GOVERNING BOARD

Maxine Friedman – Board Chair

Senior Vice President Growth, Bionic Solution

Maxine has 20+ years of strategic partnerships, business development and marketing experience at agency, startup and Fortune 500 companies. She currently leads Talent and Business Development for Bionic, an innovation and entrepreneurial practice helping the world’s largest companies launch new businesses. For five years, Maxine was Vice President of Partnerships at Clickable, where she was a part of the founding management team. She holds a B.S. in Journalism from California State Polytechnic University and an MBA from both Columbia University and London Business School and began her career at Cunningham Communication, a Silicon-Valley branding/PR agency, where she built and managed holistic communications programs for some of the largest technology brands – including, Oracle, Motorola and eSchwab (Charles Schwab)

Maxine, her husband, and two children live in the Meatpacking in NYC.

Sue Verity – Board Clerk

Liberty Mutual, Director of Financial Analysis

Sue joined the board as clerk after volunteering with the Boston Many Hopes chapter for several years. She studied Business Administration at the University of Vermont and has an MBA from Boston College. She works as a Director of Financial Analysis at Liberty Mutual in Boston. Sue visited Many Hopes in Kenya and was thrilled to meet the girls and see the impact in person.

Patrick Murphy

President, John Hancock Financial Services

CEO, New York Life Retirement Plan Services

Born and raised in Massachusetts, Patrick has spent the past 25 years in the financial services industry helping companies and their employees achieve financial security. He is currently the President of John Hancock Retirement Plan Services. Pat has also spent significant personal time as a coach and mentor, helping young people realize their potential on and off the athletic fields. He became a believer in the Many Hopes mission after meeting Thomas for lunch in 2012. He was a private donor and helped with fundraising before joining the board.

Daniel Grant

Global Staffing Lead, Google Search and Assistant

Daniel joined Google in 2015, after a career in recruiting across the non-profit and education industries. At Google, Daniel initially managed five teams of recruiters, primarily supporting Software Engineering hiring in the Bay Area. Daniel then spent a year leading Google Cloud’s Americas Sales recruiting teams in a hyper growth market. For the past two years, Daniel has been the Global Staffing Lead role for Google Search and Assistant, leading all staffing efforts for all global hiring of these technical businesses.

Before Google, Daniel was the Vice President of National Alliances at Teach For America, based in new York City. With his experience serving under-privileged children in South Africa and Namibia, Daniel launched our Many Hopes New York Chapter and served as Regional Director for our first year in NYC. Daniel first visited Mudzini Kwetu in 2009 and fell in love with our vision for long term, transformative change through the lives of the girls he met there.

Nelson Mills

Columbia Property Trust, President

Nelson has more than 30 years of experience in the real estate investment and financial services industries. He is responsible for overall strategy, operations, and financial performance of Columbia Property Trust, a $6 billion public real estate owner/operator. He also serves as a director on the Columbia Board. Prior to joining Columbia in 2010, he served for five years as the President and Chief Operating Officer of Williams Realty Advisors, LLC, managing and advising a series of real estate investment funds. Previous roles included CFO of Lend Lease Real Estate Investments and Partner at KPMG LLP. He received a B.S. degree in Business Administration from the University of Tennessee and an M.B.A. from the University of Georgia. Nelson and his wife, Judy, live adjacent to Madison Square Park in New York City.

Joseph Zito

(X)form Coaching and Consulting, Founder

Joseph is an Elite-Performance Strategist dedicated to transforming professional lives of volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity into realities of clarity, control, calm, and continuous improvement. He previously spent 20 years in the corporate realm, serving as an operating executive in both early-stage startups (including two successful exits) and large global enterprises. He currently lives in Brooklyn, NY, with his amazing wife and their two incredible children.

Joseph McKnight

Joseph McKnight is a Managing Director with Blackstone Credit, focusing on mezzanine lending and private equity investments in the energy and power sectors.
Before joining Blackstone Credit, Mr. McKnight served as a Vice President at Goldman Sachs, where he focused on private equity and proprietary direct investments in power generation and renewable energy within the firm’s J. Aron commodity division. He previously worked as an Associate in the Natural Resources private-equity vertical at Apollo Management.

Mr. McKnight received a BA in History from the University of Pennsylvania and a BS in Economics from The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, where he graduated with academic honors

Becky Welday – Board Treasurer

Becky grew up in Texas and graduated from Baylor University with degrees in Economics and Finance in 1990. A former credit analyst and commercial lender at Bank of America, Becky stopped working in order to stay home with children, Richard and Layne. She met her husband, Rick, at Baylor and got married shortly after graduation. The Weldays have lived all over the world including periods in Switzerland, Mexico City, New York, Los Angeles, Kansas City, Saint Louis, and all over Texas. Her extra time is spent volunteering with churches and other organizations and she enjoys reading, traveling, cooking, and spending time with family and friends.

NEW YORK BOARD

Haley Wright

Morrison & Foerster, Head of Strategic Communications and Content Marketing

Haley currently works in marketing and communications for the legal industry. She enjoys helping organizations craft the stories that show the world who they are. Outside of work, you can find her working to raise awareness of the ways that we can all get involved in caring for orphans and children in foster care. Haley is passionate about helping vulnerable children feel that they are wanted and belong.

Matt Beck

Beck Investment Group, CEO

Born and raised in Arizona and having lived on both coasts, Matt Beck has spent the last 20 years investing and rehabilitating commercial real estate. In addition to his passion for revitalizing distressed properties, he’s also devoted to giving his time and resources to various charities in Haiti, Brazil, South Africa, and Mexico. With a fortuitous introduction to the founder, team, and mission of Many Hopes, Matt was immediately dedicated to aide in their cause.

