WHO WE ARE

DARIA CALIGUIRE

DIRECTOR OF THE SAGE FUND

Daria Caliguire is the founding director of the SAGE Fund. She was responsible for conducting an in-depth mapping study, Advancing Human Rights Accountability for Economic Actors, analyzing challenges and approaches to holding corporations, development finance institutions and non-state actors accountable to human rights obligations. The mapping study laid the groundwork for the design and launch of the SAGE Fund in 2015. Previously, she worked with donors and NGOs as an advisor on economic, social and cultural rights (ESC Rights) and human rights and global economy issues. She has experience developing new strategies, programs and organizations to advance human rights, development and economic justice. Beginning in 2001, Daria worked with a global group of human rights NGOs to create the International Network for Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ESCR-Net), and became the first director of the network. Previously, she was a Project Manager in the Ford Foundation’s Peace and Social Justice Program, developing new initiatives and thematic lines of work across the foundation’s offices. Beginning in 1994, she spent four years in South Africa working with local NGOs on governance, environment and economic development issues in the new post-apartheid democracy. She holds a Masters in Public Policy from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, a BA from Kalamazoo College, and studied at the University of Cape Town as a Rotary Scholar.

Kris Genovese

Program officer

Kris Genovese joined SAGE Fund in April 2021. In the last several years, Kris was instrumental in developing the Early Warning System, now hosted by the International Accountability Project; the creation of the Coalition for Human Rights in Development; and most recently, the launch of the Community Resource Exchange. Prior to SAGE, Kris worked at the Centre for Research on Multinational Corporations (SOMO) based in Amsterdam where she supported communities in accessing the complaints mechanisms associated with development finance institutions. Kris previously worked at the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL), where she was the director of the People, Land, and Resources Program. Earlier in her career, she served as international counsel at Defenders of Wildlife, where she led a campaign to improve environmental protections in the U.S.-Peru Free Trade Agreement. Kris holds a law degree from New York University School of Law and a B.S. in Environmental Policy and Behavior from the University of Michigan School of Natural Resources and the Environment. Kris is based in Haarlem, The Netherlands.

Marion cadier

Program officer

Marion Cadier joined the SAGE Fund in September 2019. Prior to SAGE, she worked for several international NGOs focusing on corporate accountability and human rights protection. With the International Corporate Accountability Roundtable (ICAR), she led work on corporate reporting on modern slavery, mandatory human rights due diligence, and G20 advocacy. Marion also served as Researcher at the Business and Human Rights Resource Center, where she tracked and analyzed the latest developments related to corporate legal accountability. Before that, she worked with the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), focusing among other on community-driven documentation and international advocacy including around theTreaty on human rights and business. Marion also worked for Amnesty International’s International Secretariat, focusing on forced evictions of Roma communities in France. Marion holds a BA from King’s College London and an MA from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS). She is fluent in Spanish, French and English.

Carlos Lozano

FORGE Program officer

Carlos Lozano is a Colombian Human Rights and Environmental Lawyer with extensive experience in Latin America. He has an LL.M. in Environmental and Natural Resources Law from the University of Oregon, United States, which he attended as a Fulbright Scholar. He has worked as a researcher and consultant for Latin American and international NGOs, governmental and cooperation agencies on issues of Institutional Reform, Sustainability and Transitional Justice. He also has participated on teams providing technical assistance to Colombia’s government on Environmental Licensing, Human Rights, Victims’ Reparations and Hazardous Waste Management. He has also experience in Public Interest Litigation, and Accountability.

Karyn Keenan

FORGE Coordinator

Karyn Keenan joined the SAGE Fund in 2021 as the coordinator of the FORGE collaborative. Prior to joining SAGE, Karyn was the founding director of Above Ground, an advocacy organization that promotes corporate accountability and access to justice for the victims of corporate abuse. Karyn was active for many years on the steering committee of the Canadian Network on Corporate Accountability (CNCA). Previously, she worked at the Halifax Initiative, a civil society coalition with a focus on international financial institutions. Karyn worked for several years in South America, including at the Peruvian organization, CooperAcción, where she supported communities impacted by the extractive industries. Karyn graduated from Osgoode Hall Law School and completed her articles at the Canadian Environmental Law Association. She holds a Master in Environmental Studies from York University and a BSc from McMaster University.

