Judy Wise, Chair
Judy Wise is a longtime friend of Mother Jones and served on its board of directors for several years in the 1990s. She recently retired as senior director of Facing History and Ourselves, an international professional development organization for educators who reach more than 13 million students every year. She worked for Facing History for 25 years and co-founded the organization’s first regional office in Chicago and the UK office. She is now a member of Facing History’s International Board of Directors and a board member of the Chicago Media Project and Restore Justice (a criminal justice reform organization).
Judy served on President Obama’s Commission on White House Fellowships. Previously, she served as executive director of the Committee on Illinois Government and worked in the news department at both NBC TV and CBS TV in Chicago. She received her BA from Washington University and MA in psychiatric social work from the University of Chicago. Judy has three grown children and four grandchildren.
Richard Melcher, Vice Chair
Rick has been in and around media his entire career. He is a founding principal of Melcher & Tucker Consultants, a Chicago-based strategic marketing and communications firm advising small and midsize companies and nonprofit organizations. Since co-founding the business in 2000, Rick has helped clients with strategic planning, public relations, and capital campaigns. Before his current endeavors, he worked at two leading public policy websites and spent two decades at Business Week magazine, managing bureaus in Chicago and London, where he received the Citation for Excellence from the Overseas Press Club for reporting on Europe, and the Center for Education Reform’s award for Excellence in Journalism.
Rick serves on the Chicago advisory board of Facing History and Ourselves and is a member of the national Leadership Council. He is also a member of the Economic Club of Chicago. A graduate of Duke University, Rick and his wife, Barbara, are the parents of three children.
Sara Frankel, Treasurer
Sara Frankel began working in media companies as a Mother Jones fellow. She subsequently worked as a magazine editor and newspaper feature writer and later was an executive in multiple digital media and ecommerce companies. She founded and ran two internet startups, invested in multiple startup companies, and is currently working on a book.
Susan Sachs, Secretary
Susan Sachs, has more than 35 years of executive experience in magazines, books and digital media. As a consultant in the ’90s, she advised startup internet companies on financing strategies and business plans. In 2004, she joined Common Sense Media as the founding COO and returned for a stint as president in 2010. Prior to that, Sachs worked for 18 years at Time Warner Inc., where she held various finance, advertising and publishing positions worldwide. She has served on the Common Sense Media board of directors since 2007 and is currently its Co-Chair. Sachs is a graduate of Lehigh University and the Columbia Business School.
Rafael Agustín
Rafael Agustín was a writer on the award-winning The CW show Jane the Virgin and is the author of the new bestselling comedic memoir Illegally Yours (Grand Central Publishing), which was selected as a Barnes & Noble “Priority Title,” as well as an Apple Books “Must Listen.”
Agustín serves as CEO of the Latino Film Institute, where he oversees the Youth Cinema Project, the Los Angeles Latino International Film Festival (LALIFF), and LatinX in Animation. In 2018, LA Weekly named Agustín one of the 50 most essential people in Los Angeles. Also in 2018, the United Nations invited Agustín to speak at their 70th anniversary celebration of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In 2021, Agustín was appointed to the National Film Preservation Board at the Library of Congress. In 2022, the LA Times declared Agustín a “Power Player” in their inaugural LA Vanguardia class.
Agustín received his BA and MA from UCLA’s School of Theater, Film & Television, is an alumnus of the CBS Diversity Comedy Showcase, and is a Sundance Institute Episodic fellow.
Omar Alam
Omar Alam is Vice President and Associate General Counsel at Salesforce, where he leads the M&A Legal team. In this role, he serves as a trusted advisor and business partner to Salesforce’s global M&A program and Salesforce Ventures, the company’s in-house venture capital arm. Omar is also an Adjunct Professor of Law at Northwestern University’s Pritzker School of Law, where he focuses on business and the law of venture deals, teaching out of the school’s San Francisco campus. Prior to Salesforce, Omar practiced corporate law at WSGR in the Bay Area, representing innovative technology companies throughout their business life cycles. Omar began his legal career as a law clerk to the Honorable Virginia Kendall on the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois. While in law school, he co-founded a short-lived medical device company; prior to law school, he worked as a correspondent at the UN Chronicle in New York and then at a healthcare nonprofit. Omar holds a J.D. from Northwestern Pritzker School of Law and an A.B. from Bowdoin College in Government and History.
