Our Boards.

Jon serves as the Deputy Director of Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors and is based in the Chicago office. He works with individual, family, institutional, and corporate donors across the Midwest, around the country, and around the world. In his time at RPA he has worked with a number of donors on climate change and environmental conservation; supported the work of foundations re-tooling strategy in post-bankruptcy Detroit; helped a family foundation in Chicago design a strategy to support the city’s infrastructure of small and mid-sized theaters; worked on a team assessing a foundation’s internal staffing structure with a focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion; and assisted a multinational company develop partnerships with organizations around the country that help young people access higher education.

Previously, Jon was Donor Services and Initiatives Manager at the Santa Fe Community Foundation, where he managed the Foundation’s LGBTQ and Native grant programs, oversaw a project that uses crowd-sourced giving to support public school projects, and managed Foundation events and communications. Before joining the Santa Fe Community Foundation he was a Research Associate for the Peter G. Peterson Foundation in New York City, where he managed major projects focused on health care policy, national security policy, and youth engagement. Jon has also worked at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago and was on the staff of President Obama’s 2008 campaign.

Jon received a B.A. from The University of Chicago in 2004 and a Master’s in Public Administration from the Maxwell School of Syracuse University in 2010. He served on the planning committee for the 2013, 2014, 2016, 2020, and 2023 conference for Funders for LGBTQ Issues. He serves on the board of Crossroads Fund, a public foundation that funds racial, social, and economic justice in Chicago; Mikva Challenge, a national civic engagement organization that brings young people into the democratic process; and the Just Transition Fund, an intermediary organization that supports economic transition efforts in coal-impacted communities in Appalachia, the Midwest, and the Intermountain West. He was a member of the 2020 class of the Emerging Leaders program at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs.

Mark Rosenberg is a Senior Vice President, Investment at UBS Financial Services Inc in Chicago, IL and is a Certified Portfolio Manager (CPM®).  Mark is currently Chair of the Mikva Challenge National Board of Directors after serving 5 years as Chair of the Finance Committee and most recently as Treasurer.

Mark serves on the Board of Directors of the Albert Pick Jr. Fund, a foundation that supports small community Chicago nonprofit organizations in the areas of civic and community building, culture, education, and health and human services.  He was Treasurer and Chair of the Investment Committee for 6 years.

Mark holds a B.A. degree from the University of Missouri. He joined Mikva Challenge as a board member in 2015 with the encouragement of his father-in-law, Abner Mikva.  Mark has been a Financial Advisor for 37 years, providing families with comprehensive financial planning and investment management.  He also sits on the Board of the Albert Pick Jr. Fund, a grant making Foundation that was an early donor to Mikva Challenge.  He is married to Rachel Mikva, one of the original “Mikva kids.”

Randy Kinder is Head of Taft Hartley Strategy at EnTrust Global, one of the world’s largest alternative investment providers. He is the former President of the AFL-CIO Investment Trust Corporation (ITC) and spent nearly 22 years working on behalf of America’s Labor movement both at ITC and the AFL-CIO Housing Investment Trust. In addition to serving Mikva Challenge, Mr. Kinder is an Executive Board Member for Holtz’s Heroes Foundation. He is a proud graduate of the University of Notre Dame and the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business. As a student-athlete at Notre Dame, Randy participated in football and track and he enjoyed a short NFL career with the Green Bay Packers & the Philadelphia Eagles after college. Mr. Kinder and his family reside in Washington, D.C.

Cynthia Wong is a proud Mikva Challenge alumna from the South Side of Chicago. A former banker, management consultant, and nonprofit executive director, she’s now a philanthropic leader based in San Francisco focused on initiatives to advance racial and economic equity. She works with impact-oriented funders and investors to develop new products, programs, and business models.

Currently, she’s partnering with the senior leadership and team at the Seattle Foundation on a new strategy and operating model for community philanthropy. She previously led the Bay Area office of the nation’s largest community development financial institution (LISC), invested in underserved communities as a banker and impact investor at Morgan Stanley, and has also worked with large corporations, foundations, and nonprofits on solving mission critical issues as a strategy/management consultant.

