Junior Board

Generation Citizen has recently founded a Junior Board, which will consist of committed individuals, from sectors including finance, consulting, non-profit, and more, dedicated to providing valuable skills to the GC team, and raising the organization’s profile.  The Board launched in September 2011, and is comprised of impressive young professionals who believe in GC’s core mission of empowering under-represented youth to participate in the democratic process.

Jimmy O’Keefe- (Chair of Board): Jimmy O’Keefe is a Director in the Digital Business Development group at EMI Music, a major record label based out of New York and London.  He focuses on structuring, evaluating, and negotiating music and video content distribution deals designed to grow the digital top line.

Prior to joining EMI, Jimmy was a Business Analyst at McKinsey & Company in the New Jersey Office where he worked with his clients to develop strategies against their most challenging problems.  He worked primarily with clients in the consumer retail industry – in particular, cosmetics, milk, cereal, among others.  He also has experience counseling non-profit clients pro bono, in particular developing strategic plans focused on geographic expansion.  Jimmy received an AB degree magna cum laude with highest honors from Harvard College, where he studied Biochemistry and Economics.  He serves on the Junior Board for Generation Citizen.  He currently lives in New York, NY and enjoys traveling and, on special occasions, reality television.

Sudeep Doshi: Sudeep Doshi works at McKinsey & Company in New York, helping clients across a wide variety of industries including education, financial services, energy and healthcare. Outside McKinsey, he has had extensive experience in print media, most notably as a 20009 Robert Bartley Fellow at the Wall Street Journal, and has been an active volunteer at a number of non-profits around the world. He graduated from Princeton University magna cum laude in public policy and international affairs, and plans to enroll at Harvard Business School next fall to pursue his MBA.

Alexander Stamatiadis: Alexander Stamatiadis works at McKinsey & Company in New Jersey, helping clients across a wide variety of industries including consumer products and pharmaceuticals.He graduated from the University of Pennsylvania magna cum laude in PPE (Politics, Philosophy, Economics) and History. He is originally from Athens, Greece and currently lives in New York.

Matthew Tolliver: Matthew currently works as Director of Business Development at ThinkEco, Inc. a New York City-based energy efficient consumer electronics start-up.  Prior to that position he served as a Foreign Service Officer in the U.S. Department of State, with diplomatic postings in Mexico, Saudi Arabia, and Washington, DC.  He also worked previously as a Recovery Act Fellow at the U.S. Department of Energy, helping oversee the disbursement of nearly $40 billion in ARRA stimulus funds to a wide range of renewable energy projects.  Matthew received his BA from the University of Florida (Political Science, Spanish), and his MBA from Harvard Business School.  He is originally from Coral Springs, Florida.

Jeff Berry: Jeff Berry is an investment banking analyst at Morgan Stanley.  Previously, he worked in the Firm’s equity research department.  Jeff is the founder of Nashville-based Mentor TennisSee, one the nation’s leading inner-city tennis and education programs.  Jeff graduated from Vanderbilt University with a BA in History and Financial Economics.

Hary Jagannathan, Bio Coming

Annie Knickman: Annie Knickman is a consultant in McKinsey & Company’s New York office.  At McKinsey, Annie has focused on the healthcare industry, helping clients with a variety of problems related to strategy, organizational questions, and marketing & sales.  She is also involved in helping nonprofits through pro bono counseling, advising organizations as they go through the strategic planning process.  To date she has worked with organizations focused on education and job placement.   Prior to joining McKinsey, Annie studied psychology and economics at Harvard College, where she graduated summa cum laude in 2009.  Her senior thesis on mind perception was awarded the Hoopes and Harris prizes while at Harvard, and has since been published in the psychology journal Cognition.  She serves on the Junior Board for Generation Citizen.  She currently lives in New York, NY, where she enjoys exploring the great running paths and restaurant scene.

National Advisory Board

Generation Citizen’s Advisory Board consists of non-profit executives, other professionals, and experts in the civic education space that provide the organization with help and advice on a frequent basis.  Although it is an informal body, the Advisory Board plays a crucial role in the development of Generation Citizen through its advice and overall support of the organization.

David Flink, Executive Director, Project Eye to Eye
David Flink is the Executive Director of Project Eye-To-Eye, which is a nationally known mentoring program. In Project Eye-To-Eye, using art as a medium, college and high school students with LD/ADHD act as tutors, role models and mentors for elementary, middle and high school students with similar learning differences. The younger students learn to understand and articulate their individual assets and needs and become empowered to find success.

In addition to his work in Project Eye-To-Eye, David graduated from Brown University with Honors with a degrees in Education and Psychology and holds a masters degree in Disability Studies from Columbia University Teachers College. The Orton Gillingham Society has recognized his Honors Thesis on the Treatment of Dyslexia through Multisensory Learning. David has lectured at Brown University, Dartmouth College, Vassar College, Columbia University, Reed College, and at numerous conferences for organizations including the International Dyslexia Association. David has served as an Admissions Officer for Brown University, where he evaluated over 4,000 applications, and was the Disability Admissions Liaison at Brown University, reviewing all applications of those who applied to Brown with disabilities.

Alan Harlam, Director of Social Entrepreneurship, Brown University
Alan works collaboratively with community organizations and leaders and university students and faculty to identify, develop, and guide progress on projects that can respond meaningfully to community needs. In addition, he helps develop courses in social entrepreneurship including a two semester capstone course in Sociology. Alan has been a social entrepreneur at Amos House where he helped launch and manage their institutional and full-service catering business, More Than a Meal, which creates employment opportunity for the poor and homeless of Providence. Prior to his work at Amos House, Alan has been an investor and consultant to financially distressed, turnaround companies and worked for an international IT consulting company.

