Kim Hoover
Chair
Kimberly Hoover is an attorney, a business owner, a philanthropist and a donor to progressive causes. She is also a published author of YA fiction.
Ms. Hoover arrived in Washington, DC in 1985 after graduating from Duke University School of Law, where she was Executive Editor of the Duke Law Journal, and began a practice that spanned more than 20 years and included stints at top tier law firms as well as her own shop.
She has served on the boards of several community banks: Treasury Bank in Washington, DC, which was ultimately sold to Countrywide; Monument Bank in Montgomery County, MD, Revere Bank in Howard, Frederick, and Montgomery Counties, MD, ultimately sold to Sandy Spring Bank headquartered in Montgomery County. In the early 2000s, she started a real estate operating company, RED Multifamily, which develops, owns and operates multi-family workforce and affordable housing in the District of Columbia.
Ms. Hoover has or currently serves on several nonprofit boards including Voices for Progress where she is the new Chair, the LGBTQ Victory Fund, Advocates for Youth, and Lambda Literary. In 2016, Ms. Hoover was appointed a Commissioner to DC Mayor Muriel Bowser’s Advisory Committee on LGBTQ Affairs. In 2021, Ms. Hoover was appointed to the Affordable Housing Advisory Board of Miami-Dade County by County Commissioner Eileen Higgins.
In addition to a JD from Duke University, Ms. Hoover holds a BA in English and American Studies from Baylor University where she graduated magna cum laude and was named Outstanding Senior Woman.
Anna Aurilio
Anna Aurilio is a long-time environmental advocate. For the past 10 years, she was the Director of the Washington DC office for Environment America, a federation of 29 state-based, citizen-funded environmental advocacy organizations. Ms. Aurilio led a team of advocacy staff and was responsible for policy and strategy development for campaigns on clean water, clean air, energy, global warming and preservation issues. She has testified in Congress numerous times and has been named a top grassroots lobbyist by The Hill for the past 9 years. Before leading the federal office of Environment America, Ms. Aurilio served as federal legislative director for the U.S. Public Interest Research Group (U.S.PIRG).Ms. Aurilio received a bachelor’s degree in Physics from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst in 1986 and a Master’s degree in Environmental Engineering and Water Resources from MIT in 1992 where she published several papers on water pollution in Woburn Massachusetts. Prior to receiving her Master’s degree, Ms. Aurilio was a Staff Scientist with the National Environmental Law Center where she investigated major water polluters and provided technical expertise for Clean Water Act citizen suits.Nick Chedli Carter
Nick Chedli Carter is currently the director of the Resilient Democracy research and funding initiative (formerly 2020 Vision Ventures), and chair of the Civic Digital Organizing Group Digital Transition project. Nick also works with a variety of pro-democracy organizations, funders and researchers, was a recent Harvard Kennedy School Ash Center Technology and Democracy Fellow, and has held senior positions in presidential, federal and statewide electoral campaigns and policy advocacy efforts.
He has also worked at VICE Media, Planned Parenthood, CCTV Center for Media and Democracy, and is a proud Americorps Alumni.
Nick is keenly interested in identifying and scaling effective initiatives that merge innovative technology and media with people- driven civic engagement. This is towards increasing more consistent civic participation, closing equity gaps in who drives and benefits from civic innovation, and towards building more inclusive civic identities.
Storme Gray
Storme Gray (she/her) is the Executive Director of Emerging Practitioners in Philanthropy. A passionate change agent, servant leader, and advocate for justice, her professional career includes nearly 15 years of experience in the philanthropic sector, with a focus on youth development, racial equity, and inclusive philanthropic practice. And as a proud native of Camden, NJ, Storme credits her upbringing in Camden with providing her with the tenacity and authenticity that fuels her approach to the work.
Storme’s career in philanthropy began at The Summit Foundation, where she supported efforts to improve adolescent sexual and reproductive health and preserve and protect the Mesoamerican Reef Ecoregion. From there, she went to the Bainum Family Fund, where she oversaw a grantmaking portfolio of $1 million focused on educational, workforce, and youth development programming for at-risk, low-income youth within the DC metropolitan area. Storme has also worked with national philanthropic support organizations, such as the Council on Foundations, where she created leadership development programming for philanthropic professionals, with a focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion.
Prior to joining EPIP’s staff as Director of Programs in 2017, Storme was a Program Officer at the Washington Area Women’s Foundation, where she developed the foundation’s Young Women’s Initiative, a city-wide effort to improve the educational, economic, and life outcomes for cis and trans young women and girls of color, with youth at the center of the decision-making process.
In her spare time, Storme serves as an appointee on the Fairfax County Advisory Social Services Board, a board member of Women of the Dream, a youth development organization for young women in Camden, NJ, and The Black Swan Academy, a Black Youth Civic engagement organization in Washington, DC. Storme is also a proud member of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc, a graduate of American University, and fur-mommy to two sweet dogs – Indigo and Bodhi.
