Our Board

Alan Davis is president of The Leonard and Sophie Davis Fund, a private family foundation. Mr. Davis is the Director of the WhyNot Initiative, the foundation’s program to support social change efforts that have the potential to significantly address problems with the democratic process, income and wealth distribution, universal healthcare, and tolerance. He was founder and CEO of Conservatree Paper Company, the leading distributor of recycled paper, and founder and CEO of ASDavis Media Group, a publisher of more than 40 travel guidebooks.

Dedrick Asante-Muhammad has been a long time thought leader focused on racial economic inequality. He started his work as the first Racial Wealth Divide Coordinator at United For A Fair Economy. He then went on to work with Chuck Collins at Institute for Policy Studies Inequality and Common Good Program. Dedrick then went on to become the Senior Director of the Economic Department for the NAACP and currently is the Chief of Race, Wealth and Community for the National Community Reinvestment Coalition. Dedrick has also worked for Rev. Al Sharpton’s National Action Network, multi-cultural centers and Bedford Hills Correctional Facility.

Rajasvini Bhansali is the Executive Director of Solidaire Network and Solidaire Action, a community of donor organizers mobilizing critical resources to the frontlines of social justice.  She is a passionate advocate for participatory grassroots-led power building and a lifelong student of social movements. In a wide-ranging career devoted to racial, economic and climate justice, she has previously led an international public foundation that funds grassroots organizing in Asia, Africa and Latin America; grown a national youth development social enterprise; managed a public telecommunications infrastructure fund addressing the digital divide in the Southern United States; and worked as a community organizer, researcher, planner, policy analyst and strategy consultant. Born and raised in India, Rajasvini earned a Master’s in Public Affairs with a focus on Telecommunications and Technology Policy from the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin and a Bachelor′s in Astrophysics and Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities & Social Sciences from UC Berkeley. Vini also spent several years working in rural Kenya with community leaders, an experience she credits as having inspired her to work to transform philanthropy and international development.  To that end, she currently serves on several philanthropic boards.  Vini co-authored Leading with Joy: Practices for Uncertain Times, recently published by Berrett-Koehler Publishers.  She is also a published poet, essayist, popular educator, yoga instructor and leadership coach. When not engaged with community organizations, Rajasvini can be found nesting with her family, taking long naps in the garden or plotting the next dance party with friends.

Chuck Collins is the Director of the Program on Inequality and the Common Good at the Institute for Policy Studies where he co-edits Inequality.org. He is an expert on U.S. inequality and the racial wealth divide, and the author of numerous reports and several books. His newest book, The Wealth Hoarders: How Billionaires Pay Millions to Hide Trillions, is about the wealth hiding industry (Polity 2021). Mr. Collins is a founding board member of the Patriotic Millionaires and co-founder of United for a Fair Economy (UFE), which was created to raise the profile of growing inequality and support organizing efforts to address it.

Ellen Dorsey is Executive Director of the Wallace Global Fund, a private foundation focused on advancing progressive social change by supporting people-powered movements in the environment, democracy, human rights, and corporate accountability sectors. Under her leadership, the Fund is recognized globally for creative philanthropic strategies and mission aligned investing, including supporting the youth-led fossil fuel divestment movement. Dorsey was awarded the 2016 inaugural Nelson Mandela – Graca Machel Brave Philanthropy Award for launching Divest-Invest Philanthropy, a coalition of over 200 foundations committed to aligning investments and grants to address the climate crises and accelerate the clean energy transition. Dorsey has an extensive background in academic, philanthropic, and non-profit leadership.

Scott Ellis is the founder and CEO of MasteryTrack, and a national expert in catalyzing mastery learning at scale. He has more than 20 years of experience as an executive and consultant in technology and nonprofits, and deep expertise in strategy, operations, finance, measurement of impact, and management coaching. Previously Scott was the founding CEO of The Learning Accelerator, Executive Chairman of Open Up Resources, and Chief Strategy Officer and Chief Operating Officer of New Teacher Center. He has also served on the boards of directors of multiple nonprofits and provided consulting support to dozens of others.

Devin Fergus is the Arvarh E. Strickland Distinguished Professor, History and Black Studies at the Truman School of Public Affairs and an adjunct professor at the Robert Trulaske College of Business at the University of Missouri. He is also the author of Land of the Fee (Oxford). In addition to being a member of the Experts of Color Network, Fergus is the first professional historian named to the Closing the Racial Wealth Gap Initiative—the nation’s premier group of practitioners, government officials, academics, philanthropists, and private sector leaders dedicated to engaging policymakers and others on the racial dimensions of the wealth gap and policies that fuel racial economic disparities.

Darrick Hamilton is Henry Cohen Professor of Economics and Urban Policy and founding director of the Institute on Race, Power and Political Economy at The New School. Hamilton examines social stratification and political economy to move policy and practice in ways that promote economic inclusion, social equity, and civic engagement. Considered one of the nation’s foremost experts on these topics, Darrick has been profiled by top media outlets, served on the economic committee of the Biden-Sanders Unity Task Force, and testified before several Senate and House committees. He was recently appointed to serve as a commissioner on the New York City Racial Justice Charter Revision Commission.

Nancy MacLean is the William H. Chafe Professor of History and Public Policy at Duke University and the author of several award-winning books, most recently, Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America. A New York Times bestseller, it was a finalist for the National Book Award and the winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Award in Current Affairs and the Lillian Smith Book Award for outstanding writing about the U.S. South. In 2021-22, she is researching a new book as the John Hope Franklin Fellow at the National Humanities Center.