Our Team

Ana Blanco
Richard Crespin
Lina Delgado
Lisa Gans
Director of Inclusive Investment
Caroline Logan
Varlee Sannor
Imakando Sinyama
Beth Skorochod
Sadie Williams
Senior Associate

Ana Blanco

Ana is a corporate sustainability and external affairs expert who helps companies strengthen their business models by identifying, measuring and managing environmental, social and governance (ESG) risks and opportunities, as well as understanding policy and regulatory frameworks. As Director of External Affairs at PMI, Ana supported the company’s phasing out of cigarettes, including by developing partnerships with public and private sector organizations and advocating for policy modernization. Previously she worked for GSMA and the United Nations in corporate sustainability initiatives as well as in the financial industry as an ESG research analyst. She is part of the Board of Directors of the Colombian American Association where she promotes dialogue and mutual understanding between the US and her native Colombia. Ana holds a law degree as well as MA degrees in Political Science and Latin American Studies. She lives in New York with her husband, daughter and two dogs. She enjoys participating in long distance triathlons.

Richard Crespin

As the CEO of CollaborateUp, Richard advises businesses, governments, and non-profits on how to work together to solve big problems. He also serves as a Senior Associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies as part of its Project on Prosperity, conducting research and hosting multi-sector dialogues on how to improve lives in emerging economies while addressing US foreign policy goals. Richard has served on multiple boards for companies and NGOs, including The Corporate Responsibility Association and the Office Depot Foundation. He currently chairs the Finance Committee and serves on the Board of Directors of the Global Electronics Council and chairs the Governance Committee and serves on the Board of Directors of the Falls Church Education Foundation. He has been an adjunct professor at The George Washington University School of Business teaching public-private partnerships and a featured lecturer on social innovation at Georgetown University and at the Harvard School of Public Health.

During his career, Richard has worked across the private, public, and civil sectors, designing and implementing organization strategies, collective impact programs, and public-private partnerships. This includes projects with the US Department of Defense, the US Agency for International Development, the US Global Leadership Coalition, serving as Executive Director of Corporate Responsibility Officers Association, and as President of SharedXpertise Media, the publishers of Corporate Responsibility Magazine and organizer of the COMMIT!Forum. Richard is an alumnus of both The George Washington University and the Harvard Business School.

Richard, along with his wife Emily, also serves as personal assistant, cook, and chauffeur to three over-scheduled children headquartered in their home in Falls Church, VA. In between his personal and professional responsibilities, Richard is also learning to re-landscape golf courses one shot at a time and rocking out to the snap, crackle, pop of his knees on the tennis court. He also hopes one day to be reincarnated as one of his children.

Lina Delgado

Lina Delgado is a strategic partnerships and alliances expert. She identifies, cultivates, and executes win-win partnerships to accelerate organizational growth and develop new business opportunities. She is a creative strategist with proven success in connecting governments and the private sector to collaborate on projects and solutions.

In addition to her role at CollaborateUp, Lina serves as the Executive Director of the Colombian American Association (CAA) in New York. She leads business-relevant programs covering geopolitical issues and other current affairs of interest to the business, public sector, NGO, and academic communities. As Executive Director, she oversees the development of new revenue sources, as well as building and maintaining relationships with sponsors, internal stakeholders, corporate members, and funders.

At the CAA, Ms. Delgado also created the Association’s first incubation program for early-stage entrepreneurs from minority groups in Colombia. The program aims to help entrepreneurs build their businesses from the ground up and generate a positive impact in their communities.

As a women and gender equality advocate, Lina implemented diversity and inclusion policies to all programs, including a rule to have at least one female speaker on all panels.

Prior to joining CAA, she founded a digital marketing agency serving small and mid-size companies wanting to promote their businesses and engage with their customers online and offline. Before that, Ms. Delgado worked as a senior investor relations associate at i-Advize, covering Latin American companies. Lina worked closely with CFOs and IRO’s of publicly traded companies preparing communication strategies and reports for investors and buy-side equity analysts while developing new business for her practice.

Ms. Delgado holds a Bachelor of Business Administration from ICESI University in Cali, Colombia, and an MBA Essentials certificate from the London School of Economics.

She enjoys mentoring social entrepreneurs, spending time with her two dogs Santo & Lupita, and visiting her native country Colombia.

Lisa Gans

Director of Inclusive Investment

Lisa Gans currently serves as the Director of Inclusive Investment on USAID’s Climate Finance for Development Accelerator (CFDA) and as the Director of Consulting & Facilitation at Collaborate Up. Previously, Lisa was a Senior Investment Advisor on USAID’s INVEST mechanism, where she managed a portfolio of investment for the Vietnam, Tunisia, and Pakistan Missions, as well as portfolios for USAID’s Office of Gender Equality & Women’s Empowerment, the Innovation, Technology and Research Hub of the Bureau for Development, Democracy, and Innovation, and the Bureau for Resilience and Food Security.

