Harvey is a retired attorney after practicing law in Santa Barbara for almost 40 years. He was instrumental in guiding Girl Up through its incorporation and in obtaining its 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status. He received his B.A. from the University of California at Santa Barbara and his J.D. from the University of San Francisco. A fun fact about Harvey is that he is the proud father of Kim, and he is an avid bicyclist.

Sofie is an Information Officer with USAID’s Office of U.S. Foreign Disaster Assistance (USAID/OFDA) where she monitors and reports on complex humanitarian emergencies, natural disasters, and response activities in the Asia and Pacific region.  Sofie joined USAID/OFDA with more than four years’ experience in research, policy, and U.S immigration law.  While at Simmons & Ungar, a full-service immigration law firm in San Francisco, CA, Sofie managed a large caseload of employment, family-based, and humanitarian cases.  Outside of work, she volunteered with newly resettled refugee women and girls to promote capacity-building and self-sufficiency through mentorship, language training, and resettlement support.  Sofie holds a B.A. from the University of California, Berkeley and an M.A. in Law and Diplomacy from The Fletcher School at Tufts University where she specialized in forced migration and development economics and was Co-Chair of the Journal of Humanitarian Assistance.  As part of her master’s thesis, she conducted desk and field-based research on the humanitarian response to the Syrian refugee crisis in Jordan, with a particular focus on gender-based protection issues.  She speaks Swedish and French.

With extensive travel experience and a passion for social justice and global health, Hilary is excited to be involved with Girl Up Initiative. While currently in medical school at the University of California, Davis, Hilary most recently worked as a Senior Program Analyst for Dimagi, a social corporation that finds innovative ways to use mobile technology to strengthen health systems. This experience included spending a year living in Mozambique and nine months in India, working primarily with community health workers in rural communities. Prior to that, she spent almost three years living in Managua, Nicaragua, where she coordinated a 3800-member pediatric cohort study on Dengue Fever and Influenza in collaboration with UC Berkeley and the Nicaraguan Ministry of Health. Hilary received her B.A. in Molecular Biology and Public Health from UC Berkeley in 2009. She is at her happiest in the great outdoors and is endlessly fascinated by human ingenuity in unlikely places.

Kimberly is a Grant Manager for SOS Children’s Villages in Norway, managing family strengthening and gender equality programs in four sub-Saharan African countries. Previously, she was Deputy Executive Director of Girl Up Initiative Uganda where she oversaw fundraising efforts, grant management, strategic planning, and communications. For 11 years, Kimberly has dedicated herself to promoting gender equality and the rights of women and girls in sub-Saharan Africa through establishing Girl Up Initiative Uganda and through her work with other organizations such as the Global Fund for Women, the Norwegian Refugee Council and the World Bank. Kimberly holds an MPhil in International and Comparative Education from the University of Oslo, an MPhil in African Studies from the University of Cape Town, and a BA in International Development Studies from the University of California Berkeley.

Sasha Mostofi-Jorgensen has over twenty years of experience working with technology companies in strategic pre-sales and marketing roles. She is currently a partner at Aventi Group, a premier product marketing agency in Silicon Valley. Prior to Aventi, Sasha was the VP of Product Marketing and Inbound Marketing at Spirion, a data security startup. At WhiteHat Security, she led the product marketing team, building it from the ground up, and at IBM she the competitive intelligence lead for the Rational products. Sasha is an independent author and speaker and has been in interviewed on national radio stations including NPR. She is also an Executive Mentor for Social Entrepreneurs at Santa Clara University’s Miller Center.