Board of Young Trustees

Young Trustees:

Click the Young Trustee's name for their bio, and the donate link for their personal donate page!

Jessica Marks, Chair |

Cara Miale, Secretary

Elvia Zazueta | Rebecca Offensend | Stephen Billy

Jessica Marks, Chair Donate

Jessica Marks, a Denver native and SMRC supporter since its inception, recently expanded her involvement by volunteering as a Team Leader for the 2008 Global Development Internship in Mpumalanga, South Africa. After spending an amazing eight-weeks in SMRC’s South African partner communities with the organization’s newest leaders, Jessica knew she must continue to be actively involved. She looks forward to working with other Young Trustees as well as the interns and fellows working to improve the state of health and education in SMRC partner communities. Jessica graduated from The George Washington University in 2005 with a degree in political science and public policy. She is a recent Teach For America Alumna, after spending two years teaching 3rd grade in Glendale, Arizona. She now resides in San Francisco, California.

Cara Miale, Secretary Donate

Cara Miale is a Colorado native who enjoys at least 300 days of sunshine a year. After catching the travel bug at a young age, she used college as a time to better acquaint herself with the rest of the world. She lived, studied and reveled in Spain, Chile, Brazil and Boulder until she graduated Summa Cum Laude with a B.A. in Spanish language and literature from The University of Colorado. She enjoys speaking Spanish very much. In pursuit of a passion for writing and editing, Cara also attended the University of Denver Publishing Institute in 2006. Cara is currently the Communications Coordinator at CoBiz Financial, a financial services company in Denver, and serves on the committee for the Nathan Yip Foundation which seeks to enrich the lives of underprivileged children around the world by providing schools, education and ongoing support. She is proud to be a more involved member of the SMRC community as a Young Trustee.

Stephen Billy

Stephen Billy is an east coast native, born and raised in New Jersey. He graduated from Rutgers University in 2008 and participated in the Global Development Internship the following summer. After returning he began attending Widener University School of Law in Pennsylvania and is currently in his second year. During the summer of 2009 Stephen returned to South Africa as a Team Leader. Stephen has loved all of his time in the communities, especially participating on the local soccer teams and couldn't wait to find a way to be involved with the organization while back in the United States.

Alyce Blum, Donate

Alyce Blum is from Denver, CO. In May 2006 she graduated with a B.A. in International Affairs and Spanish from the University of Colorado at Boulder. As a sophomore, Alyce founded the CU chapter of the Student Movement. She was recently honored to be a Co-Chair for the 22nd Annual Holocaust Awareness Week at CU Boulder and was heavily involved with Converge Colorado, an organization helping to strengthen and encourage community members to fight against many types of social injustices on the local level. Alyce moved to Washington, DC where she worked at Patton Boggs LLP and was active with SMRC and Young Professionals in Foreign Policy. She has studied and traveled abroad extensively, most notably living in Ecuador and Spain to improve her Spanish language skills while acquiring an open mind to the world outside of the U.S. Alyce has attended national conferences on the atrocities in Darfur, Sudan, as part of her interest in modern day manifestations of genocide. A proven leader, she has also led awareness activities regarding the conflict in northern Uganda. In her free time Alyce enjoys skiing, traveling, meeting new people, and learning new languages.

Dita Garlick, Donate

Dita Garlick lives in Denver, Colorado and is a proud native. She went to Washington University in St. Louis for undergrad to study Architecture where she graduated in 2003 completing a Bachelor of Arts in architecture and a minor in art. She received a Masters of Architecture at the University of Colorado at Denver, completing her studies in 2005. She has been working full time for an architecture firm in Denver, PBA, for almost 3 years. Outside of architecture, Dita is involved in many community related activities, and has served in the ADL Glass Partner's-in-Leadership program and served on the Allied Jewish Federation Young Adult Committee in Denver, CO. She has been an active supporter of the SMRC since it was established and wholeheartedly believes in its mission.

Jonathan Hunt-Glassman, Donate

Jonathan Hunt-Glassman is a Project Director at Danya International, Inc., a health communications and technology company. He serves as product manager for Danya’s web-based behavioral health clinical tools, overseeing all aspects of the products’ financing, development, marketing, sales, and support services. His work at Danya has also included coordinating the development of a professional networking Web application for internationally-based drug abuse researchers; researching and writing the white paper that provided the basis for an international private-public partnership to use cellular technology to monitor treatment of Tuberculosis in Kenya; serving as a liaison to key strategic partners; and performing planning, correspondence, proposal preparation, and customer service tasks related to projects initiated out of the office of Danya’s President and CEO. Hunt-Glassman has previously been employed by the youth leadership organization LeadAmerica, the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office, and the Los Angeles County Chief Administrative Office.

