Latin America
Flavio Bassi, Brazil
Flávio Bassi was born in Brazil but spent ten years of his childhood in Algeria. His family traveled extensively, nurturing in Flávio a passion for diversity and a strong belief in the ability of people to improve their world. Upon returning to Brazil, he studied biological sciences, public health, and social anthropology at the University of São Paulo and chaired USP's commission for community-based projects, setting and refining priorities for student-led initiatives. He also organized a seminar series that focused on the social and environmental challenges faced by Brazil's traditional communities. Outside of school, Flávio was introduced to two important social movements in Brazil - the Landless Workers Movement and the Movement of Dam Affected People - and began to consider ways to link social movements and citizen-led organizations. Later, through Ocareté, the organization he founded in 2002, Flávio worked closely with indigenous communities in Brazil's Northwestern Amazon forest and "quilombola" communities of the Atlantic forest valley (afro-Brazilian rural communities that coalesced around their resistance against slavery). The organization, which continues today, focuses on identity affirmation as a foundational step in securing land rights for traditional peoples. Flávio came to Ashoka in 2007, joining the Sao Paulo-based team that finds launch-stage leading social entrepreneurs in Brazil.
Marcelo Ber, Argentina
Marcelo joined Ashoka in June 2006 to aid in the Latin American expansion of Ashoka's effort to promote youth entrepreneurship. Before joining Ashoka, Marcelo created a youth-led service learning project called Compromiso Joven (Youth Commitment), which exposes young people to social challenges and links them with opportunities to provide management and institutional support to citizen sector organizations in Argentina. Argentina's Ministry of Education declared Compromiso Joven to be one of the country's top twenty service-learning projects, and the best led by students. Marcelo has also worked at Procter & Gamble-Argentina, leading the implementation of the company's Corporate Social Responsibility program. At P&G he designed and led a campaign called "Moms from the Heart" in alliance with UNICEF to raise funds and awareness for programs that fostered early childhood development. The campaign helped P&G to achieve a strong double bottom-line result by strengthening pampers equity and sales while significantly reducing child mortality. It garnered several awards, and P&G and UNICEF have adopted the campaign in México, Venezuela, Colombia, Paraguay, and Chile. Marcelo received a B.A. in economics from San Andrés University.
Sarah Berghorst
Sarah Berghorst is the Director of the Entrepreneur to Entrepreneur Program in Latin America. In this capacity, her role involves engaging business leaders, building the Ashoka Support Network (ASN) program and developing relationships with businesses and business networking associations across the region. Sarah joined Ashoka in 2005 and lead Ashoka’s Global Development team in the Washington D.C. office for two years. Prior to Ashoka, Sarah worked at DAI, a development consulting firm, on microfinance projects in Latin America, managing client relationships, logistics and budgets. During her time at DAI, she co-authored an analysis of the microfinance market in Uruguay, and launched an internal learning initiative to promote exchange of expertise and ideas within the company. Sarah was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Panama, where she mobilized local and international stakeholders to establish the region’s first rural information technology center and training program and ran a national woman’s scholarship and education initiative. Sarah grew up in the Chicago area and has a degree in Economics from the University of Michigan.
Luiz Carlos Bouabci, Brazil
Luiz studied Law and got his Masters degree in sustainability at the Catedra UNESCO/Fundación Polytecnica de Catalunya in Spain. He has worked at several organizations, both in the social and private sectors. Most recently, he worked at Amana-key, a center for excellence in management worldwide, based in São Paulo, Brazil. There he helped with strategic planning for the Earth Charter and creating a new model of development for the Amazon region. Luiz has also worked with environmental activist Vandana Shiva in India on legal matters and spent a year in San Diego, California working in an alliance that gathers companies and government towards legal environmental solutions for the area.
Paula Cardenau, Southern Cone
Before joining Ashoka, Paula worked for several years in Argentina's Social Investment Fund, which channels resources to community-based, demand-driven projects, in extremely poor selected districts in Argentina. Paula's responsibility was project social ex-ante assessment, and in this vein she has developed and tested participatory assessment methodologies, trained local teams and NGOs for social project design and implementation, traveled all over the north of Argentina for site-visits, and coordinated evaluation processes. At the end of 2000, Paula joined Ashoka Southern Cone staff to be in charge of Search and Selection and Fellowship, and in June 2001 she also became the CBI Coordinator and launched the CBI Initiative in the S. Cone. She holds a licentiate degree in Politics and Post-Graduate Studies in NGOs and Social Development.
Jack EdwardsJack joined Ashoka in 2003 after working for 31 years as an executive with Cummins Engine Company. He has lived and worked in Latin America for more than fifteen years, starting as a Peace Corps volunteer in Colombia, and then in Mexico and Brasil. Jack came to know about Ashoka through Cummins, which sponsored fellows in three different countries. Jack's work with Ashoka includes helping the Latin American group develop partnerships, with his initial work focusing on Mexico.