Emi Gusukuma
Emi Gusukuma provides legal and strategic advice to the founders of the Sandler Phillips Center, manages outside counsel, and is responsible for all legal matters and operations associated with the Center’s activities. With over 20 years of legal experience, Emi litigated a broad array of employment and commercial matters in private practice. She was a trusted adviser to clients large (including companies in the Fortune 500) and small, in the nonprofit and for profit sector, representing a wide range of industries from healthcare to tech. She regularly defended clients in investigations by state and federal agencies, and conducted scores of trainings, understanding that education was key to achieving compliance.Emi has a long-standing commitment to public service. She was President of the Asian American Bar Association, one of the largest minority bar associations in the country, from 2012-2013. Active in civil society, she served on the Immigrant Rights and Ethics Commissions for the City and County of San Francisco. Appointed to the Ethics Commission in 2004, she chaired the Commission for two years before her term concluded in 2010. During her tenure, she oversaw a dramatic increase in the staff and budget, which allowed the Commission to expand its public and municipal education programs, and to fulfill its mandates.
Emi is a 2010 recipient of the Best Under 40 Award from the National Asian Pacific American Bar Association, and a 2013 recipient of Minority Bar Coalition’s Unity Award for her longstanding work to increase diversity in the legal profession and in the judiciary.
Emi holds a BA degree from UCLA, and a law degree from UC Hastings College of the Law.
Joan Huffer
Joan Huffer has focused on ensuring lower-income Americans have access to economic opportunity in her career and her philanthropy. She worked in the U.S. Senate for twenty-seven years where she focused on education and income support programs. During that time, she worked for Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle (SD) for 8 years, served two stints on the Senate Budget Committee, and worked on the personal staffs of Senator Kent Conrad (ND) and Senator Don Riegle (MI). After retiring from the Senate in 2007, she joined the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities to run the Federal Budget Initiative, a program that provides technical assistance to state non-profit organizations on federal budget, tax, and low-income policies. Ms. Huffer is a partner and member of the board of the Democracy Alliance and founded Virginia Plus, a progressive donor collaborative focused on increasing civic and electoral engagement in Virginia. She also sits on the Boards of the Commonwealth Institute for Fiscal Analysis and the Alliance for Excellent Education.
Sam Jammal
Sam Jammal currently serves as Chief of Staff at Mosaic, a solar residential lending platform. He previously worked as Vice President and Assistant General Counsel at Firefly, an advertising technology start-up. Prior to his recent roles, Sam held legal and policy positions at SolarCity and Tesla. Before entering the private sector, Sam served as a Chief of Staff in the U.S. House of Representatives and as a Legislative Counsel in the U.S. Senate. Sam also served in the Obama Administration at the U.S. Department of Commerce. He began his career in civil rights as a Legislative Staff Attorney for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF).
In 2018, Sam ran for Congress in Southern California and continues to advocate for progressive policies. In addition to serving on the board for Voices for Progress, Sam serves on the boards of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights Los Angeles (CHIRLA), Grid Alternatives Greater Los Angeles and the Arab American Democratic Action Fund.
Joel Kanter
Joel Kanter has served as President of Windy City, Inc., a privately held investment firm, since July 1986. Mr. Kanter has served as the President, and subsequently as the President and Chief Executive Officer of Walnut Financial Services, Inc., a publicly traded company. Mr. Kanter started his career as Legislative Assistant to former Congressman Abner J. Mikva (IL); served as Special Assistant to the National Association of Attorneys General where he was involved in the legislative efforts to reenact the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, and to enact the original Superfund Legislation; and served as the Staff Director of the House Rules Subcommittee on Legislative Process Chaired by former Congressman Gillis Long (LA). Mr. Kanter serves on the Board of Directors of two public companies; is a Trustee Emeritus and past President of the Board of Trustees of The Langley School in McLean, Virginia; is the current Board Chair of the Black Student Fund; is the Education Committee Chairman of the Kennedy Center’s National Committee on the Performing Arts; and serves as an appointee of the State Legislature to the Gubernatorial Virginia Israel Advisory Board.Brian Kettenring
Brian Kettenring is Director of the Economy and Society Initiative at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. He leads a five-year, $50 million grantmaking effort that aims to foster a new “common sense” about how the economy works, the aims it should serve, and how it should be structured to meet the biggest challenges our society faces.
Previously, he worked as a community organizer for more than 25 years, most recently as Co-Executive Director of the Center for Popular Democracy, where he helped lead the organization’s work building grassroots support for a resilient and just economy. Earlier in his career, he worked as an organizer with several organizations, working on issues of economic justice, education, civic engagement, and democracy.
In 2019, Brian co-founded a journal and community called The Forge: Organizing Strategy and Practice. He holds a bachelor’s degree in African and European intellectual history from Carleton College, and is currently pursuing a master’s degree in history at the University of Massachusetts at Boston, focusing on the relationship between social movements and worldview change. He lives in Alameda, California with his wife and their three children.