Our Team
-
Elsa Bassett
Fellow -
Richard Crespin
CEO -
Lisa Gans
Director of Inclusive Investment -
Brendan Kiely
Program Intern -
Caroline Royster
Manager -
Imakando Sinyama
Consulting Specialist -
Beth Skorochod
Senior Director -
Tim Spesia
Program Intern -
Petra Stankard
Director of Facilitation & Consulting -
Sadie Williams
Senior Associate

Elsa Bassett
Fellow

Richard Crespin
CEO
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.

Lisa Gans
Director of Inclusive Investment
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.

Brendan Kiely
Program Intern

Caroline Royster
Manager

Imakando Sinyama
Consulting Specialist

Beth Skorochod
Senior Director
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.

Tim Spesia
Program Intern

Petra Stankard
Director of Facilitation & Consulting
Her belief in the strength of collaborative approaches to drive social impact is born of 15-years in the global health field where she led market shaping efforts to speed the adoption of new health technologies in middle- and low-income countries. This work required complex multi-stakeholder collaborations with academic institutions, private sector companies, community-based organizations, large multilateral organizations, and a diversity of governments. In this capacity she honed extensive skills in human centered design, qualitative research, systems analysis and inclusive facilitation approaches. Petra holds a BA from Vassar College and a Master in Public Health from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, with a focus on social behavior change and adult learning. When she isn’t designing workshops, she can be found pretending to be a dragon for her two young kids, booking a yoga class, or cramming for an upcoming book club.