Bela Garces

Program associate

Bela Garces joined the SAGE Fund in the summer of 2020. She graduated from Johns Hopkins University the prior spring with a Bachelor’s in Environmental Studies, focusing on sustainable food systems and political ecology. While attending Hopkins, Bela worked with the university’s dining department on the Real Food Challenge, which aimed to increase the availability of local, sustainable, and ethically-sourced food products on campus. She was also on the governing board of Real Food Hopkins, a club that provided peer-learning on food justice and sovereignty and led campaigns to transform the university’s food system.

maggie weese

Program associate

Maggie Weese joined the SAGE Fund in 2018. Before arriving at SAGE, she worked as the Program Assistant for the Community Impact Internships Program, an internship program at Johns Hopkins University that pairs college students with Baltimore-based nonprofit organizations and government agencies to work on community-identified projects in Baltimore. Maggie graduated from Johns Hopkins University in 2017 with a Bachelor's in Public Health. While at Hopkins, she worked as the lead organizer for the Johns Hopkins University fossil fuel divestment campaign, which successfully pressured the University to divest from thermal coal in 2017. She is currently pursuing a joint Master of Public Health and Urban Planning at Harvard University.

Tricia Feeney

Senior Advisor

Patricia Feeney’s career has been spent on the front lines of human rights and humanitarian work in Latin America and Africa. During that time, she has had senior roles and extensive field experience with Amnesty International, where she investigated the enforced disappearance of thousands of opponents of the Argentine military juntas, and with Oxfam, where she studied the impact of development projects funded by international financial institutions such as the World Bank. In 1998, Patricia Feeney founded Rights and Accountability in Development (RAID), a trail-blazing research and advocacy organization in the field of business and human rights. While leading RAID as its executive director until 2017, she travelled extensively in Africa - to the Democratic Republic of Congo, Zambia, Zimbabwe and Tanzania - and developed RAID’s work, ranging from legal actions against mining companies complicit in war crimes to pressing stock markets for more effective regulation of companies involved in corruption and human rights abuses. Patricia read modern languages at London University, and has worked as a consultant for the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and advised the UK Government on corporate governance.

Katrina Anderson

Women’s Rights Advisor

Katrina Anderson is a human rights advocate working to advance gender justice in partnership with feminist and social justice movements around the world. She supports social justice leaders, organizations, and philanthropic institutions to refine their strategies, innovate to meet new challenges, and build resilient organizations. She is trained as an international human rights lawyer who has worked in the U.S., Europe, South Asia and Southeast Asia for a range of local, national and global organizations. Prior to starting her consulting practice in 2017, she was Senior Human Rights Counsel at the Center for Reproductive Rights for eight years. There she partnered with racial justice, disability justice and immigrant rights movements to design and implement advocacy initiatives, including co-founding the Black Mamas Matter Alliance to address severe racial disparities in U.S. maternal health. Before that she worked as a program officer for UN Women’s Trust Fund to End Violence against Women, and as Legal Officer for the Women’s Initiatives for Gender Justice in The Hague. She has also lived and worked in Cambodia and began her human rights work on the Thai-Burma border addressing human rights and environmental harms facing women migrant agricultural workers. She has a B.A. from the University of Virginia, a J.D. from Seattle University School of Law, and an LL.M. in international human rights law from American University’s Washington College of Law. Since 2019 she has worked with SAGE to bring a gender analysis to its grantmaking, first by helping to launch a pilot round of grants to strengthen women’s economic justice, and currently as coordinator for the Natural Resources and Resilient Women Initiative, a two-year initiative that aims to amplify the resilience strategies of women human rights and environmental defenders.