Hunt-Glassman received a B.A. in history from Columbia University. While in college, he served as the chair of the Columbia College Student Council Elections Board, vice-president and treasurer of the Columbia Mock Trial Program, and a writer for the Columbia Spectator and Columbia Political Review. Born and raised in Los Angeles, Hunt-Glassman lives in Washington, D.C

Avigail Goldgraber

Avi Goldgraber is a native of Boston, MA and a long time supporter of ThinkImpact. She graduated in 2006 from Washington University in St. Louis with a degree in Political Science and Middle Eastern Studies. After graduation, she moved to Israel for a year to study Arabic and worked at an Anti-Human Trafficking NGO. Since moving back to the United States in late 2007, she has worked for the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration an agency within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and for the Deputy Secretary of HHS. In 2009, she moved back to St. Louis to work as the Director of the St. Louis Regional Health Commission’s Behavioral Health Initiative. In addition to work with ThinkImpact, Avi is involved with Washington University’s Eliot Society where she is working to develop a mentorship between young alumni and Washington University community leaders.

Kurt Herzer

Kurt Herzer is a graduate of Johns Hopkins University, where he studied health services research/policy and received a bachelors in public health. His work ranges from using medical simulation and systems engineering to improve surgical care, to national assessments of healthcare quality standards. Kurt's research has carried him from congressional hearings on Capitol Hill to the World Health Organization, where he began developing a methodology to estimate the global burden of healthcare-associated infections. For several years he has collaborated with healthcare quality leaders in the National Health Service in the United Kingdom on informatics tools to enhance patient safety nationwide. Kurt has authored/co-authored several journal papers and a book chapter, and has spoken at international conferences. In 2008, he became a Harry S. Truman Scholar and USA Today named him as one of 20 to the All-USA Academic First Team. In 2009, Kurt was awarded a Marshall Scholarship and is studying social epidemiology at the University of Oxford. After Oxford, Kurt will return to the United States to complete an MD-PhD at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Xuan-Trang Ho, Donate

A 2006 Rhodes Scholar, 2005 Truman Scholar, and one of USA Today's 20 First Team members, Xuan-Trang Ho is the youngest of 8 children.She emigrated to Nebraska in 1994 with her parents and 4 older siblings as political refugees from Vietnam. Trang went from having no command of English to graduating as the valedictorian of her high school of 680 students. A graduate of Nebraska Wesleyan University in May of 2006, she majored in political science and Spanish and a minor in international affairs. She planned and participated in service learning trips to Nicaragua, El Salvador, Vietnam, Sri Lanka, North Carolina, Louisiana and Washington, D.C. Trang worked as a certified Vietnamese medical and legal interpreter and volunteered as a Spanish legal interpreter for a pro bono immigration law clinic when she was in college. Trang also honed her Spanish skills and interests in Latin American politics by interning at the US Department of State in the Bureau of Western Hemisphere, studying abroad in Argentina in 2004, and interning at the Council on Hemispheric Affairs in Washington, D.C. in 2005. As a Rhodes Scholar, she read for an MPhil in Latin American Studies at St. Antony's College of the University of Oxford, United Kingdom. She currently serves as Program Officer in the Office of Governance and Multilateral Affairs for the United Nation’s Children’s Fund (UNICEF) in New York City under their New and Emerging Talent Initiative.

Lauren Johnston, Donate

Lauren Johnston resides in Helsinki, Finland where she plays professional soccer for FC Kontu and is attempting to grasp the Finnish language. She received her BA from Northwestern University with degrees in history and international studies with emphases in European and African culture and society. While there, she played soccer and headed the Northwestern chapter of SMRC. Under her leadership, the chapter fundraised nearly $5,000 for SMRC’s soccer field project in South Africa, participated in SMRC’s Joining HandsPen-Pal Project and sent two volunteers to South Africa. Lauren was introduced to SMRC when she attended East High School in Denver, Colorado where she played varsity soccer and softball. She looks forward to continuing her education and receiving her master’s degree in the coming years.

Rebecca Offensend

A graduate of Claremont McKenna College in Southern California, Rebecca's involvement in ThinkImpact started with a passion for social entrepreneurship. She first discovered the SE sector as an intern at the Partnership for New York City, an economic and community development organization based in Downtown Manhattan. Her interest flourished across the country at school and as she traveled and lived all over the world, including a brief stint working as a researcher at Gerson Lehrman Group in London. Rebecca also volunteers for another organization dedicated to social entrepreneurship called StartingBloc that is based in New York. Her work through both these communities has been an incredible experience and a way to stay connected, even from Jackson Hole, Wyoming, where she currently resides and teaches snowboarding.

Raphael Picciotto, Donate

Raphael Picciotto is the Finance Director for Pedro Domecq Colombia (PDC Vinos y Licores Ltda.). He has been part of the Student Movement for Real Change since he graduated from college. During his undergraduate studies, at the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, he was a member of the board of the Student Movement for International Relief (SMIR). Raphael´s Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering major along with his Entrepreneurship and Management minor has allowed him to grow in the wine and spirits industry developing business opportunities in several different countries. During his time at Hopkins, Raphael was elected President of the Alpha Epsilon Pi Psi Chapter Fraternity and Vice President of SMIR-JHU Chapter. He was born and raised in Colombia, giving him a firsthand experience of what it means to live and work in a developing country.

