Nicole Campbell specializes in creating peace of mind. She has provided strategic legal, governance, and operational guidance as a senior advisor for two of the world’s most prominent philanthropists and has spoken on and trained senior management teams and board members in nearly every region of the world in grant making, governance, and organizational design.

With more than fifteen years of experience in the public and private sectors, Nic has deep expertise in designing and building nonprofit organizations from concept phase to full independence and designing innovative organizational, grant-making, and governance structures. For her entire career, she has been a sought-after strategist and thought partner to philanthropists, philanthropies, collaboratives, movements, and nonprofit organizations in the United States, the Caribbean, Sub-Saharan Africa, and around the world.

Nic is founder of the Build Up Companies, a federated group of companies comprised of Build Up Advisory Group, The Campbell Law Firm, and Build Up, Inc. and focused on transforming outcomes for vulnerable and marginalized communities. She is Chief Executive Officer of Build Up Advisory Group, an advisory firm that specializes in improving governance, grant making, and organizational design for brave philanthropists, philanthropies, movements, and nonprofit organizations to provide them with the structural capacity to deliver on their missions. She is Managing Attorney of The Campbell Law Firm, a boutique law firm that serves as a trusted advisor to brave grant-making nonprofits, movements, philanthropies, and philanthropists to interrupt cycles of injustice and inequity. She is also President of Build Up, Inc., a nonprofit capacity builder that supports leaders of color and incubates and fiscally sponsors charitable projects and organizations that work with under-resourced and invisibilized communities around the world.

Prior to founding the Build Up Companies, Nic was Senior Director of Operations and Foundation Counsel for Dalio Philanthropies, Ray Dalio’s global, multi-million dollar family philanthropy; Deputy General Counsel and Secretary for the Open Society Foundations, George Soros’s global, multi-billion dollar philanthropic network; and Associate General Counsel for the New York Community Trust, a multi-billion dollar community foundation.

Nima Shirazi is a communications and program strategist with over two decades of experience working at the intersection of culture and politics, media and narrative, advocacy and the arts.

Currently a Vice president at Spitfire Strategies, Nima develops strategy, campaigns and messages alongside fearless partners dedicated to dismantling systems of discrimination and disinformation; shifting power and wealth from corporations to communities; and demanding that our environments and economies are abundant and shared.

Nima is a member of the Radical Communicators Network and the Gulf/2000 Project, an academic forum and online resource service operated by The Sage Institute for Foreign Affairs. Nima also co-hosts the award-winning media and politics podcast “Citations Needed”.

Rick Scott recently retired as the VP of Finance & Compliance at the McKnight Foundation in Minnesota. He oversaw several complex areas, including finance, investments, and legal compliance through periods of significant economic and leadership transitions. Among his accomplishments, he worked closely with McKnight’s president and board of directors to establish the first impact investing program at McKnight. Rick also led the Foundation’s early efforts to leverage its role as an institutional investor and deploy more of its investments to advance its mission.

Before joining McKnight in 1999, Scott was chief financial officer of the Guthrie Theater and a large human services agency after spending 13 years working in the computer industry. His undergraduate and graduate studies were in international economics, supplemented with language studies in Spanish, Russian, German, Italian and French.

Aside from a current focus on community service, Rick is an independent foundation and NGO consultant. His areas of practice cover private foundation and not-for-profit management and governance, including finance, operations, investment, and board. Investment expertise includes development of impact investing programs and board/committee consulting.

Desiree Flores (she/her) brings 20 years of social justice grant making and program development experience funding social justice movement building at the local, state, and national levels. She was previously the Program Director of U.S. Social Justice at the Arcus Foundation, a global LGBTQ philanthropy, supporting policy and culture change determined by LGBTQ people pushed to the margins. Earlier in her career, she served as Director of Board Affairs at Planned Parenthood Federation of America, and as a longtime program officer at the Ms. Foundation for Women supporting more powerful gender and racial justice movements. Desiree earned a bachelor’s degree from UCLA and a master’s in public administration from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

Tammy Dowley-Blackman, a graduate of Oberlin College and Harvard University, is an author, entrepreneur, leadership expert, executive, and professor. Her company, Tammy Dowley-Blackman Group, LLC, includes a suite of brands, including TDB Group Strategic Advisory, a management consulting firm specializing in organizational and leadership development for the corporate, government, nonprofit and philanthropic sectors, as well as Looking Forward Lab, which partners with corporations and higher education systems to create workplace solutions for Gen Z and their managers.