Monika Bauerlein, President, Ex Officio
Monika Bauerlein has been CEO of Mother Jones since 2015 and has focused on expanding MoJo’s journalistic and revenue capacity, deepening its impact, and broadening its audience. Previously, she served as co-editor with Clara Jeffery, who is now editor-in-chief. Together, they have been honored with the I.F. Stone Medal for Journalistic Excellence, the Pen/Nora Magid Award for Magazine Editing, and multiple National Magazine Awards including the 2017 honor for Magazine of the Year. Under their leadership, Mother Jones grew from, as the PEN judges wrote, “a respected—if under-the-radar—indie publication to an internationally recognized, powerhouse” magazine.” She has also worked as Mother Jones’ investigative editor, focusing on long-form projects marrying in-depth reportage, document sleuthing, and narrative appeal, and as an alternative-weekly editor, a correspondent for US and European publications (in Washington, DC, and at the United Nations), an AP stringer, a corporate trainer, a translator, a sausage slinger, and a fishing-line packager. She lives in Oakland.
Jane Butcher
Jane has been a Mother Jones board member since 1992. She is currently the board president of the Local Theater Company. She is on the BioFrontiers Advisory Board at the University of Colorado and the board of the Boulder Community Health Foundation. She is past chair of the Conference on World Affairs and the Women of the West Museum.
Bích Ngọc Cao
Bích Ngọc Cao is a digital marketing and communications executive whose career spans media organizations, tech startups, the music industry, government, and nonprofits. She currently serves as Senior Advisor, Communications, at the Los Angeles Unified School District. She has enjoyed an unconventional career path that includes stints at organizations and companies such as Define American, (RED), the Los Angeles Times, Harvest Records, Warner Bros. Records, and MySpace. A lifelong Angeleno and USC alumna, she served for eight years as president of the Board of Library Commissioners for the city of Los Angeles. During her tenure at the Los Angeles Public Library, the library system received the nation’s highest library honor, the National Medal for Museum and Library Service.
André Carothers
André Carothers has more than 25 years of experience in nonprofit management, philanthropy, program development, and organizational and leadership development. He is currently an independent consultant and executive coach for leaders in business, nonprofits, and philanthropy.
He is also general partner at the Batchery, a Berkeley-based early-stage startup incubator, and serves on the board of directors of the Furthur Foundation, the Weinmann Charitable Trust, the New Place Fund, the Rainforest Action Network, and the Story of Stuff Project.
In 1999, he co-founded the Rockwood Leadership Institute, an international leadership training organization, where he served as executive director until 2008. From 1984 to 1997, he worked at Greenpeace USA as an editor of their national newsmagazine, a campaign manager, and a member of the board of directors. He was a regular columnist for E magazine and has written on environment and civic issues for many publications. He has authored numerous reports, articles, and conference presentations on topics ranging from the economics of timber extraction in Papua New Guinea to the integration of spiritual practice into social activism. He received an MA in environmental science from the Energy and Resources Group at the University of California, Berkeley.
Lauri Fitz-Pegado
Cultural and commercial diplomacy is the hallmark of Lauri Fitz-Pegado’s career. She has worked at Voice of America and the US Information Agency, and has served as a US Foreign Service officer in the Dominican Republic and Mexico. Appointed by President Clinton, she was assistant secretary and director general of the US and Foreign Commercial Service at the Department of Commerce, led by Secretary Ronald H. Brown. Lauri managed 130 global and 90 domestic offices engaged in supporting small and medium-sized businesses, helping them expand into foreign markets and advocating for major American companies competing for projects abroad. In the private sector, she advised countries, corporations, individuals, and nonprofits as a senior executive at Hill and Knowlton and Gray and Company, and as a partner at the Livingston Group. She also was an executive at Iridium, the global mobile satellite communications company.
With a history of ballet training and performance with the Capitol Ballet, Vassar Repertory Dance Theatre, and Ballet Santo Domingo, she now has returned to her passions by teaching ballet and mentoring. She applies her communications and public relations skills to promoting artists, and her business and leadership experience to advising dance institutions that share her commitment to social change, empowerment, and inclusion. Her memoir, Dancing in the Dash: My Story of Empowerment, Diplomacy, and Resilience, was released in the fall of 2021.
Lauri was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa and received her BA cum laude from Vassar College and her MA from the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). She also speaks Spanish and Portuguese.
