LIFT

Rob Carmona is the President and CEO of STRIVE International, a community-based employment-training program that he co-founded in 1984 in the basement of a public housing complex. Under his stewardship, the organization has grown from a community-based organization to an international network of service providers with sites in 18 U.S. cities, London, England, Dunbartonshire, Scotland, Derry, Ireland and three sites in the State of Israel (Tel Aviv, Haifa, Jerusalem).

Mr. Carmona was born in East Harlem. He graduated from the College of New Rochelle in 1979, went on to receive his Masters degree in Social Work from Columbia University in 1982, and has since became one of New York’s most respected nonprofit leaders. In addition to LIFT, he serves on the Board of Directors of a variety of community agencies including Black Agency Executives, Human Services Council, Episcopal Social Services, Per Scholas, Inc., and Self Help, Inc.

Lee Foley has been a Washington lobbyist for over 28 years. He is the managing partner of Capitol Hill Partners.

Mr. Foley represents various interests before the U.S. Congress and the Executive Branch of the federal government in issue areas including education, employment and training, banking and financial services, community and economic development, asset building, job creation, rural and agricultural programs, small business development, appropriate technology and employment security. Foley also has extensive business and lobbying experience in banking and financial services policy, serving on the boards of directors of financial institutions in Boston, Miami, New Orleans, Los Angeles, and Memphis and as a bank board treasurer and as a chair of a board audit committee. Foley has also advised several of the nation’s major foundations and financial institutions regarding their domestic charitable activities. In the award winning book “Coyote Warrior” investigative journalist and author Paul VanDevelder writes that Foley is “the best in the city”.

Prior to his lobbying career, Foley served in a variety of positions in Washington including as a White House domestic policy advisor, chief of staff at a federal agency and as a staffer for two U.S. Senate committees.

Michael is the Founding General Partner of Heritage Partners, a private equity firm formed in 1993 that focuses on family-owned and founder-backed businesses who are seeking a partner to provide transition capital and help their businesses grow and create value. He has served as lead director on the board of over a dozen companies, working with management teams on establishing and achieving strategic objectives, stewarding human and capital resources and creating shareholder value. Michael began his career with a fifteen year stint in commercial lending and private equity with Bank of Boston.

Michael is a Current Member of the Board of City Year’s flagship Boston operation; a Current Member of the Board, Chair of the Strategic Planning Committee and of the Development Committee of The Children’s Room, a grief counseling organization; Current Member of the Board of the USC School of Theatre; and Current Co-Chair of Belmont Hill School’s Parents’ Annual Fund Campaign Committee

Previously he chaired the Capital Campaign for the Paulist Center Community, an intentional Roman Catholic community in Boston known for its commitment to social justice, and is a Former Board Trustee and Capital Campaign Committee Chair of the Belmont Foundation for Education, a privately funded enterprise designed to support Belmont’s public school system.

Michael is a graduate of Boston College.

Ted Howard is the founding Executive Director of The Democracy Collaborative at the University of Maryland, a position he has held since 2000. The Collaborative is a national leader in the fast growing field of community wealth building strategies and policy development.

For the past three decades, Mr. Howard has worked in the not-for-profit/civil society sector, including more than 15 years in international development with NGOs and agencies of the UN system. Most recently, he was the Executive Director of the National Center for Economic Alternatives, a research and policy institute. Prior to that, he was Global Communications Director and Chief Operating Office of The Hunger Project, an international NGO.

He is author or co-author of several books, including “Ending Hunger,” “Entropy,” and “Who Should Play God?” His most recent reports on community development include “Linking Colleges to Communities: Engaging the University for Community Development” and “Building Wealth: The New Asset-Based Approach to Solving Social and Economic Problems.” His articles have appeared in numerous publications, most recently The Chronicle of Philanthropy, Shelterforce, The Journal of Higher Education Outreach and Engagement, and Yes!

From 1998 to 2007, he served as chairman of the board of Search for Common Ground, the world’s largest conflict resolution NGO. He is currently board chair of Blue Frontier, an environmental advocacy organization committed to saving America’s living oceans.

