Informing to Empower Board of Directors

Liz Abzug

Liz Abzug is the CEO and founder of the 15-year old non-profit Bella Abzug Leadership Institute (BALI), a leadership training institute for middle and high school girls. As a national consultant, professor, lawyer, lobbyist and candidate for New York City elective office, Abzug has been a professional involved in many fields including politics, urban economic development and human rights. For more than 15 years Abzug was an Adjunct professor in Urban Studies at Barnard College/Columbia University where she taught courses on Urban American and International Cities, community building and economic development.

Abzug also leads a series of Women and Leadership courses. In November 2008, she was named one of the “21 Leaders for the 21st Century” by Women’s E-News.

Jonathan Greenberg

Jonathan Greenberg is the founder, board chair and seed capital donor of Informing to Empower, and the creator of the Candidates Video Debate system.

Greenberg was a Web 1.0 pioneer, founding Gist Communications in 1996, an Internet company that competed successfully with TV Guide Online. In 1997, Gist was one of just 14 websites in the world to be named a winner of the First Annual Webby Awards in San Francisco. At Gist, Jonathan managed a staff of 80 writers, editors, software engineers, producers and designers who built, implemented and maintained custom TV listings and daily entertainment news. Gist’s websites reached millions of viewers, on behalf of dozens of clients in three countries, including Yahoo, AOL, MSN, NBC, CBS, USA Today, CNN, Axel Springer, Hachette Lagardere and Hewlett Packard.

Greenberg is an award-winning national investigative journalist and author who has written three of the most widely-read exposes about Donald Trump’s business career to be published in the Washington Post. Greenberg’s story of his early career as the Forbes 400 reporter who taped Trump pretending to be the fictitious John Baron has been the subject of monologues on Colbert, the Daily Show and Seth Meyer’s A Closer Look.

During the two years following the world Trade Center attacks of September 11, Greenberg served as Policy Director for the New York City Council’s Select Committee on Lower Manhattan Redevelopment, where he directed media and public policy campaigns and was the city council’s lead analyst for federal relief programs.

Jonathan received his B.A. in rhetoric and literature from the State University of New York at Binghamton and a Masters Studies in Law degree from Yale Law School.

Kalyanee Mam

Board Member Kalyanee Mam is the recently-named Executive Director of Informing to Empower. Mam is an award-winning filmmaker whose film, A River Changes Course, which she directed and produced, has won several awards, including the Grand Jury Award for World Cinema Documentary at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival and the Golden Gate Award for Best Documentary Feature at the 2013 San Francisco International Film Festival. Mam is also known for her work with director Charles Ferguson as Cinematographer, Associate Producer, and Researcher for the 2011 Academy Award-winning documentary Inside Job, about the global financial crisis.

Mam’s latest work, Lost World, featured in Emergence Magazine and received The Eric Moe Award for Best Short on Sustainability. She also worked as a cinematographer and associate producer on 2011 Oscar-winning documentary Inside Job.

Her work has been generously supported by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Kendeda Fund, Kalliopeia Foundation, the Documentation Center of Cambodia, and the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.

After graduating from Yale University, Mam received her law degree from UCLA School of Law. Mam has worked with International Bridges to Justice at the National Legal Aid Center in Beijing, China, the Refugee Law Clinic at the University of Witswatersand in Johannesburg, South Africa, and the Asian Pacific American Legal Center, where she assisted immigrant victims of domestic violence file for permanent residence status in the United States under the Violence Against Women Act.

Joan Marler

Joan Marler is the founder and Executive Director of the Institute of Archaeomythology, which advances the study of the early matriarchal societies which predate Western historical patriarchal civilizations. For 15 years she was an independent producer and radio journalist for Pacifica radio network’s KPFA in Berkeley, California. Marler has a Master in Archaeomythology from Sonoma State University and is a graduate of Mills College.

Marler is the editor of The Civilization of the Goddess (1991) by Marija Gimbutas and From the Realm of the Ancestors: An Anthology in Honor of Marija Gimbutas (1997). She worked closely with Marija Gimbutas as her personal editor from 1987-1994 and lectures internationally on Prof. Gimbutas’ life and work. Joan Marler initiated courses in Archaeomythology at two graduate schools in San Francisco: New College of California and the California Institute of Integral Studies. She taught modern, folk and ethnic dance for 28 years through Santa Rosa Junior College in northern California.

Linn Washington

Linn Washington is a journalism professor at Temple University, where he teaches courses in investigative reporting, journalism law and multimedia reporting and news writing. He co-created the journalism department’s innovative Multimedia Urban Reporting Lab (MURL). For eight years, he also directed and co-directed PhiladelphiaNeighborhoods.com, an urban reporting–focused class that has earned nearly three dozen regional and national journalism awards, as well as Best Practices recognition from the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication.,

Linn Washington’s career in journalism includes a Masters Degree and Fellowship from Yale Law School, working as a foreign correspondent for reporter for eight countries, and directing study abroad programs for Temple’s School of in London and South Africa. Washington continues to work as a professional journalist for news entities (print and online) across America and in Europe. He has received award recognition for that journalism and frequently serves as an expert commentator on news programs including appearances on CNN and the BBC World Service.