Alan is a partner of Social Venture Partners of RI which invests and advises Rhode Island social enterprises. He has also served on many community Boards including the Jewish Community Day School of Rhode Island and City Year Rhode Island.

Mark Hanis, President, Genocide Intervention Network
Mark Hanis is the Founder and President of the Genocide Intervention Network. Genocide Intervention Network’s mission is to empower individuals and communities with the tools to prevent and stop genocide.

Several events in Mark’s life put him on a course of anti-genocide activism, including work with Columbian asylum seekers and torture victims. Mark also spent seven months in Sierra Leone at the Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL), during which time he worked alongside many refugees which opened his eyes further to the conditions of the victims of atrocities.
Mark has been honored with Ashoka, Echoing Green and Draper Richards Fellowships and he is a 2009 World Economic Forum Young Global Leader. Mark and Genocide Intervention Network have been featured in the New York Times, Christian Science Monitor and The New Republic as well have appeared on a number of media outlets, including CNN Headline News, NBC, MSNBC and NPR.

Meira Levinson, Professor, Harvard Graduate School of Education
Meira Levinson’s current work focuses on documenting and addressing the civic achievement gap: a gap in individuals’ civic and political knowledge, skills, attitudes, and behaviors that is starkly tied to race, ethnicity, immigration status, and especially class. Levinson argues that the U.S. civic achievement gap should be taken as seriously by educators and policymakers as the reading and math achievement gaps are, not least because it is unjust, undemocratic, and unnecessary. She is writing about these issues and others in a book on civic and multicultural education in de facto segregated urban schools and communities. Levinson has also written about liberal education and political theory, autonomy, parental versus children’s rights, school choice, and other topics in The Demands of Liberal Education and various articles and book chapters.

A political theorist and philosopher of education by training, Levinson grounds her work in scholarship from a variety of disciplines as well as her eight years’ experience teaching middle school students in the Atlanta and Boston public schools. She believes strongly in the possibility of productive cross-fertilization (without loss of rigor) among scholarship, policy, and practice and attempts to realize this ideal in her work.

Peter Levine, Director, CIRCLE
Peter Levine is Director of CIRCLE, The Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement, which is part of Tufts University’s Jonathan Tisch College of Citizenship and Public Service. Levine is also Research Director of the Tisch College. Levine graduated from Yale in 1989 with a degree in philosophy. He studied philosophy at Oxford on a Rhodes Scholarship, receiving his doctorate in 1992. From 1991 until 1993, he was a research associate at Common Cause. From 1993-2008, he was a research scholar at the University of Maryland’s Institute for Philosophy & Public Policy. Levine helped to launch CIRCLE at the University of Maryland as its deputy director (2001-5) and then its director. In the late 1990s, he was also deputy director of the National Commission on Civic Renewal. Levine is the author of The Future of Democracy: Developing the Next Generation of American Citizens (University Press of New England, June 2007), three other scholarly books on philosophy and politics, and a novel. He also co-edited The Deliberative Democracy Handbook (2006) with John Gastil and co-organized the writing of The Civic Mission of Schools, a report released by Carnegie Corporation of New York and CIRCLE in 2003. He serves on many governing boards and advisory boards of organizations involved in civic renewal

Kristin J. Moody, Attorney, Berman DeValerio
Kristin is Of Counsel in the Boston office of Berman DeValerio.  Previously, she practiced at Holland & Knight LLP and Morrison & Foerster LLP.  She has over a decade of experience representing plaintiffs and defendants in a variety of areas including securities litigation, government and regulatory investigations, and other complex commercial litigation matters.  Additionally, Kristin has represented pro bono clients in political asylum and discrimination matters.  Kristin has also taught Business Law at Fisher College and is a member of its Advisory Board.  She holds a B.A. from Bucknell University, a J.D. from Boston College Law School and an LL.M. from New York University School of Law.  In addition to serving on Generation Citizen’s National Advisory Board, she is also the Chair of Generation Citizen’s Boston Advisory Council.

Laurel Stolte, Harvard Graduate School of Education, Doctoral Student
Laurel Stolte is a doctoral student at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.  She is working with Generation Citizen to identify instructional practices that support students’ development of civic skills, as well as helping with curriculum and professional development.  Laurel taught social studies, English as a Second Language, and Spanish for six years, and has worked with action civics programs in Colorado and Mexico.

John Zola, Educator, Boulder, Colorado
John Zola spent 32 years as a high school social studies teacher; most recently at New Vista High School, a “break the mold” public high school in Boulder, Colorado.  He also was Director of School and University Partnerships at the University of Colorado School of Education.  Throughout his career, John developed interactive teaching materials and trained colleagues in active learning strategies and Socratic seminars.  He has presented keynote addresses on topics such as critical thinking and numerous workshops that help teachers make the work and voice of students central in the classroom.  John’s sessions are interactive and participatory with a strong focus on practical classroom applications.  In addition to his work in the secondary classroom, John taught Social Studies methods courses for the University of Colorado and still conducts in-service trainings on civic education in a variety of locations around the United States, Central Europe, and Asia.

Boston Board

The Boston Board of Generation Citizen is defined as a non-governing body whose mission is to provide Generation Citizen with fundraising, networking, and public relations. The Council will be comprised of community members from all sectors, including government, private sector, non-profits, and, importantly, teachers and administrators have worked with the Generation Citizen program. The Board plays an vital part in managing local strategy and fundraising.

Layla Amjadi, Bridgespan

Kristin J. Moody, Attorney, Berman DeValerio

John Natoli, Special Advisor to the Chief Financial Officer at City of Boston

Dana Samuels, Executive Director, Technology Underwriting the Greater Good

Joseph Sinatra, Investor Relations Officer, Root Capital

Nick Way, PricewaterhouseCoopers