Scott Springfield

Citigroup, Vice President

Scott comes to New York by way of Atlanta, Georgia, where he studied engineering at The Georgia Institute of Technology and subsequently received an MBA from Emory University. Scott spent his early career in consulting for hospitals and clinics around the U.S., which led him to build and lead a volunteer-based nonprofit organization focused on raising money and awareness for Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta.

After moving to New York in 2013 to pursue a career in finance, Scott was introduced to Many Hopes and its mission to rescue, educate, and advocate for vulnerable children. Having lived abroad in India and witnessed first hand the plight of orphaned children on the streets of New Delhi, and the cycle of poverty, crime, and abuse in which they become trapped, he was immediately drawn to the importance of the Many Hopes mission and the impact it could create.

Bo Han (Co-Chair)

Buzzer, Founder and CEO

Before launching Buzzer in 2020, Bo spent 5 years with Microsoft in Global Content before 9 years with Twitter, most recently as the Director of Live Content. He is married to Emily and they live in New York City with their dog. They have visited Many Hopes first partnership in Kenya several times and Bo has run marathons for Many Hopes on multiple continents. A keen sports fan, the top three descriptors of Bo are Follower of Christ, immigrant, entrepreneur.

Vanessa Leong (Co-chair)

Deloitte, Senior Consultant

Vanessa has been part of Many Hopes since the very beginning and led our first online fundraising campaign in 2009. She was among the first group to visit our first partnership in Kenya several times and has been a volunteer leader in our Boston and New York chapters. Vanessa lived in Europe and Africa, where she spent 2 years in Lesotho working on HIV/AIDS service delivery for children before returning to the USA for a period in DC before moving to New York where she now lives. She is active in Church of the City and is a Chicago Bears fanatic.

Cat Dewey

Nitin Gambhir

Tethys Technology, Founder

Nitin and is an expert in market microstructure and execution research. His work and vision has allowed Tethys to successfully expand our product offering globally and across multiple asset classes. Mr. Gambhir has a BS from the Indian Institute of Technology in New Delhi, India and an MBA in Business and an MS in Engineering from Yale University. Mr. Gambhir started his career as an Associate at JP Morgan where he spent 5 years, before joining Bear Stearns where he initially held the position of Vice President before being promoted to the position of Managing Director. Thereafter, Mr. Gambhir founded Tethys Capital, LLC in 1998 a hedge fund firm that managed capital for institutional investors, and a second hedge fund, Altus Asset Management, LLC in 2000.

Quyen Tran

Christina Ware

Chrissy grew up in Western PA and moved to NYC after college to work in the fashion industry. After meeting Thomas through mutual friends and hearing his story, she became committed to Many Hopes and started fundraising and using her connections to help forward its mission. She has visited Kenya twice and looks forward to going back regularly in the future.

LONDON BOARD

Lynn Raynault

Segments of One, CEO and Co-founder

Lynn has over 20 years of experience in developing and delivering marketing and communication strategies for luxury goods and services organizations. Lynn is the former CMO for Wealth-X and prior to that, she led the marketing function for Sotheby’s auction house as VP Americas Marketing. Earlier in her career she held senior marketing positions at Lancome, William Grant & Sons and Heineken and holds an MBA from Columbia Business School. Lynn joined the UK Many Hopes board in 2017 “Education is the universal foundation for building better societies. By advocating and educating underprivileged children, Many Hopes sets the foundation for the future through a new set of influencers”.

Laura Bailey

Actor

Laura is based in London. She holds a BA from Stanford University and an MSc from the London School of Economics in Development Studies. She worked for non-profits in Bangkok, Thailand, and New York that focused on economic empowerment in low-income countries. As a mom of two young children, she feels passionate about the Many Hopes mission to rescue children from poverty and abuse.

Will Goodall

Head of Research for a US-headquartered hedge fund.

Will has headed up the research function at a large US hedge fund for seventeen years. Will has family links to Kenya and has supported other charities there. He joined the Many Hopes board after attending a fundraiser in London. “The urgent need to support these kids around the world is indisputable, and the vision and model of Many Hopes to equip children to change their situation and in turn contribute to effecting change in their societies is exciting,” he commented.

Heather McCormick

Google, Marketing Manager

Heather is a Global Marketing Manager at Google, responsible for building learning and education campaigns for Google Cloud. Previously she worked in sales and marketing at Accenture, a global tech consulting company. In 2018, Heather got the opportunity to visit Many Hopes work in Mombasa Kenya, and the commitment to justice, education, and raising leaders really resonated with her. Since then, she has been supporting Many Hopes, mainly focused on brand strategy, marketing, communications, and staffing.

Simon Hammerstein

Victoria Thompson – Chair

Barclays UK Consumer Banking, Chief of Staff

Victoria has a Consulting background with over 20 years’ experience working on global Business Transformation programs focusing on M&A and Outsourcing deals. Victoria has also worked in the, not for project sector where she was the COO for a global Christian Charity. She joined the Many Hopes UK Board in 2017 and is passionate to see the local children we support to defeat the injustices that charity alone cannot

Anoushka Rayner

Paxos, Head of Growth

Anoushka Rayner has 25 years of experience in the finance industry, predominantly managing global sales and business development teams in Financial technology. Having worked at HSBC, UBS, NEX and now Fintech company Paxos. She holds an Executive Masters in Entrepreneurship.

“After attending a fundraising event in 2017, I wanted to do more. Education brings change, caring about others fuels passion to make that change. The team at Many Hopes enables that change but the children of Many Hopes are creating it.”