This document contains short biographies of 20 individuals working in arts, culture and social change. They include organizers, artists, activists, funders and managers from organizations based in countries around the world such as Brazil, Kenya, Egypt, Zimbabwe, Guatemala, Indonesia, the Netherlands, United States and more. The biographies provide information on their backgrounds, areas of work and the organizations or projects they work on or have founded.

2. Felipe Altenfelder
Fora do Eixo, Brazil
Felipe Altenfelder works in the national man-
agement of the Circuito Fora do Eixo, a social
experiment to provide music and culture to
the public and livelihoods to culture makers
- by mutualizing the means of production for
music. He was the manager of the regional net-
work in Sao Paulo and he is founding member
of Midia NINJA, a collective of citizen journal-
ists keen to present an alternative narrative to
the mainstream media by reporting live from
the frontline. He was a speaker and audio op-
erator in Rádio UFSCar, besides participating in
the process of implementation of the FM and
online station. He is one of the coordinators
in the Grito Rock Festival, an integrated event
that happens in more than 50 countries around
the world.
Amis Boersma
Hivos, The Netherlands
The Civic Explorations programme aims to
explore, exchange knowledge on and experi-
ment with new trends in citizen’s action. Amis
focuses on linking change makers to one an-
other in innovative ways and making insights
available for the larger community. Her main
interest lies in understanding what motivates
people to become active in their societies, and
she is specifically passionate about the connec-
tion between the personal and the political,
and the power of playfulness. Prior to working
at Hivos, Amis started her own consultancy -
NGO toolkit - to help NGO’s better understand-
ing what the results of their work was and to
deal with their donors (and reporting require-
ments).

3. Michelle Coffey
Lambent Foundation,
United States
As Executive Director, Michelle Coffey designs,
implements and furthers the strategic agenda,
leadership and vision of Lambent Founda-
tion. Through innovative grant making and
projects, Lambent Foundation supports the in-
tersections of contemporary arts and culture as
critical strategies for social change. Lambent’s
global grant making provides critical general
operating support for artist-centered organiza-
tions in the visual, performance and alternative
media fields in NewYork, New Orleans and Nai-
robi. Prior to the creation of Lambent Founda-
tion in January 2009, Ms. Coffey was Director
of Starry Night Fund and Senior Philanthropic
Advisor at Tides Foundation. With a global lens,
her areas of focus included Human Rights,
Women/Girls, Criminal Justice Reform, Arts and
Culture and HIV/AIDS.
John Ewing
Ghana Think Tank,
United States of America
John Ewing is a digital media artist creating
public art with an emphasis on community
participation. He works on large sustained
projects that often last several years. He has ex-
hibited at the National Museum of Wales, FACT,
the Venice Biennale of Architecture, and ZKM.
In 2006, he co-founded the Ghana ThinkTank,
a growing network of think tanks from Ghana,
Cuba, El Salvador, Mexico, Iran, Afghanistan,
Serbia and the US prison system, who work to
solve problems in the“developed”world. While
initially developed as an art project, the Ghana
ThinkTank has begin to have influence outside
the art world as well.

4. George Gachara
The Nest,
Kenya
George Gachara is a cultural activist, designer
of learning programs in the field of social in-
novation, a cyclist and the co-director at The
NEST - a Kenyan multidisciplinary art space
that serves as a functional playground for art-
ists, thinkers and curious minds. George enjoys
exploring the intersection of identity, history
and power in order to find the human spaces
in which to build resilient communities with
sustainable ideas of living and being. George is
the author of The Reverse Is True, a semi-auto-
biographical book about his journey to find his
place in society.
Gertrude Flentge
Doen Foundation,
the Netherlands
Since 2008, Gertrude Flentge is program man-
ager of the international culture programme
at DOEN foundation (www.doenculture.com),
which focusses on supporting the arts in Afri-
ca, Asia and Latin-America. From 2000 till 2004
Gertrude developed and coordinated the RAIN
network for visual artists’ initiatives in Africa,
Asia and Latin-America at the Rijksakademie
van Beeldende Kunsten in Amsterdam. In 2005
she ran the website www.thepowerofculture.
org. From 2005 till 2007 she managed the
culture program of Hivos in Central-Asia and
Latin-America and initiated Arts Collaboratory
(www. artscollaboratory.org) a funding and
collaborative program for visual artists initia-
tives throughout the world, set-up and funded
by Hivos and DOEN Foundation.