Lisa also served as Executive Vice President of City First Enterprises, a Community Development Financial Institution in Washington D.C., and as a Fellow at the Beeck Center for Social Impact & Innovation at Georgetown University. She was also a Fuse Corps Executive Fellow and the founder of Aperture Innovation Labs, a consultancy focused on human centered design solutions. Lisa also worked on global health issues with the International Medical Corps, and on rule of law projects in Iraq, Afghanistan, Egypt, and Swaziland. She began her career as a litigator at Debevoise & Plimpton in New York and was a Term Member of The Council on Foreign Relations, and a contributor to the Huffington Post. She holds a B.A. from Harvard University and a J.D. from Columbia Law School. Lisa can be found in Bethesda, Maryland with her husband and two young sons. Before children, she enjoyed scuba diving and quiet.

Caroline Logan

Caroline Logan is a Manager at CollaborateUp where she will work to support CollaborateUp’s portfolio of collective impact programs. She is skilled at designing and delivering tailored content across industries. She also brings her extensive experience building and launching leadership development programs with her to CollaborateUp. Her previous experience includes serving as a Project Lead with McChrystal Group where she delivered leadership development programs and developed new business, and as a staff writer with BORGEN magazine. Caroline graduated with merit from The London School of Economics with a Master of Science in International Relations. She also earned a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science and English Literature from The University of North Carolina Wilmington. She enjoys snowboarding, hiking, spending time with her partner Caleb and Bernese Mountain Dog, Ralphie.

Varlee Sannor

Varlee Sannor is Head of Business Development for CollaborateUp. He brings deep experience in driving innovative approaches to accelerate organizational performance through cohesive strategy planning and execution, knowledge management and the implementation of new programs for organizational growth. With both public and private sector expertise, Varlee strives to bring an external perspective and insight to support long-term strategic planning processes, translating cross-functional business engagements to optimize alignment and coordination across teams.

Varlee’s experience covers global development space in a variety of fields, including health systems strengthening, Nutrition, Data Analytics, Governance, among others. As a Business Development expert, he has managed and/or overseen multiple large and complex proposals focused on Capacity Building, Data Quality Assurance, Social and Behavior Change Communication interventions, private sector engagement, corporate marketing strategy and project design, implementation and management across multiple sectors and initiatives, including HIV, reproductive health, gender, and others. Over the last two years, he led the development of more than 50 proposals overseeing processes from capture to technical design, writing and editing, and negotiation with clients. He has also facilitated multiple co-creation workshops.

Varlee holds a master’s degree in International Development from Columbia University, as well as a master’s degree in Public Health Epidemiology from Cuttington University in Liberia. He is recognized as a driven, highly motivated, and passionate professional with a keen attention to detail.

Imakando Sinyama

Imakando Sinyama is a Senior Manager at CollaborateUp. Imakando specializes in human capacity development and institutional strengthening through participatory methodologies such as social learning. He has a background in Collaboration, Learning, and Adaptation and has served as a learning advisor on several USAID projects. He has designed and facilitated multi-stakeholder workshops with USAID, bringing together donors, implementers, government officials, and private sector actors, to collectively design solutions and strategies across Southern Africa.

Beth Skorochod

Beth Skorochod is Senior Director at CollaborateUp. She is a skilled program designer, facilitator and creator of inclusive approaches to international development and social innovation. Beth has designed, facilitated and led workshops and meetings of global stakeholders to collaboratively develop innovative solutions for target users.

Her experience covers social and behavior change, co-creation and collective impact, and service delivery projects in multiple sectors and initiatives, including HIV, reproductive health, gender, wildlife conservation, youth, and others. She has worked with a variety of donors including USAID, WHO, World Bank, Gates Foundation, Hewlett Foundation and a number of private sector firms.

In between raising two kids and a large, anxiety-riddled rescue dog named Harriet, Beth earned a master’s degree in public health from Johns Hopkins University with a concentration in behavioral science. She is trained in design thinking at the Stanford Design School and has led several multi-disciplinary teams to research and design solutions using complementary disciplines, including user-centered design, behavioral economics, and commercial marketing.

Sadie Williams

Senior Associate

Sadie is a Senior Associate at CollaborateUp where she supports learning workshops, project facilitation, and client outreach. She has a Master’s degree in International Affairs from The George Washington University and a Bachelor’s degree in History from Truman State University. Her background includes work with UNICEF, the U.S. Mission to the United Nations, and the Truman National Security Project. She was a Fulbright grantee in Spain for two years, where she studied renewable energy in the Canary Islands and taught in Spanish public schools, and has extensive experience in international education and child development programs. In her free time, she enjoys reading, being outside, skiing, and going to shows at the Kennedy Center.