Power moves: 10 recent leadership and professional changes at Philly nonprofits
1. Adriana Abizadeh to serve as Kensington Corridor Trust’s first executive director.
Kensington Corridor Trust, a new nonprofit, announced that Adriana Abizadeh will serve as its first executive director.
Abizadeh most recently served as executive director of the Latin American Legal Defense and Education Fund (LALDEF) in Trenton, NJ. Prior to her leadership role at LALDEF, Abizadeh was the special projects coordinator at Saint Joseph’s Carpenter Society in Camden, NJ.
As the inaugural executive director of the Kensington Corridor Trust, Abizadeh will lead the charge in fundraising, project development, and community engagement. “The neighborhood trust model is an innovative approach to retaining asset value and growth in Kensington, a community with historic disinvestment and immense inequities. Property by property, we are leading a movement towards a future where neighborhoods have control,” Abizadeh said via the emailed announcement.
According to the announcement, Kensington Corridor Trust “is not a trust in a traditional, legal sense. It is a nonprofit corporation made up of neighborhood organizations and community members which protects the community’s long-term interest by owning land and leasing it affordably. This framework protects properties from significant price escalation while allowing income from the property to be reinvested into community programming and improvement initiatives.”
Abizadeh currently serves on the board of directors of the Trenton Circus Squad and New Jersey Policy Perspective. She was an executive board member an co-chair of the New Jersey Alliance for Immigrant Justice from 2017-2019, and an ACO and general board member of the Trenton Health Team during the same years. In May 2020 she was awarded the Princeton YWCA Tribute to Women award.
She holds a bachelor’s degree from Rutgers University-Camden, and a master’s degree from Drexel University.
2. Lori Renne becomes executive director of Midwest Food Bank Pennsylvania.
Midwest Food Bank recently announced that it has hired Lori Renne as the executive director of Midwest Food Bank Pennsylvania.
MFB Pennsylvania, which serves Pennsylvania, New Jersey and New York City, will conduct its inaugural food distribution in the Harrisburg-Hershey area in the upcoming weeks. Midwest Food Bank has eleven locations, nine in the United States, and one each in East Africa and Haiti.
Before joining Midwest Food Bank, Renne served as the director of marketing at the Pennsylvania Chamber of Business and Industry for the past 21 years. Prior to that, she served as manager of business development at PA Chamber Insurance; strategic account manager at AT&T, and director of business development at the PA Chamber of Business and Industry.
She is a member of the women’s leadership network and bridges society of the United Way of the Capital Region.
Renne has a bachelor’s degree from La Salle University.
3. Stephanie Fenniri becomes Deputy Director of the Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia.
Stephanie Fenniri, previously the education and social impact director of the Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia, was recently named the deputy director of the organization.
Fenniri is the founder of RK Impact, a Philadelphia-based social impact consultancy, and is a teaching fellow at the Center for Social Impact Strategy at the University of Pennsylvania,
Prior to joining the Bicycle Coalition, she served as the senior community partnerships manager and community engagement manager of PCCI in Dallas. Additionally, she served as manager of homeowner and neighborhood support and as bilingual family services coordinator at the Dallas Area Habitat for Humanity.
Fenniri is a board member of the Philadelphia AmeriCorps alumni chapter board of the Mayor’s Office of Civic Engagement and Volunteer Service, and of Pennsylvania Immigration and Citizenship Coalition (PICC). She serves as an interviewer for the University of Pennsylvania alumni interview program, and is a congressional action team member of UNICEF USA.
She holds a bachelor’s and master’s degree from the University of Texas at Arlington; a master’s degree from the University of Pennsylvania; and certifications from The Wharton School, Cornell University and Boston University.
4. Chloe Alvarado named senior communications associate at Juvenile Law Center.
Juvenile Law Center announced it has hired Chloe Alvarado as a senior communications associate, to develop and implement communications and digital engagement strategies to support Juvenile Law Center’s legal advocacy and fundraising work.
Before joining Juvenile Law Center, Alvarado served as marketing and operations manager of Haven by McCann; communications coordinator of Womanly magazine; research assistant at Yale University, and operations consultant at Penn Medicine.
Her volunteer experience includes cofounding and serving as program coordinator for Temple University‘s Honorables of Color organization; serving as intern events coordinator for the City of Philadelphia and marketing intern for the Norris Square Neighborhood Project; as well as serving as a community birth doula for DONA International.
Alvarado holds a bachelor’s degree from Temple University.
5. Steve Preston and Hannah Chatterjee join the Share Food Program.
The Share Food Program, the largest independent food bank in the country, recently added two new staff members: Steve Preston, to serve as the director of emergency response; and Hannah Chatterjee, to serve as the assistant director of commodity distribution.
“Steve and Hannah are crucial to our operations at Share, especially in managing the dramatic increase in demand during the coronavirus,” executive director George Matysik said in the announcement. “We are thrilled to add their knowledge and expertise of both public and private sector issues to the Share family.”
Immediately before joining the Share Food Program, Preston served as the first deputy chief diversity, equity and inclusion officer of the City of Philadelphia. Earlier he served as the deputy chief of staff to Mayor Jim Kenney, and as transition director. He was active in Kenney’s mayoral campaign as a transition advisor and field director — this last a role he also fulfilled for NextGen New Hampshire and the Clay Pell gubernatorial campaign in Rhode Island.
Preston holds a bachelor’s degree from Duquesne University.