Nadine Freeman, Andean RegionNadine Freeman joined Ashoka in July 1998 as Andean Director to manage Ashoka's programs in the five Andean countries (Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Venezuela) from the Ashoka office in Lima, Peru. Nadine came to Ashoka following two years as program manager for Latin America and Southern Africa at the South North Development Initiative, based in New York. Prior to her work at South North, Nadine received an MBA from the Anderson Graduate School of Management at UCLA. While at the Anderson school, she worked as a teaching associate in the UCLA Head Start Directors Management Training program. Nadine has also worked for Conservation International in Ecuador and was a high school Spanish teacher in Los Angeles before that. Nadine received her BA from Washington University in Political Science and Spanish. She is a native of New York City and has lived and studied in Salamanca, Spain and Guadalajara, Mexico.
Valentine Giraud, BrazilValentine has a BA in International Relations from the Catholic University in São Paulo. She was part of the Strategic and Management Team for Sustainable Development of the ABN AMRO Bank in Brazil. Previously, Valentine lived for a year in India working in Rajasthan with the Indian Institute for Rural Development, a grassroots level NGO devoted to rural development. She also worked in New Delhi with Planet Finance, an international NGO dedicated for the development of micro-enterprise and micro-finance worldwide. Valentine joined Ashoka as assistant on the Fellowship Team for Brazil and Paraguay.
Guillermina Lazzaro, Argentina
Guillermina joined Ashoka in 2005 as coordinator of the Citizen Base Initiative in Ashoka’s Southern Cone office, based in Buenos Aires. Since January 2006, she has also directed the search and selection process for new Ashoka Fellows in Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay. Since January 2008 she has become the Southern Cone Director. Guillermina came to Ashoka with 10 years of work experience in the Argentinean citizen sector. In1998, she developed and conducted a pioneering, non-U.S. funded, research project on the challenges for and best practices of CSOs in Argentina, subsequently creating the first webpage in Argentina focusing on CSO management. Guillermina has also led several innovative initiatives in well-known citizen sector organizations such as Fundación Compromiso, Fundación Leer, and Fundación Vida Silvestre, her focus ranging from communications to fundraising and volunteer management. She has a degree in politics and has completed post-graduate studies on civil society.
Tiana Lins, Brazil
When Tiana Lins joined the communication course of the Superior School of Advertising and Marketing (ESPM), she got surprised with the business focus of the University. To change this, within the Junior Enterprise, Tiana proposed consulting services to the social sector. This was the first time that a communication University worked for the social sector. From this initiative, Tiana created in 1999 the social organization called Marco 3 - Marketing and Communication for Social Sector Organizations. In 2000, by working in a youth mobilization project with the Pro-Action Institute (created by an Ashoka fellow), they decided to join forces and create Aracati (Agency for Social Mobilization). After some time at Aracati, Tiana decided to spend a year out of Brazil. She worked as a volunteer in Nepal, Thailand, and India. In India, she worked with women from rural areas in a health project and another education and youth empowerment project. In both projects, she created and organized two publications. Upon her return to Brazil in 2004, Tiana coordinated a community based project in São Paulo, which involved three fellows’ organizations with different methodologies. Succeeding in this, Tiana started to coordinate a program involving the social, private and governmental sectors with the objective of promoting the political and social participation of youths in the Northeast of Brazil. Tiana is coordinating the Venture Program in Brazil.
Carina Pimenta
Carina Pimenta joined Ashoka after earning a Master in Social Development at University of Sussex, England. There, she created Latin America in the Spotlight, a forum designed to raise awareness about the region and further discussions on social, economic and political development issues among students and faculty members. Carina studied Business Administration and Economics and worked for 5 years at a consulting firm – Roland Berger Strategic Consultants – where she was responsible for research and information and designed a knowledge management program for the South American operations.
Lizzie Valdivieso, Andean RegionLizzie comes to Ashoka after completing her Masters in Social Development at the University of Sussex. There, along, with Brazilian Ashoka colleague, Carina Pimenta, she created a forum on “Latin America in the Spotlight” with the goal of increasing knowledge and sparking discussion on social, economic and political development in Latin America. Her thesis focused on the emergence of the indigenous movements in Ecuador and Bolivia and their contributions to the consolidation of democracy in Latin America. She worked with UNESCO on the re-launch of the Secretary of the Peruvian Cooperation Commission where she promoted the national proposal to create the Center for Cultural Patrimony. She applied her previous training in developmental communications on working with local development projects and the Communications and Information Unit of the European Union in Brussels. In addition to coordinating Fellowship activities in the region she will also support the Andean Region’s communications program.
Gastón WrightGastón joined Ashoka in January 2001 after having spent the previous 5 years working for the Argentine Political Science Association, the Latin American Centre for Socioeconomic and Political Studies. He has taught comparative politics and political theory at Buenos Aires University Del Salvador University and the University of Toronto. He holds Bachelor's degree in Political Science and a Masters in History and Political Science, and has committed part of his professional and academic experience to researching multiculturalism and political economy. Since joining Ashoka, Gastón has supported Ashoka Fellows in different parts of the world to collaborate, exchange expertise and knowledge as well as promote their work. His main roles include supporting the Ashoka Global Fellowship Program team from Toronto as well as other activities in Latin America and North America. He is a native of Buenos Aires, Argentina and has lived in England, The Netherlands and Canada.