Peter Barber is a marketing executive, community leader and advocate for young people. He’s been involved with Mikva Challenge since 2015 and is Chair of the organization’s Illinois Advisory Board and a member of its National Board of Directors.

Peter has held leadership roles in and provided marketing and advertising support to a number of prestigious companies, including DDB, McDonald’s, Procter & Gamble, Budget Car & Truck Rental and the Leo Burnett Company. He was most recently Executive Vice President for Lipman Hearne, a Chicago-based marketing agency working exclusively with nonprofit organizations.

Peter is also a former elected official. He served as Trustee and President of the Oak Park District 97 School Board for eight years, where he worked to improve teacher diversity and spearheaded development of the village’s kindergarten-for-all program. Following that experience, Peter was elected to a seat on the Oak Park Village Board of Trustees, where his work focused on community economic development and cross-governmental collaboration, including support for early childhood learning initiatives.

Stefanie Cruz is a strategic communications advisor and Founder & CEO of the DigiGeeks Collective. She has over 15 years’ experience mobilizing millions of individuals to action across national social movements including the Women’s March, Families Belong Together and the March for Our Lives.

Stefanie was one of the first digital strategists on Capitol Hill as the Director of Digital Media for Congressman Sander Levin and the Ways and Means Committee. Worked in partnership with the Democratic task force to support and encourage Members of Congress and Committees to embrace digital and social media tools to share legislative updates and create online communities.

Most recently, she served as the Vice President of Marketing and Digital at America’s Promise Alliance.

Rachel Graham is the Director of Programs for the Lefkofsky Family Foundation in Chicago. In this role, she oversees the Foundation’s education grantmaking and runs Success Bound, the Foundation’s middle grades initiative. With a deep focus on middle grades, the Foundation believes that students in this developmental stage will thrive if they have access to supportive learning environments that allow them to explore who they are and who they want to be in the social, economic and civic world.

Success Bound is a free middle school program enhancing those middle school environments. Rachel serves as the Co-Chair of the Youth Guidance’s Working on Womenhood Advisory Council and is on the Local School Council of Otis Elementary School in Chicago.

Rachel believes that young people will change the world, and has a long standing passion for enabling young people to be at the table when decisions that effect them are made.

Previously, she created the Youth Program for Chicago Ideas, which during the course of five years empowered thousands of high school students to spark ideas into action and make change in themselves, their schools and their communities. Prior to her role at the Lefkfosky Family Foundation, Rachel worked as a school psychologist in a suburban elementary school. Rachel has a Masters in School Psychology from Northeastern University in Boston.

Dr. Kenann McKenzie-DeFranza is the Founder of Aspiring Spirit, LLC consulting group which includes the well-known podcast.  Her background and expertise includes civic engagement research & practice, organizational consulting,  PreK-12 and higher education professional development on subjects such as educational practices, policy, administration, and leadership. At the Federal education level, she served as Executive Director for the National Board of Education Sciences in the US Department of Education for several years. Dr. McKenzie also is noted as the inaugural Director of the Generous Listening and Dialogue Center founded at Tufts University. She now serves as an Associate Professor of Education Practice and Director of Academic Innovation & Strategic Partnerships at Gordon College, MA.

Collectively, she has worked for over two decades in the education sector as a college academic counselor, researcher, lecturer, policy analyst and a high school administrator, and now as a full-time academic faculty member.

In her civic life, she is a Rotarian, serves on several non-profit boards, is an elected official on the Beverly Massachusetts School Committee, and serves as President of the newly founded North Shore Branch of the NAACP ‘23-’25.

In 2022, she was recognized with the Heroine Award by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts’ Commission on the Status of Women.

Dr. McKenzie has a BA from Cornell University, M.Ed., from the University of Virginia and Ph.D. from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and Teachers College.

Dick Meyer has spent more than 35 years in journalism as a book author, reporter, television producer, editor, executive and columnist. At CBS News, NPR and BBC News, Meyer was an early leader in building high quality digital news and integrated newsrooms.

Dick is the author of the 2008 book on American culture and politics, Why We Hate Us: American Discontent in the New Millennium (2008) and also wrote a critical assessment of Reaganomics, Running for Shelter (1985).