To watch interviews, podcasts and videos featuring Lauri click here: https://linktr.ee/laurifitzpegado
Bill Gee
Bill Gee is a co-founder of the Manaaki Foundation and a longtime supporter of Mother Jones. In the nonprofit journalism space, he has served for nine years as a board member for Chicago Public Media (WBEZ), participated on ProPublica’s Leadership Council, and worked closely with the Global Press Institute and The Trace. Before embarking on his philanthropic path, Bill owned and operated a Chicago-based commercial baking business for 30 years. This experience fuels his special appreciation for the work MoJo does uncovering the dysfunction of this country’s food system. Bill is an advocate for advancing socially responsible investing principles applied on both personal and philanthropic fronts. Although a lifelong Chicagoan, he and his Australian wife, Sue Crothers, consider Sydney their second home.
Linda W. Gruber
Linda W. Gruber is the president of the Gruber Family Foundation, established in 1987. The foundation funds in the areas of women’s issues, human rights, the arts, progressive journalism, and education. She currently serves on the board of the Global Fund for Women and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and is a member of Women Moving Millions. She formerly served on the board of directors of Planned Parenthood Federation of America. Beginning with a stint in the Lyndon Johnson White House, Linda worked as a consultant, taught at San Francisco State University, and worked for the US Department of Labor. A graduate of Wellesley College, she lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her husband, Jon D. Gruber. They have two grown children and six grandchildren.
Emily Harris, Staff Representative
Emily Harris is Mother Jones’ Director of Finance. In addition to assisting the CFO with companywide financials, she manages IT and facilities. She joined the staff in 2018 after working in accounting in a variety of industries, including advertising and politics. Emily is an alumna of Mills College in Oakland, CA.
Angie Jean-Marie
Angie Jean-Marie is the founder and principal of Fait La Force Strategies, a boutique social impact consultancy. With more than a decade working in policy and politics, Angie is a purpose-driven social impact strategist, community builder, and creative thinker. Through her boutique consultancy, Fait La Force, Angie offers services including social impact strategy, strategic planning, and political advising.
Angie’s unique approach to social impact, honed through her years at mission-driven organizations like TIME’S UP, Civic Nation, and the Goldhirsh Foundation, celebrates the optimism and opportunity in addressing our greatest challenges. Her expertise includes successfully managing multimillion dollar campaigns and grant programs, partnerships with brands and philanthropic organizations, and shaping thousands of events across all 50 states. Her innovative work with cultural institutions and grassroots organizers has contributed to a new wave of civic participation and attitude shifts about race, gender, political activism, and more.
Angie has been featured in Forbes and USA Today and on CBS, MSNBC, and MTV News. She serves on the boards of Courage California and Mother Jones. Angie holds a master’s degree in public policy from the University of Southern California and a bachelor’s degree in government and politics from the University of Maryland, College Park.
Clara Jeffery, Vice President, Ex Officio
Clara Jeffery is the editor-in-chief of Mother Jones, and, as of 2024, the Center for Investigative Reporting and its public radio show Reveal. During her tenure, Mother Jones has won multiple National Magazine Awards (including for general excellence, reporting, video, and magazine of the year); redesigned its magazine and website; established bureaus in Washington and New York; and become a social media powerhouse. More than a dozen pieces that Jeffery has personally edited have been winners or finalists for National Magazine Awards; she’s also the recipient of a Penn Award for editing and an I.F. Stone medal for journalistic independence. Before joining Mother Jones, Jeffery was a senior editor of Harper’s magazine; she cut her journalistic teeth at Washington City Paper. A graduate of Carleton College and Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism, she resides in the Mission District of San Francisco with her son, Milo. She can be found on Twitter and Threads @clarajeffery, where she’s trying not to yell at NIMBYs so much.
Jonathan Logan
Jonathan Logan is the founder and CEO of the Jonathan Logan Family Foundation, which supports investigative journalism, documentary film and arts and culture and whose work is dedicated to social justice and strengthening democracy.
He has been a board member for The Center for Investigative Reporting for more than two decades, and was a founding supporter of Reveal, the country’s first weekly investigative public radio show and podcast.
The Jonathan Logan Family Foundation’s impactful investigative journalism grantees include the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, ProPublica, FRONTLINE, The Marshall Project and the Investigative Reporting Program at UC Berkeley. The foundation launched the Logan Center for Urban Investigative Reporting at Temple University, the Black Press Archives digitization project at Howard University and the Logan Nonfiction Program, which supported multimedia creators of long-form nonfiction. Jonathan is also on the board of the Berkeley Repertory Theatre.
Jonathan has two grown children and one grandchild. He lives with his husband, John Piane, in Berkeley, CA.