Michele Jolin is a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress, where she is developing policy tools to foster social innovation and drive investment toward more effective nonprofit solutions to our nation’s critical social problems.  Jolin was appointed by President Obama in December 2010 to be a Member of the White House Council for Community Solutions.

Previously, Jolin served as Senior Advisor for Social Innovation at the White House.   In that role, she designed and launched the Social Innovation Fund and developed a range of other policy tools to drive federal investment toward effective solutions.  Jolin also served on President Obama’s Presidential Transition Team.

Prior to joining the White House, Jolin was a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress where she headed CAP's presidential transition project and co-edited the book Change for America: A Progressive Blueprint for the 44th President.  She also authored a number of articles and reports on policy tools to promote innovation and impact in the nonprofit sector, including a Stanford Social Innovation Review (SSIR) piece arguing for a White House Office of Social Innovation.

Jolin was a Senior Vice President at Ashoka, a global foundation that invests in social entrepreneurs in more than 50 countries around the world. At Ashoka, she was responsible for launching and managing several global initiatives designed to support the growth and spread of the most effective, social entrepreneurial ideas.

Jolin served as the Chief of Staff for President Clinton’s Council of Economic Advisers, for CEA chairs Joseph Stiglitz and Janet Yellen. She also worked for Sen. Barbara Boxer on the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee.

Kirsten Lodal co-founded LIFT in 1998 as a sophomore at Yale University and has devoted the last ten years to guiding the development of LIFT’s innovative program model.

Lodal is a frequent public speaker on such topics as social entrepreneurship, program evaluation, and civic engagement. She is committed to strengthening the nonprofit sector as a whole by participating in numerous service and poverty-related policy working groups, coaching leaders of emerging social ventures, and actively serving on the Board of the Homeless Children’s Playtime Project (HCPP). She served as a panelist at both the 2008 and 2009 National Conference on Service and Volunteering, and was selected as an Aspen Ideas Festival Scholar in 2009.

Lodal was the 2004 recipient of the Jefferson Award for Public Service and recognized with the Samuel S. Beard Award for Greatest Public Service by an Individual 35 or Under.

Lodal holds a B.A. from Yale University and an executive management certificate from Columbia Business School’s Institute for Not-for-Profit Management. She currently lives in Washington, D.C. with her husband, Jeff Himmelman, who is an author and musician.

John steers a national non-profit organization that equips under-represented minorities with the skills, career roadmap, coaching and door-opening relationships that are required to become high-impact leaders in corporations, entrepreneurial ventures and nonprofits.  MLT serves 2,000 students and professionals nationwide and is the #1 source of minority talent at the nation’s top MBA programs and at many of its blue-chip partner companies including Goldman Sachs, Google, PepsiCo, McKinsey, and Target. John has been featured on CNN, the cover of Fortune Magazine and in the Wall Street Journal, Businessweek, NPR, and other media outlets.

Prior to MLT, Rice was an executive with the National Basketball Association, where he served as managing director of NBA Japan and as director of marketing for Latin America.  Before joining the NBA, Rice spent four years with the Walt Disney Company in new business development and marketing for both the Disney Vacation Club and Disney Consumer Products Latin America based in Miami.  Rice began his career as an account executive with AT&T.

Outside of MLT, John chairs the compensation committee and serves as the lead director of Walker & Dunlop (NYSE: WD), a real estate finance company that is one of the largest multi-family lenders in the US.  He is a senior advisor and director of CareerCore – a technology company that provides outsourced career services solutions for colleges and corporations.  He was appointed to President Obama’s Advisory Board on Historically Black Colleges and Universities, serves on the Yale University Council and on the Board of Visitors of Duke University’s Sanford School of Public Policy, and is a member of the Young Presidents’ Organization.  Rice received his MBA from Harvard Business School and his BA with honors from Yale.  He lives in the Washington D.C. area with his wife Andrea and two children Mateo and Kira.