Emma Haseley

Emma Haseley is the Senior Associate, Corporate and Foundation Partnerships at BRAC USA. She supports the team in developing research proposals, innovation projects, and other relevant initiatives across various BRAC entities and teams. Before joining BRAC USA, Emma served as an AmeriCorps VISTA with the non-profit ArtReach. In this position, she focused on expanding the capacity of ArtReach to provide community engagement and visual arts training to members of the East of the River community in Washington, D.C. She previously worked as an intern for Iris Group International and Soomo Learning, honing her writing skills and strengthening her passion for gender equality in international development. Emma also interned with BRAC USA’s Research & Learning team in 2020. She is currently a contributing writer to the Zinn Education Project’s This Day in History (#TDIH) series. Emma holds a Bachelor of Arts in History and Women’s & Gender Studies from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Davis Connelly

As Manager of Individual Giving, Davis supports BRAC’s poverty alleviation programs by enhancing U.S.-based stakeholder relationships and fundraising strategies.

Davis comes to BRAC USA after more than a decade of building community-elevating programs and sustainable revenue at Roads to Success, Inc in New York City. As a program leader, Davis paved the way for a diverse network of public schools to access high-quality services directed toward youth empowerment and support for working or underemployed families. Once he was tapped to launch Roads to Success’s Development Department, Davis helped transform the service-oriented organization into a charitable operation with a holistic, equity-minded intervention portfolio, addressing literacy rates, college access, youth and family unemployment, mental health support, and much more.

Davis studied at American University and Cortland State and holds a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology. He has also been active in international cultural exchange through the arts, as well as environmental education since 2006.

Sarah Cliffe

Sarah F. Cliffe is currently the director of New York University’s Center on International Cooperation. Prior to that, she was the Special Representative for the World Bank’s World Development Report on Conflict, Security and Development, and the Special Adviser and Assistant Secretary-General of Civilian Capacities to the United Nations.

Ms. Cliffe has worked for the last twenty years in countries emerging from conflict and political transition, including Afghanistan, Burundi, Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of Congo, Guinea Bissau, Ethiopia, Haiti, Indonesia, Liberia, Mali, Rwanda, South Sudan, South Africa, Somalia, and Timor-Leste. At the World Bank, her work has covered post-conflict reconstruction, community-driven development, and civil service reform. Ms. Cliffe was the chief of mission for the Bank’s program in Timor-Leste from 1999 to 2002; led the Bank’s Fragile and Conflict-Affected Countries Group from 2002-2007 and was the Director of Strategy and Operations for the East Asia and Pacific Region from 2007-2009.

Ms. Cliffe has also worked for the United Nations Development Programme in Rwanda, the Government of South Africa, and the Congress of South African Trade Unions, as well as for a major management consultancy company in the United Kingdom on public sector reform issues.

Ms. Cliffe has a Bachelor’s degree in history from Cambridge’s University and a Master’s degree in international relations and international economic policy from Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs.

Dirk B. Booy

Dirk Booy has over 40 years of international development experience having worked at the village/community level, ran a National Field Office, managed a large fundraising office in Canada, and provided global leadership across 96 countries. He has held senior positions in large INGOs, both Western and Southern led, and helped mentor and develop over 100 leaders in the sector. Most recently, Booy served as the Senior Director for Program Development, Resource Mobilization and Learning (PRL) in BRAC helping to establish the PRL unit across the organization.

Currently, Booy is a Consultant/Mentor/Advisor to INGOs helping to build organizational capacity to improve overall impact. His unique focus is on facilitating meaningful change in complex, multicultural organizations. Booy has a Bachelors in Social Economics from Calvin (College) University, and a Masters in International Rural Development Planning from University of Guelph. He resides in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada.

Ronald Grzywinski

Ron Grzywinski was the Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of ShoreBank Corporation, the nation’s first and largest certified Community Development Finance Institution. Starting in 1973, ShoreBank provided finance and information services to disinvested communities in Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, and rural Arkansas. Subsequently, the Corporation provided advisory and operational assistance to Grameen Bank and BRAC in Bangladesh, the Aga Khan Foundation in Pakistan, as well as local development banks in the former Soviet Union, Africa, and Asia. In 1996 ShoreBank Corporation created ShoreBank Pacific, the nation’s first environmental development bank.