Susan Mayer Hirsch
Susan Mayer Hirsch is the founder of Hirsch Philanthropy Partners (now joined with Third Plateau), where she guides philanthropists to think bigger and bolder – to continually imagine new possibilities that create lasting impact. Before launching Hirsch, Susan was founding Executive Director of the Mimi and Peter Haas Fund, where she set up a new philanthropic model to expand early childhood education. She was previously Bay Area Executive Director of Strive for Five, a national campaign to promote community volunteerism and charitable giving, and a public affairs strategist for McKesson where she advised senior management for the nation’s oldest health care company on business, community, and political issues. Democracy and journalism are longstanding areas of interest and professional focus for Susan, including in her role as a founding member of The Bay Citizen’s Board of Directors. While earning a B.A. in International Economics and Russian from The George Washington University, she served as an aide to U.S. Senator Henry Jackson (D-Washington) and later worked for the Council on Foreign Relations.
Grace Molteni, Staff Representative
Grace Molteni is a senior designer at Mother Jones. She works with nearly every department at the organization, from laying out the magazine and web packages, to collaborating with our development, fundraising, and advertising team on projects year-round. She earned her BFA in Graphic Design and BA in Art History at the University of Minnesota Duluth and worked in the Chicago advertising world for four years before switching gears to news design (with a yearlong sabbatical teaching English in rural Japan in-between.)
Gina Pell
Gina Pell is an award-winning creative director, thought leader, and pioneer in digital media. She is best known for building digital communities of influential women since 1999. As the driving force behind lifestyle and design startups like Splendora, Joyus, LOLy, and now The WHAT, Pell’s content companies have cultivated thriving communities, both online and offline, activating over 100,000 members.
In 2016, she coined the term “Perennials” to characterize individuals of all ages who consistently embrace growth, remaining relevant without being confined by generational stereotypes. The concept of Perennials went viral, leading to over a hundred articles around the globe, as well as inspiring the publication of two best-selling books by other authors, most recently “The Perennials” by Wharton professor and political economist Mauro F. Guillen, defining megatrends shaping a post-generational society.
Currently Gina is the Content Chief of The What. She also presides over The What Alliance, a private invitation-only social and professional network of world-class leaders from early stage entrepreneurs to Fortune 500 executives. Pell holds positions on the Boards of the Center for Reproductive Rights, Center for Investigative Reporting, and McSweeney’s—an American non-profit publishing house founded by Dave Eggers.
Pell graduated Phi Beta Kappa from University of California at Berkeley with a BA in English Literature and attended the Pratt Painting and Printmaking program in Venice at the Universita dell’Arte.
Ken Pelletier
Ken is a technologist, designer, musician, and amateur chef. Working at the intersection of design and technology, Ken has led several software and design projects over a 30-year career, most recently as CTO at Groupon.com. He is an investor and adviser to several early-stage startups and serves on the board of the Old Town School of Folk Music, and the Awesome Foundation of Chicago, and is partner and board member at City Winery Chicago. Ken has had a lifelong interest in cooking and the politics of food. He has completed the La Technique program at the French Culinary Institute in New York City and is a founding member of the Kitchen Community Chicago, a nonprofit based in Boulder, Colorado, that is building “learning gardens” in Chicago schools. Ken is originally from Boston. He and his wife, Amanda Lao, split their time between Chicago and Los Angeles.
Ashok Ramani
Ashok Ramani is a partner with Davis Polk, where he heads the firm’s IP Litigation practice. A Fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers, he focuses his practice on patent and trade-secret litigation and investigations. Leading publications, including Chambers and the Daily Journal, have repeatedly recognized Mr. Ramani as among the country’s best IP trial lawyers. Mr. Ramani is active in his community, serving on the board of Bay Legal and having previously served as the board chair of Advancing Justice-Asian Law Caucus. Mr. Ramani graduated with high honors in Economics from UC Berkeley before earning his J.D. cum laude from Harvard Law School. He clerked for the Honorable Henry Kennedy, Jr. on the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
Vincent Robinson
As the founder of the 360 Group, Vincent participates in all aspects of the firm’s work—from client engagements to intellectual and human capital development and ensuring the firm’s overall health and effectiveness. He founded the firm in 2004 to realize his commitment to leadership in social sector organizations. During his tenure, he has worked with a diverse group of foundations and nonprofits to help grow their aspirations and impact through strategic tools with a keen eye on execution and implementation. He has developed innovative ways to connect organizations with solutions, including operational plans that organizations can leverage to the highest order.
