 2009.  Françoise holds an M.A. in Political Science from McGill University and an LL.B. from the Université de Montréal, and she was a law clerk to Justice Charles Gonthier of the Supreme Court of Canada.  

Chris Grumm grew up as the daughter of a Lutheran missionary with generations of pastors and bishops in her family tree.  She has worked both with secular and faith based organizations to build an agenda of social change and justice, concentrating on change within communities on the ground as well as institutions and systems.  One of her focuses is the investment in women and girls and through that investment, bringing changing to whole communities.

Most recently Chris Grumm was the CEO/President of the Women’s Funding Network (WFN).  During her 11 year tenure as CEO the network grew from 75 to over 160 with assets of over $500,000,000.  Women’s funds have been a leader in the world of social change philanthropy and were key partners and leaders in the Women Moving Millions Campaign that raised over $200,000,000.  Prior to WFN she was the Executive Director of the Chicago Foundation for Women.

Ms. Grumm also served as the first Vice-President of the newly formed Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and spent 4 years in Geneva, Switzerland as the Deputy General Secretary of the Lutheran World Federation.  During that time she worked with church leaders both in the United States and around the globe in the execution of their public voice, particularly in the creation of development work focused on the eradication of poverty and social injustice. 

Ms. Grumm was trained as a health educator and worked for over 20 years in the area of reproductive and maternal/child health.  She is a trained community organizer, the principles of which she has applied to all of her work throughout her career.  Currently she is consulting through her company, Chris Grumm Consulting Group.  Her focus is leveraging organizations and leaders who can bring solutions to scale and create true social change impact in communities around the world.  She serves on the Boards of Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services and Landesa, Rural Development In Institute. 

Marlene Hess is an independent philanthropic consultant. She is the former Managing Director of Global Philanthropic Services at JPMorgan Private Bank (J.P. Morgan Chase). She advises clients worldwide, and designs philanthropic strategies to make their giving more effective; she also counsels donors on foundation succession and governance issues. She has helped create innovative programs for non-profit organizations and advises on their operations, governance, and outreach. Also formerly Director of Not-For-Profit Relations for Chase, she enhanced the bank's philanthropic activities and formed extensive partnerships between the corporate and non-profit sectors. She created a range of campaigns to raise public awareness about community issues, including the award-winning "Child Vaccination Program," which Chase spearheaded in partnership with the Children's Defense Fund and the New York City Department of Health.  Marlene serves on the boards of the Museum of Modern Art, Rockefeller University, the International Women's Health Coalition, Lincoln Center Theater, Jazz at Lincoln Center and New York City Ballet. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and also serves on the Advisory Committee of Harvard University's David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies. A graduate and former trustee of Mills College, California, she is a former member of the Harvard College Board of Overseers' Committee to Visit the College. She has served on the Capital Commitment Committee Taskforce of the New York City Partnership's Financial Recovery Fund to aid in the rebuilding of lower Manhattan.

Through December 31, 2008, Claudia J. Kahn was Senior Vice President for Public Affairs & International Program Development for Merrill Lynch. Ms. Kahn had global responsibility for international leadership and sponsorship programs aligned with business development and public policy strategies. A long-time Merrill Lynch veteran, Ms. Kahn served as Senior Vice President, Public Policy & Corporate Responsibility from October 2003 to December 2006.  Prior to that, she served as Senior Vice President of Marketing Communications from December 2001 until October 2003. Over the course of her career, Ms. Kahn has held a variety of management positions in Corporate Communications, Finance and Administration, and Human Resources. She also served as Assistant to the Chairman and President from February 2002 through April 2003. Ms. Kahn is a member of the Financial Women’s Association, The Women’s Leadership Board at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, the International Women’s Health Coalition Leadership Council and the Education Fund of the New York Women’s Forum. In 1986, Ms. Kahn was named by the New York YMCA to its Academy of Women Achievers and was also honored by the Girl Scout Council of Greater New York in 2004.  In January 2007, she was honored by the Women’s Associate Leadership Connection at Merrill Lynch with the first Annual Recognition Award.  Ms. Kahn was born in New York City and majored in American History at Smith College, graduating in 1973. She served as Executive Assistant to the President at Smith before joining Merrill Lynch.  

A philanthropist for more than 30 years, Susan Nitze has served in a range of arts, education, and social service organizations. To mention a few, she is a founding member of the Volunteer Council of the New York Philharmonic, co-chair of the IWHC President's Council, and a Trustee of the American Academy in Rome as well as the Groton School in Groton, Massachusetts. She serves on a Women's Advisory Council for U.S. Foreign Policy and Women for the Council on Foreign Relations, and is a committee member on Network 20/20, which helps educate the next generation of U.S. leaders on policies promoting global public security. A graduate of Wellesley College, Ms. Nitze was the president of the board of the Girl Scouts of Greater New York for eight years and continues to serve as its chair.

Marnie S. Pillsbury has been the Executive Director of The David Rockefeller Fund and Philanthropic Advisor to Mr. Rockefeller since 1990. She is a Trustee of The Rockefeller University and serves on the board of the Women's Campaign Fund, the Edward John Noble Foundation, and Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors. She is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Advisory Committee for the David Rockefeller Fellows Program at the New York City Partnership, and the International Council for The Museum of Modern Art. Ms. Pillsbury served for many years as a Trustee of World Learning, formerly The Experiment in International Living, which operates in more than 40 countries around the world. She is also an advisor to a small grants program serving HIV/AIDS orphans and vulnerable children in South Africa. A graduate of Wellesley College (1965), Ms. Pillsbury received an MBA from the New York University Stern School of Business in 1987.

Diana L. Taylor, MBA, MPH
Diana Taylor joined Wolfensohn Fund Management L.P., a strategic consulting and investment firm, in 2007, prior to which she served as New York State superintendent of banks and chairwoman of the New York State Banking Board.  Before her government service, she worked in the private sector as vice president for KeySpan Energy and as an investment banker with Smith Barney, Lehman Brothers and Donaldson Lufkin & Jenrette.  Diana serves on the boards of Citigroup, Brookfield Properties and Sotheby's.  She also serves on several charitable boards. She chairs the boards of ACCION International, Hudson River Park Trust, New York Women’s Foundation and the YMCA of Greater New York.   Other memberships include Dartmouth College, the Mailman School of Public Health and the International Women's Health Coalition. She is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Economic Club of New York.  She earned her AB from Dartmouth College, her MBA from the Columbia School of Business, and her MPH from the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia.

Maureen White is the Senior Advisor on Humanitarian Issues in the Office of the Special Representation to Afghanistan and Pakistan in the U.S. Department of State. She was National Finance Co-Chair of the Hillary Clinton for President Campaign. She served as National Finance Chair of the Democratic National Committee from 2001-2006. In the Clinton Administration she represented the U.S. Government at the United Nations Children’s Fund from 1997-2001. Ms. White has been a member of the board International Rescue Committee since 1995, rotating off for her years in government service. She was chairman of the Overseers of the IRC from 2004-2009. She has served on the boards of numerous organizations involved in international humanitarian work including IWHC, Human Rights Watch, and Refugees International.  Prior to that she had a career in international economic research in New York, London, and Tokyo, working for First Boston Corporation, the Royal Institute of International Affairs, and the Nomura Research Institute.  She has a BA from Mt. Holyoke and an M. Sc. (Econ) from the London School of Economics. She is married to Steven Rattner and they have four children.  

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