After many years as an executive at nonprofit and for-profit news organizations, Dick returned to full-time writing and reporting in 2014 as the chief Washington correspondent for Scripps News, where he wrote a syndicated column, news analysis for Scripps’ properties nationwide and hosted occasional podcasts.

He is the recipient of an Alfred I. du Pont-Columbia University Award (1998), an Investigative Reporters and Editors Award (1998) and a Sigma Delta Chi Society of Professional Journalists Award (1998) for reports that led to the identification and disinterment of the remains of the Vietnam soldier once in the Tomb of the Unknowns, in Arlington National Cemetery. For his online work, Meyer and his teams have been honored with a du Pont Award a Peabody, EPpy awards from Editor & Publisher magazine, an Edward R. Murrow Award from the Radio-Television News Directors Association, an Online News Association Award, Emmys and numerous Webby Awards.

Miles Sandler is the director of engagement-education in Public Affairs for the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, where she serves as an advocate and constituency builder for the Foundation’s key education outreach programs. Through storytelling, strategic communication, and authentic engagement, Miles works to enhance awareness and drive action to improve educational and life outcomes for children that deserve exceptional opportunities.

Previously, Miles worked with the National League of Cities and supported city leaders from over fifty communities in building equitable city initiatives to improve postsecondary completion rates, increase access to quality afterschool and strengthen city and school relationships.

Miles graduated with an MPA from Baruch College and a BA from the State University of New York (SUNY) New Paltz. She is a 2014 National Urban Fellow, a 2018 Surge Institute alumna, and 2019 Executive Ascent leader.

Saúl Sarabia runs a political consulting firm called Solidarity and has a part-time appointment at the UCLA Institute for Research on Labor and Employment, where he focuses on the Future of Work in a Decarcerated California. His firm led electoral outreach strategies to elect a progressive prosecutor in Los Angeles County.

Saul is an LA native who began his work as a community organizer focused on racial justice and the legal system in 1999 at the Community Coalition in South Los Angeles where he led successful campaigns to organize grandmothers and relatives caring for children whose parents were incarcerated or struggling with addiction.

He also pioneered organizing formerly incarcerated people with social service providers, their clients, and family members of system-impacted people and has been an advisor to the LA chapter of All of Us or None, a national association of formerly incarcerated people fighting to change laws that discriminate against people who have been arrested or convicted, since its inception.

Previously, he taught Chicano Studies at UCLA to involve students in community organizing. He led the Critical Race Studies program at UCLA Law School, training a new generation of legally trained social justice activists. He believes strongly that partnering student and community leaders is crucial to social movement building.

Jackie has spent her life activating people and mobilizing resources to create a more equitable world. Having been raised in a prosperous neighborhood in Chicago, she was aware from a young age that the opportunities available to her were out of reach for too many others. Her subsequent exposure as an attorney to the complexities of the criminal legal system set her on a lifelong trajectory to challenge the status quo and be a voice for equity.

Professionally, Jackie is an executive coach, facilitator, and the founder of Abloom Ventures. She helps leaders and management teams operate more effectively, increasing awareness, focus and accountability. She received coach training at Columbia University and is certified in the Deeper Signals personality assessment.

Previously, Jackie was part of leadership teams at the Aspen Institute and the University of Chicago. She is licensed to practice law and served for two years as a judicial clerk to the Honorable Mary L. Mikva.

Amy Singh serves as EVP, General Counsel and Corporate Secretary for Cameo.com, a Chicago based start-up named one of TIME magazine’s 50 Most Genius Companies. Cameo’s mission is to create the most personalized and authentic fan experiences in the world.  Prior to joining Cameo, Amy founded her own firm, Law Offices of Amy K. Singh, P.C.  She also served as SVP, General Counsel of DDB Chicago and as an Associate of Sidley Austin. Amy serves on several charitable and corporate boards, including the Impact Investing Advisory Council of YWCA Metropolitan Chicago, and the Strategic Initiatives Advisory Board of Metropolitan Capital Bank.  Amy received the Diversity Award from Black Women Lawyers’ Association of Greater Chicago.  Amy was appointed by President Obama to the President’s Advisory Committee on the Arts for the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.