Archives: Team

Donella Rapier is the President and CEO of BRAC USA, the North American affiliate of BRAC. Founded in 1972 in Bangladesh, then one of the poorest countries on earth, BRAC has grown to become one of the largest and most effective nongovernmental organizations in the world – and the only one of its scale to have originated in the Global South. BRAC’s programs in South Asia and Africa now reach more than 100 million people, providing them with tools to move from poverty into secure, resilient livelihoods.

Before joining BRAC USA, Donella served as the Chief Development and Administrative Officer at Accion, a pioneer and global leader in microfinance and financial inclusion. Prior to that, she was the Chief Financial Officer at Partners In Health, a global healthcare organization working in remote places where healthcare alternatives are limited or otherwise nonexistent, such as Haiti, Rwanda and Malawi. Earlier in her career, Donella spent more than a decade in senior leadership roles at Harvard University, including Vice President for Alumni Affairs and Development and Chief Financial Officer for Harvard Business School. Donella received her MBA from Harvard Business School and began her career at Price Waterhouse.

An outdoor enthusiast, Donella enjoys bicycling, hiking and kayaking. She also serves as a Trustee and Treasurer for the Lake Titus Protective Association in the Adirondacks, where her family vacations. She lives in Boston, MA, with her husband, Andy Pickett, a retired attorney.

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 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 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. 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 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.

Raymond C. Offenheiser leads the Notre Dame Initiative for Global Development (NDIGD) in its mission to promote human development and dignity among people worldwide by overseeing and developing its academic, research, and public policy activities, as well as its strategy for long-term growth. Offenheiser also identifies and cultivates critical, strategic partnerships between NDIGD and companies, federal agencies, foundations, and private philanthropists. Additionally, he represents NDIGD at local, national, and international events.

Offenheiser serves on the University of Notre Dame faculty as Distinguished Professor of the Practice and teaches graduate and undergraduate students in the Keough School of Global Affairs, where he teaches a course on the Foundations of Sustainable Development. Offenheiser also serves on the Keough School’s Leadership Council. His research interests and areas of expertise include poverty alleviation, human rights, United States foreign policy, and international development. He has been a frequent commentator with U.S. and international media on these and other subjects and is available to analyze, provide context, and commentary through Notre Dame’s Office of Public Affairs and Communications.

Prior to joining Notre Dame in August 2017, Offenheiser was the president of Oxfam America – a Boston-based international relief and development agency and the U.S. affiliate of Oxfam International – for over 20 years. Under his leadership, the agency grew more than eightfold and repositioned itself in the U.S. as an influential voice on international development, human rights and governance, humanitarianism, and foreign assistance.

Prior to joining Oxfam America, Offenheiser represented the Ford Foundation in Bangladesh and the Andean and Southern Cone regions of South America. He has directed programs for the Inter-American Foundation in Brazil and Colombia, and he has worked for the Save the Children Federation in Mexico. At the 2012 G20 Summit, he was appointed by the Obama administration to represent civil society interests on the leadership council of the New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition in Africa.

Offenheiser has also served as honorary president of Wetlands International; he was a co-founder of the following organizations: ONE Campaign, the Modernizing Foreign Assistance Network, and the Food Policy Action Network. He has served on the advisory boards of the World Economic Forum, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Aspen Institute, the World Agricultural Forum, the Gates Foundation, the Clinton Global Initiative, Harvard Business School, the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, the Kellogg Institute for International Studies at Notre Dame, and Cornell University.

A 1971 graduate of Notre Dame, Offenheiser also holds a master’s degree in development sociology from Cornell University.

Ann is an independent consultant based in New York. Her areas of expertise include management, financial services, impact investing, and working with non-profit organizations.

Ann has worked with a range of organizations including Citibank, N.A., Women’s World Banking, BlueOrchard Finance, and Mastercard Foundation. She has traveled and worked in over twenty countries, and in the last eight years, her work took her to several countries in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Her work in the last twenty years has focused on financial services for the poor. At Women’s World Banking her team worked with fifty microfinance institutions and banks to raise funding for their operations and growth. At BlueOrchard Finance her team invested in the debt of microfinance institutions and raised more than $120 million in a Latin American focused debt fund. Ann led several teams at Mastercard Foundation, which worked in financial inclusion, youth livelihoods and in thought leadership and innovation. During this time the Foundation significantly expanded its portfolio in financial inclusion and launched its first challenge fund, the Mastercard Foundation Fund for Rural Prosperity. This fund seeks innovative financial solutions to address the needs of rural and smallholder farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Ann graduated from Drew University with a B.A. in Economics and French Literature. She lives in Locust Valley, New York with her husband, Peter B. Colgrove, an attorney.

Barbara Lucas is a retired securities, commodities, and banking lawyer with more than 35 years of experience in law, business, and government. She currently provides consulting and litigation support services to financial services companies and law firms.

Prior to her consulting career, Ms. Lucas was a partner and chairperson of the banking department at Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft. Before joining Cadwalader, she was General Counsel to what was then known as Citicorp’s Investment Bank. She also served as Chief Counsel to the CFTC’s Division of Enforcement and Director of its Office of Policy Review, as well as Special Counsel to the SEC’s Division of Corporation Finance.

In addition to her professional activities, Ms. Lucas is on the board of several organizations including Accion International, a global nonprofit committed to creating a financially inclusive world. She also chairs WomensTrust, a Ghana-based NGO that empowers poor women and girls through education, health care and economic development. She also serves on the board of the Stanley M. Isaacs Neighborhood Center, a New York City-based settlement house.

Ms. Lucas received her undergraduate degree in English from Cornell University and her J.D. from the Washington College of Law at American University. She lives in New York City with her husband, Richard Nesson.

Brigit Helms is a seasoned executive, bringing more than 30 years of leadership experience in pioneering innovative approaches to finance and other market-based solutions to poverty. Brigit now serves as the Executive Director for the Miller Center for Social Entrepreneurship at Santa Clara University, which has accelerated more than 1,000 social enterprises since 2003, leveraging its location in the heart of Silicon Valley and its Jesuit ambition to end poverty and protect the planet.

Prior to the Miller Center, Brigit was the Vice President for Technical Services at DAI Global, where she led a large team of technical experts in project design and implementation across 90 countries. Brigit’s career spans the public and private sectors, multinational organizations, and nonprofits. Additionally, Brigit has served as a mentor, angel investor, and founder of several startups. Brigit has lived and worked in more than 40 countries, speaks several languages, and still loves to travel. She holds a PhD in Development and Agriculture Economics from Stanford University and a Masters from Johns Hopkins School for Advanced International Studies.