lien de brouckere

Advisor

Lien is a US-qualified lawyer advising on strategies and providing technical support to assert and defend land and human rights, advance corporate accountability, and rights-based development in the context of major development projects. Her experience includes working in more than a dozen countries in Sub-Saharan Africa as well as Afghanistan. In her freelance work she has advised, among others, the 11th Hour Project of the Schmidt Family Foundation, the Environmental Law Alliance Worldwide (ELAW), the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH, and the American Bar Association Rule of Law Initiative (ABA ROLI). Lien previously served as the Deputy Director of the Africa program at the Rights and Resources Initiative, advancing recognition of Indigenous Peoples’ and local community land rights. Before that, she directed the Natural Resources & Human Rights Program at Global Rights, where she led the launch of the African Coalition for Corporate Accountability (ACCA) with members representing more than 25 countries. She has collaborated with the mandate team of the UN Guiding Principles on Business & Human Rights to further access to non-judicial remedy, and practiced international investment and competition law in New York and Europe with a global law firm for a number of years. Lien completed her law degree with Great Distinction from McGill University and speaks French, Dutch, English, and German fluently.

Advisory Board

Lesley Carson

Wellspring Philanthropic Fund

Lesley Carson directs the International Human Rights Program at Wellspring Philanthropic Fund, where she has worked since 2007. She specializes in work on disability rights, human rights in the global economy, and transitional justice. With over 20 years of experience in international public service, Lesley has field experience in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and Europe, as well as policy and grant making experience in the United States. She has served as Co-Chair of the Human Rights Funders Network, a global philanthropic network of more than 600 member foundations. Prior to Wellspring, she served as founding director of Forefront, an advocacy, training, and protection network of frontline human rights defenders from around the world. She has worked for Amnesty International USA, served on the Foreign Operations Subcommittee of the Appropriations Committee with Senator Patrick Leahy, and taught a course on the role of civil society in human rights at New York University. Lesley has a Masters of International Affairs from Columbia University and a BA from Harvard.

greg mayne

oak foundation

Greg Mayne is a Programme Officer for the International Human Rights Programme, Oak Foundation. He leads the Programme’s grant making on criminal justice reform, with a focus upon issues of due process, pre-trial detention and torture, primarily in Brazil and India. He is also responsible for the Programme's grant making on business and human rights, specifically corporate accountability and increasing access to justice, as well as its overall grant making in India. Greg is also Chair of the Advisory Board of Ariadne, the network of European Funders for Social Change and Human Rights. Greg has more than 20 years’ experience in a range of countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America on upholding human rights and the rule of law, with an emphasis on ensuring respect for human rights in criminal justice systems. He formerly assisted the UN Special Rapporteur on the Independence of Judges and Lawyers and also worked at the Human Rights Institute of the International Bar Association focusing on the capacity-building of bar associations in Southern Africa. Greg holds degrees in Business from Australian Catholic University and Law from University of New South Wales. He also holds an LLM in International Law from the School of Oriental and African Studies in London.

Conniel malek

TRUE COSTs Initiative

Conniel Malek is the Executive Director of True Costs Initiative (TCI), which seeks to increase corporate accountability and strengthen legal systems in the Global South. Her work centers on driving collaboration among communities, funders, and creative leaders in an effort to tip the balance so corporations are held accountable for and internalize the true environmental and human costs of their actions. She is a proud daughter of the Caribbean and is particularly committed to advocating for the rights of those in often overlooked parts of the globe as it pertains to climate justice and technical expertise. In addition, Conniel is a Board Member of the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL), the Environmental Defender Law Center (EDLC) and EDGE Funders Alliance. Under her leadership, TCI became one of the founding members of Funders Organized for Rights in the Global Economy (FORGE). She was an Equity in Philanthropy Fellow with the Rockwood Leadership Institute and prior to TCI, practiced corporate law for a decade. She is a graduate of the University of Virginia School of Law and received her BA in Government and International Relations from Cornell University.

New Venture Fund

The SAGE Fund is a project of the New Venture Fund (NVF), a 501c(3) public charity that supports innovative and effective public interest projects.

NEW VENTURE FUND
1201 Connecticut Avenue NW
Suite 300
Washington, DC 20036