Jessica Risch

Jessica is the Director of Programs and Operations at DC Action for Children- a prominent children’s advocacy organization in Washington- where she coordinates programs and operations, and provides oversight to DC ACT’s communications, development, and financial divisions. Jessica is also the Assistant Director of the Diane and Norman Bernstein Foundation, a philanthropic family Foundation, and has spent the past year managing the Foundation’s grant making.

She formerly worked as a Senior Field Organizer on a congressional campaign where she helped build grassroots efforts by recruiting, overseeing, and managing volunteers for political events, phone banks, and canvassing. Prior to that she was awarded the Legacy Heritage Fellowship where she worked as a Research Associate at a Washington think-tank and conducted research in counter-terrorism policies and security issues in the Middle East; and planned numerous events and conferences to promote the work and findings of the organization’s research.

She graduated with a degree in political science from the University of Michigan, where she held various leadership roles and was actively involved in the creation and organization of advocacy-oriented student groups. She also wrote for the Michigan Daily- the University’s most widely circulated student newspaper and interned for the Chief Judge of the Federal District Court of Eastern Michigan. In her spare time, Jessica is involved in anti-sex trafficking efforts in Washington and abroad. Jessica is fluent in English, Hebrew, and Spanish.

Ilya Shapiro

Ilya Shapiro is a senior fellow in constitutional studies at the Cato Institute and editor-in-chief of the Cato Supreme Court Review. Before joining Cato, he was Special Assistant/Advisor to the Multi-National Force-Iraq on rule of law issues and practiced international, political, commercial, and antitrust litigation at Patton Boggs LLP and Cleary Gottlieb LLP. Shapiro has contributed to a variety of academic, popular, and professional publications, including the L.A. Times, Washington Times, Legal Times, Weekly Standard, Roll Call, National Review Online, and from 2004 to 2007 wrote the "Dispatches from Purple America" column for TCS Daily.com. He also regularly provides commentary on a host of legal and political issues for various TV and radio outlets, including CNN, Fox News, ABC, CBS, NBC, Univision, Voice of America, and American Public Media's "Marketplace." He is an adjunct professor at the George Washington University Law School, a member of the board of visitors of the Legal Studies Institute at The Fund for American Studies, and lectures regularly on behalf of the Federalist Society and other educational and professional groups. Before entering private practice, Shapiro clerked for Judge E. Grady Jolly of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, while living in Mississippi and traveling around the Deep South. He holds an A.B. from Princeton University, an M.Sc. from the London School of Economics, and a J.D. from the University of Chicago Law School (where he became a Tony PatiÃ±o Fellow). Shapiro is a native speaker of English and Russian, is fluent in Spanish and French, and is proficient in Italian and Portuguese.

Michael "Zeke" Vince, Donate

Zeke Vince, real name Michael E. Vince, learned about SMRC while in Political Economics class with founder Saul Garlick at The Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. Initially, Zeke helped Saul advertise the idea of SMRC around campus but his role evolved into a donor and outside supporter upon graduating in 2005. Since graduation, Saul and Zeke worked closely together to try and gain corporate sponsorship for SMRC. Besides SMRC, Zeke is a Stoked Mentor www.stoked.org, a program where young adults become friends with at risk youths by learning how to skateboard, surf and snowboard together. Zeke currently lives and works in Manhattan where he is employed by Bloomberg Lp.

Elvia Zazueta

Elvia Zazueta is a member of the Young Board of Trustees since 2009. She is currently in her second year at New York University Law school. Prior to that Elvia received a BA in Government and Economics/Accounting from Claremont McKenna College in 2008. During her time at CMC Elvia wrote the honors government thesis "Unquenchable Thirst: Water Conflict Between mexico and the United States" on the relations between the US and Mexico when it comes to sharing water supply, and participated in the Washington DC program in 2006, where she interned at the Mexico Institute. Elvia has also interned at the Mexican Embassy in the economics department and is founder and president since 2007 of GDL180, an NGO in Guadalajara, Mexico that aims to bring about positive changes in the city through different projects focusing on key areas such as education and health. Elvia grew up in Guadalajara Mexico.

Joshua Zelkind, Donate

Joshua Zelkind is an Associate in the Forensic Services practice at PriceWaterhouseCoopers LLP. After spending a semester studying reconciliation and development in South Africa, Josh was looking for a way to get involved with international development upon his return to the United States. SMRC provided him with a perfect opportunity to take a lead role on issues that he had been exposed to during his study abroad experience. A key volunteer, Josh has provided financial consulting to SMRC during his free time, which has been integral to the organization's growth and development. Josh is honored to be a member of the Board of Young Trustees and looks forward to assisting SMRC in its future endeavors. He received his BS in accounting from Ithaca College in 2007.

Chapter Login | Terms | Privacy Policy | Contact