Tammy completed her six-year term as the president of the TSNE Board of Directors, where she led the $64 million-dollar organization through unprecedented leadership and business model strategic alignment and planning. She also provides leadership as an Advisory Board member for the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. Tammy has been part of the Proteus Fund team before, serving as the founding Director of the Proteus Fund Diversity Fellowship, a successful nationally recognized program designed to bring more equitable representation and systemic change to large-scale philanthropic institutional systems.

Patricia is the former President & CEO of Asian Americans/Pacific Islanders in Philanthropy (AAPIP), working to build democratic philanthropy through a racial and gender equity lens. Prior to her role at AAPIP, Pat served as Chief Service Officer at the Mayor's Office of the City of NY. Pat has served in various positions within the philanthropic and non-profit communities. She founded the first organization on the East Coast working with battered immigrant Asian women in the early days of this new national movement. She managed a portfolio of programs including 8 shelters, 4 citywide 24-hour hotlines, and one of the largest batterer intervention programs and anti-trafficking programs in the country. In philanthropy, at the Ms. Foundation for Women, Pat innovated grantmaking strategy in several areas including early support for men’s efforts to address violent masculinity and supporting the emerging movement to prevent child sexual abuse. At the New York Women’s Foundation, she launched and managed the NYC Fund for Girls and Young Women of Color, the first collaborative fund in the country focused on young women and gender non-binary youth of color.

Risa Jaz Rifkind (she/her) is a justice advocate who seeks to make change by shifting access to power and influence. As Senior Director of Program and Strategic Initiatives for Disability Lead, she propels the organization to realize its vision to have people with disabilities lead with power and influence. By identifying and developing strategic partnerships, Risa positions Members to take on leadership roles that advance their careers, civic engagement, and equity for people with disabilities. By integrating this vision into all internal and external communications, she leads Disability Lead’s brand awareness, public and private Member programming, and community engagement and outreach. She is also a Disability Lead Member.

Outside of Disability Lead, Risa is involved in various leadership roles. She is currently on the Proteus Fund Board. In 2022, she was appointed to the National Council on Disability by President Biden. In 2020, Risa participated on the Disability Inclusion Fund’s grantmaking committee. Previously, Risa was Program Manager at The Chicago Community Trust where she developed their disability inclusion priorities and practices and managed several disability inclusion initiatives including the Disabilities Fund, ADA 25 Advancing Leadership, and ADA 25 Chicago.

She has consulted for organizations to increase their disability inclusion, including the University of Indiana Kelley School of Business, Institute for Nonprofit Professionals, Proteus Fund, and has spoken at conferences including the Leadership Exchange in Arts and Disability, Unity Summit, and Upswell Conference.

Maria Teresa is a senior executive with extensive experience building institutions, developing programs, and implementing grantmaking strategies. She recently concluded a long career with the Open Society Foundations, where she was the founder and director of the International Migration Initiative. Prior to that, she served in the Open Society-U.S. program as Associate Director for Grantmaking and Program Development, Deputy Director for the Justice Fund, and Associate Director for Communications. In the latter years of her work at OSF she focused on developing work in the Caribbean on climate displacement.

She is now working as a consultant advising a family foundation on strategic project investments and scaling impact. In her earlier career, Maria Teresa worked as a journalist, filmmaker, and television producer. She built a cable television network for the City of New York that instituted unprecedented television coverage of local government proceedings. In addition to the Proteus Fund, she is a member of the board of directors at Futuro Media and Ayiti Demen-Haiti Tomorrow. She has lived most of her life in the United States and has traveled extensively on all seven continents.

Elizabeth (Betsy) Schmidt is a Professor of Practice, specializing in nonprofits, social enterprises, and solutions-based policy analysis. She currently teaches two graduate school courses, Nonprofit Law and Management and Social and Environmental Enterprises, and two undergraduate courses, Making a Difference: Policies and Strategies for Successful Social Change and Catalyzing Change: Creating and Operating a Nonprofit.

She has also taught at George Mason University, Vermont Law School, William and Mary Law School, and Marlboro College’s MBA for Sustainability program. Betsy writes in the areas of nonprofit governance, accountability, policies, and ethics. She also writes about the legal framework for social enterprises.