For the past year and a half, Chatterjee has served as a consultant for the Community Ownership, Empowerment and Action Team that is developing a guide for the Chesapeake foodshed. Concurrent with that consultancy, she worked for the City of Philadelphia as the manager of the Food Policy Advisory Council for the past five years, and earlier, as coordinator for the same Council for a year.
Hands-on food experience included a stint as an assistant baker at a Parisian bakery, and working as a line cook at a fine-dining restaurant and teaching kitchen in Ithaca, NY.
Chatterjee is trilingual (she speaks English, French and Korean), and holds a bachelor’s degree from Cornell University.
6. Emily Lucas, Rita Calicat and Tya Winn take on new roles at Habitat for Humanity Philadelphia.
As Habitat for Humanity Philadelphia has combined its home repair program and construction under one new department called “Build,” it has announced that Tya Winn, Emily Lucas and Rita Calicat have assumed new or newly expanded positions within the organization.
Lucas will be taking on a new position of director of construction operations, working to merge the Construction and Repair into one integrated build team. Lucas has been at Habitat for 11 years, previously serving as the director of home repair. She holds a bachelor’s degree from Eastern University, and a master’s degree from Temple University.
Calicat, formerly the director of family services, becomes the director of home sales and post-project engagement.
Winn, whose title for the past three years has been the director of project planning, now becomes the director of project planning and design. Prior to joining Habitat, Winn served as co-chair of the West Philadelphia Promise Zone-Housing Community; program manager of the Philadelphia Housing Authority; as well as program manager, real estate development associate and real estate coordinator of Logan CDC.
She is the president of the board of PhilaNOMA; the director of equitable communities of the AIA Philadelphia chapter; the national conference chair for the National Organization for Minority Architects, and a member of the steering committee of StreetBoxPHL.
Winn holds a bachelor’s degree from Syracuse University and a master’s degree from the University of Pennsylvania.
7. Linode’s Richard Myers joins Hopeworks board of directors.
Hopeworks recently announced that Richard Myers, vice president of customer support and success at Linode, has joined the Camden-based nonprofit’s board of directors.
“We are thrilled to have Rick join our board of directors at Hopeworks,” Dan Rhoton, Hopeworks’ executive director, said via the emailed announcement. “Having worked with Rick, we at Hopeworks believe that he will help with building a stronger community through our mission of providing a safe environment to learn and creating more opportunities for Camden youth.”
Myers started his career at Linode as a customer support specialist in 2011. Prior to joining Linode, Myers worked as a Mac Genius at Apple for nearly four years.
He is a frequent speaker at Elevate summits that have taken place worldwide, and has appeared on the Elevate Podcast — “a show about customer support, CX, UX & probably too many puns” — multiple times.
8. Yumi Kendall named to Project 440’s board of directors.
Yumi Kendall, the assistant principal cello of the Philadelphia Orchestra since 2004, has joined Project 440‘s board of directors.
Kendall — who made her solo debut at the Kennedy Center playing with the National Symphony Orchestra at the age of 16 — joined the Philadelphia Orchestra after she graduated from the Curtis Institute of Music.
In addition to orchestral, chamber and solo performing, Kendall serves on the boards of Astral Artists and the Greater Philadelphia Suzuki Association.
In addition to her degree from Curtis, Kendall holds a master’s degree from the University of Pennsylvania.
9. Two notable retirements: Maud Lyon of Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance, and Maida R. Milone of Pennsylvanians for Modern Courts.
Maud Lyon, who led the Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance for five years, will retire as the president and CEO effective July 31, according to an announcement from the organization. Priscilla M. Luce, president of the Albert M. Greenfield Foundation and GPCA board member, has been named as Lyon’s interim replacement.
“We are deeply grateful to Maud for her leadership, especially in these last months related to the COVID-19 Arts Aid PHL Relief Fund,” the emailed announcement stated, “and we ask that you join us in wishing her well as she returns to Michigan to be with her family.”
Maida R. Milone, the president and CEO of Pennsylvanians for Modern Courts (PMC), has announced that she will be retiring at the end of June.
“Maida Milone has been an inspirational, enthusiastic, creative and dedicated advocate for the cause of justice in Pennsylvania during her tenure as president and CEO of Pennsylvanians For Modern Courts,” PMC board member and retired judge Larry Stengel said via the emailed announcement. “Maida appreciates the importance of excellence in the judiciary, and she has worked tirelessly across the Commonwealth for responsible reform and improvement in this essential branch of our government. Judges, lawyers and citizens of Pennsylvania should be extremely grateful to Maida for her service, for her hard work and for her many contributions to the administration of justice at all levels of our court system.”
10. Dr. Ellen Inverso wins PA Psychological Association’s Early Career Psychologist award.
The Pennsylvania Psychological Association (PPA) announced recently that Beck Institute psychologist Ellen Inverso is the recipient of the 2020 Early Career Psychologist of the Year Award. The award recognizes impact of Inverso’s work in the training and dissemination of Recovery-Oriented Cognitive Therapy (CT-R).
According to the emailed announcement of the award, Inverso, who is the co-director of the Beck Institute Center for CT-R, “leads a team of six clinician educators who have pioneered the development and implementation of CT-R, a groundbreaking new practice poised to change the way that serious mental health conditions are conceptualized and treated. Originally developed to empower individuals given a diagnosis of schizophrenia, CT-R applies broadly to individuals experiencing extensive behavioral, social and physical health challenges.”
Inverso is also the coauthor of a forthcoming book: Recovery-Oriented Cognitive Therapy for Serious Mental Health Conditions, to be published in September 2020 by Guilford Press.