Ron has been the recipient of the Independent Sector’s John W. Gardner Leadership Award, the Medal for Entrepreneurial Excellence from the Yale University School of Management, the President’s Founders Award from Loyola University (Chicago), and the Theodore Hesburgh Award for Ethical Business Practices from the University of Notre Dame. He was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Business Degree from Northern Michigan University and was a founding member of the Ashoka Global Academy for Social Entrepreneurship. He has been the CEO of several banks and serves on the boards of numerous social purpose organizations. He is an Alumnus in Residence at Loyola University.

Christina Leijonhufvud

Christina is an independent consultant with expertise in impact investment, investment banking, and country risk.

She spent 15 years at J.P. Morgan until retiring from the firm as a Managing Director in 2012. In 2007, she designed and launched the firm’s Social Finance business as a unit of the investment bank providing financial services to the impact investments market. Christina also led various risk management teams at J.P. Morgan, including Sovereign Risk & Advisory and Credit Portfolio Risk Management.

Prior to J.P. Morgan, Christina worked at the World Bank as Country Officer, helping develop reform programs for the former Soviet Republics of Central Asia. In 1991, she served on the Economic Reform Committee for the Government of Kazakhstan.

Christina has also worked for Ashoka-Innovators for the Public and serves on the Board of BRAC USA and the Advisory Board for the Center for Financial Inclusion. Christina earned a M.Sc. degree in Economics from the London School of Economics and a B.A. in Sociology from UCLA.

Cassie Landers

Cassie Landers has a Doctorate in Education, as well as a Master’s in Public Health, both from Harvard University. Since 1985, Dr. Landers has worked with UNICEF and other international agencies to promote policies and programs in support of young children and their families. She has provided technical assistance and support to child development programs in over 60 countries throughout Southern Africa, South Asia, East Asia, Middle East and North Africa, Central Asia and Eastern Europe. A primary focus of her work has been the design and evaluation of integrated community-based programs to support parents and families. She has been a primary investigator of several multicounty school readiness initiatives for high-risk children. In collaboration with the Open Society Foundations, Dr. Landers has designed a MA in Early Childhood Development, BU-IED University, Bangladesh. She has been instrumental in the development of curriculum materials for BRAC’s Play Labs in collaboration with the Lego Foundation. Additional international activities include the development of child protection strategies for children in emergencies, and a program for mapping and assessing child protection systems. She is currently on the faculty in the Department of Population and Family Health, Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University and teaches courses in child development and global health.

Dr. Martha Chen

Dr. Chen is a Lecturer in Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School and International Coordinator of the global research-policy-action network Women in Informal Employment: Globalizing and Organizing (WIEGO). An experienced development practitioner and scholar, her areas of specialization are employment, gender, and poverty with a focus on the working poor in the informal economy. Before joining Harvard in 1987, she had two decades of resident experience in Bangladesh working with BRAC and in India, where she served as field representative of Oxfam America for India and Bangladesh.

Marty received a PhD in South Asia Regional Studies from the University of Pennsylvania. She is the author of numerous books including Bridging Perspectives: Labour, Informal Employment, and Poverty, The Progress of the World’s Women 2005: Women, Work and Poverty, Mainstreaming Informal Employment and Gender in Poverty Reduction, Women and Men in the Informal Economy: A Statistical Picture, and Perpetual Mourning: Widowhood in Rural India. Dr. Chen was awarded a high civilian award, the Padma Shri, by the Government of India in April 2011 and a Friends of Bangladesh Liberation War award by the Government of Bangladesh in December 2012.

James Torrey

James A. Torrey founded The Torrey Funds in 1990. After investing in hedge funds since 1977, he established an investment business to identify and sometimes seed several of the most promising and compelling hedge fund managers in the world. In 1992, he formed the first exclusively international fund-of-funds in the U.S. with the same strategy of identifying and investing with hedge fund managers focused and largely domiciled abroad. The firm was built to well over $1.25 billion in assets.

In 2009, The Torrey Funds was merged in to Cadogan Management, a $4 billion fund-of-funds firm with offices in New York, Tokyo and London. After the completion of the merger, Jim became a senior advisor to Cadogan. In addition to his position at Cadogan, Jim has served on the Board of Directors of MicroVest, a unique micro-lending enterprise based in Bethesda, MD, since 2005. He has become increasingly involved in its capital development and strategic planning.

He also served on the board of the Milano Graduate School of Public Policy at the New School in New York City for several years. In 2010, Jim was appointed by President Obama to the board of the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC), the development agency of the U.S. Government. Mr. Torrey has three children and five grandchildren. He resides in Westport, CT.