In addition to academic positions, Betsy has practiced law, consulted with nonprofits, and worked directly for nonprofit organizations in legal and management capacities. Among her accomplishments were the creation and development of a data licensing program at GuideStar and a distance learning program at Colonial Williamsburg.

She has an undergraduate degree in history from Princeton and a law degree from Stanford University.

Dedicating his career to strengthening people and organizational infrastructure, Thompson-François has served in both secular organizations and faith-based institutions. His experience includes serving as the Regional Director of Amnesty International USA’s Southern Regional Office, where he worked on abolishing the death penalty in a region comprising eleven states in the Southeastern U.S, also known as the “death belt;” as the National Field Director for the Rights Working Group, a national coalition of over 300 community-based groups and policy organizations dedicated to ending racial and bias profiling across the country; as Political Education and Spiritual Sustenance Specialist at the Unitarian Universalist Association; and as the National Justice and Equity Coordinator for 350.org, an international climate change organization.

Everette serves as the Purveyor of Joy and Movement Infrastructure Architect at Grits and Greens.  He is a former trainer with Black Organizing for Leadership and Dignity (B.O.L.D.), a national training intermediary focused on transforming the practice of Black organizers in the US.

Thompson holds a Bachelor of Arts in English and a Bachelor of Science in Public Administration from North Carolina Central University (Durham, NC) and a Master of Arts degree. in Nonprofit Leadership and Development from the University of Delaware (Newark, DE). Everette is a proud father, son and husband.

Eric K. Ward is a notable civil rights leader known for his innovative approaches to combating white nationalism, antisemitism and advancing racial justice. The only American recipient of the Civil Courage Prize, Eric has over three decades of leadership in community organizing and philanthropy, and has worked with leaders from government, law enforcement, labor, business, and social movements to advance civil rights work. Ward has emerged as a stalwart national leader in the fight against authoritarianism and organized racism, including antisemitism. Eric serves on the boards of Auburn Theological Seminary and the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy. He is a senior fellow with the Southern Poverty Law Center and an institute fellow with Moment Magazine.

Paul has been President and CEO of Proteus Fund since 2016. He is a deeply committed activist for comprehensive, progressive social change with a record of over thirty years of accomplishments.

Prior to becoming President, Paul directed Proteus Fund’s Civil Marriage Collaborative (CMC) for eight years. The CMC was a groundbreaking donor collaborative that played a critical role in winning the freedom to marry in the United States in 2015. Under his leadership, the program awarded over $20 million in grants strategically targeted to support a cultural sea change on the issue of marriage equality and LGBTQ justice at the state and national levels.

Before the CMC, Paul worked in San Francisco and New York (where he is still based) pursuing his social justice values and vision as a philanthropic leader, non-profit executive, public policy advocate, consultant, and civil rights litigator. As Executive Director, he transformed Funders Concerned About AIDS into a leading international philanthropic actor in the response to the pandemic while advancing a variety of other initiatives mobilizing grantmakers to fight HIV/AIDS. At the beginning of Paul’s tenure in 1997, global investment in HIV/AIDS by American philanthropy was under $50 million. By the time he left FCAA in 2005, that figure had leaped to over $350 million. As Federal Affairs Director and Public Policy Director at the San Francisco AIDS Foundation and Public Policy Director at the AIDS Legal Referral Panel, Paul provided key leadership on a wide range of national and California-specific HIV/AIDS public policy victories on issues ranging from health care reform and privacy rights to housing and government appropriations. He also served as both Executive and Legal Director for National Gay Rights Advocates, one of the first national LGBTQ legal rights organizations.

Paul has also consulted on high-level strategy, program development and evaluation, leadership coaching and governance with a wide range of philanthropic, non-profit, and academic clients. He has served in several volunteer leadership positions, including the last eighteen years as a Trustee for Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS – one of the largest HIV/AIDS grantmakers in the United States, having awarded over $200 million since its founding in 1987.

Paul became an activist as an undergraduate at University of Pennsylvania, where he dedicated his energies to anti-Apartheid, gender, and LGBTQ justice issues. While at Harvard Law School, his summer work at the National Women’s Law Center led to his appointment as the first man to be named a Revson Women’s Law and Public Policy Fellow. As an attorney in private practice, Paul litigated prison reform, employment discrimination, and voting rights cases. Paul is an honors graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard Law School. He lives in New York with his husband.

"Resist much, obey little." - Walt Whitman