Before founding the firm, he served as executive director of Social Venture Partners Bay Area (SVP), where he led all aspects of a membership organization, including strategic planning, grantmaking (in education and economic development), financial management, and member recruitment and retention. He previously worked in the investment management division of Goldman Sachs.
Vincent is widely regarded as an expert on issues facing the nonprofit sector, having been interviewed on public radio and quoted in the Chronicle of Philanthropy, the Wall Street Journal, and the New York Times. He has also served as a board member of Net Impact, a global network of leaders, and Planned Parenthood/Golden Gate Community Health, a comprehensive community health center that serves more than 60,000 low-income clients each year. He has been co-chair of Common Sense California, and on the Leadership Council of the Public Policy Institute of California. He was a New York City Urban Fellow and holds an AB in political science and American studies (with honors) from Stanford University, and an MBA and certificate in nonprofit management from Stanford Graduate School of Business. Originally from Erie, Pennsylvania, Vincent is increasingly conversant in Spanish. He lives in San Francisco.
Robert “Rosey” Rosenthal, CEO Emeritus
Robert J. Rosenthal joined Reveal as executive director in 2008, a position he held until 2017. Rosenthal worked for 22 years at The Philadelphia Inquirer, starting as a reporter and becoming its executive editor in 1998. He became managing editor of the San Francisco Chronicle in 2002. Before joining the Inquirer in 1979, Rosenthal worked as a reporter for The Boston Globe and the New York Times, where he was a news assistant on the foreign desk and an editorial assistant on the Pulitzer Prize-winning Pentagon Papers project. As a reporter, Rosenthal won numerous awards, including the Overseas Press Club Award for magazine writing, the Sigma Delta Chi Award for distinguished foreign correspondence and the National Association of Black Journalists Award for Third World Reporting. Rosenthal was a Pulitzer Prize judge four times and was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in international reporting.
Rinku Sen
Rinku Sen is a writer and a political strategist. She is currently the executive director of Narrative Initiative, where she weaves the power of narrative together with other social change strategies to advance equity and justice. She is formerly the executive director of Race Forward and was publisher of their award-winning news site Colorlines. Under Sen’s leadership, Race Forward generated some of the highest-impact racial justice successes of recent years, including Drop the I-Word, a campaign for media outlets to stop referring to immigrants as “illegal,” resulting in the Associated Press, USA Today, the Los Angeles Times, and many other outlets changing their practices. Her books Stir It Up and The Accidental American theorize a model of community organizing that integrates a political analysis of race, gender, class, poverty, sexuality, and other systems.
Phil Straus
Phil Straus joined Mother Jones’ board in 2006 and chaired the board for 12 years until 2020. He served for 10 years on the board of the Center for Defense Information and is still fighting to control the Pentagon’s budget. He holds degrees in psychology and engineering and went back to school in mathematics. He is spending his retirement photographing, performing improv theater, cooking, playing go and court tennis, and babysitting his four grandchildren. He and his wife, Margaret, have lived in Philadelphia for more than 30 years. Luckily, their two children and grandchildren live nearby.
Gabriel Stricker
Gabriel Stricker has served on The Center for Investigative Reporting’s board since 2011 and is an adviser to Color Health. Previously, he served as chief communications officer at Color Health, chief communications officer at Emerson Collective, vice president of policy and communications at Google Fiber, vice president of communications at Niantic and chief communications officer at Twitter. He also served on the board of the Planned Parenthood Action Fund and was an adviser to Virta Health.
Stricker is the author of “Mao in the Boardroom,” a bestselling book on guerrilla marketing published by St. Martin’s Press. He received his undergraduate degree from UC Berkeley and his master’s degree in international affairs from Columbia University.
Ekow Yankah
Ekow Yankah is a professor of law at Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University. His work focuses on criminal theory and punishment and political theory, and particularly questions of political obligation and its interaction with justifications of punishment. He has written op-eds and essays for publications including the New York Times, the New Yorker, Huffington Post, and others, and he has appeared as a commentator on MSNBC, BBC, PBS, NPR, and elsewhere. He serves on the New York State Legislature’s Public Campaign Finance Board and the board of the Innocence Project, and has been a distinguished visitor of the MacArthur Foundation and the co-chair of the New York Democratic Lawyers Council, the voting rights arm of the Democratic Party. He hails from Michigan and lives in New York.