5. Sophie Leferink
Senior advisor
Arts & Culture,
Hivos, The Hague
Sophie Leferink is senior advisor Arts & Culture
at Hivos and in charge of developing a new
Hivos policy in relation to the creative sector
in Asia, Africa and Latin America. Graduated as
a historian with a special focus on Russia, her
first job as an intern was an exhibition of draw-
ings from the Gulag Archipel followed by many
international projects and programmes in the
field of literature, media, performing- and vis-
ual arts. She has been head of the programme
department of the European Cultural Founda-
tion, founder of The One Minutes junior video
platform and director ofThe One Minutes foun-
dation, a global platform for 1 minute video art.
Since September 2013, she is working for Hivos
and she initiated this Brain Grind session.
Enas Hamdy Metwally Ibrahim
Harassmap,
Egypt
Enas graduated from the Faculty of Econom-
ics and Political Science in 2008. In the same
year, she started her work in one of the biggest
research centers for demographic studies as a
researcher assistant. As such, she worked on
large scale research some of which Internation-
al surveys. She also participated in research re-
lated to development issues such as education,
women’s welfare, and health. In October 2015,
She made a switch to work for civil society and
started as a researched at Harassmap.

6. Mthabisi Phili
Voices in Colour,
Zimbabwe
In 2011, Mthabisi Phili founded Voices in Col-
our (VIC) to facilitate a platform for creative
expression for artists and communities. Before
taking on fulltime responsibility for curatorial
and administration tasks as VIC, he was Exhibi-
tion Officer for the Visual Artists Association of
Bulawayo (from 2007-2009).
Mthabisi Phili is also still a practicing artist. His
work is informed by Zimbabwe under Mugabe;
his artworks are about critically questioning
and re-interpreting the politics of the status
quo and our impression on space as citizens.
He was a highly recommended artist for Free-
dom to Create Prize in 2010. His artworks have
been exhibited in Mumbai, Sarajevo, New York,
Cairo, and CCA-Lagos. As a writer, his writings
and poems have been widely published.
Anna Overstrom-Coleman
Open Society Foundations,
United States of America
Anna Overstrom-Coleman works for the Open
Society Foundations Documentary Photogra-
phy Project (DPP), where she designs the stra-
tegic agenda as well as implements the pro-
gramming for DPP’s grant-making initiatives.
Through the Audience Engagement Grant, DPP
supports photographers, photo-based artists,
and socially-engaged practitioners who seek
partnerships and community participation
when creating projects with goals for social
change. As DPP is uniquely positioned at the
intersection of human rights, the arts, media,
and philanthropy, Anna works to facilitate mo-
ments of knowledge sharing and learning be-
tween these fields, both for her grantees, her
colleagues, and herself. She is continuously
searching for ways to connect, collaborate, and
better understand how creativity and collectiv-
ity can foster change.

7. Laura Raicovich
Creative Time,
United States of America
Laura Raicovich joined Creative Time in 2012.
As Director of Global Initiatives, she is responsi-
ble for CreativeTime Reports, the CreativeTime
Summit and Global Residency programs, all of
which aim to expand and deepen the organi-
zation’s international reach. Raicovich came
to Creative Time following a decade at Dia Art
Foundation, where she served as Deputy Direc-
tor. Previously she worked at both the Solomon
R. Guggenheim Museum and Public Art Fund.
Raicovich graduated from Swarthmore College
and holds a Master’s Degree in Liberal Studies
from the Graduate Center at the City University
of New York. She lectures internationally, and
is the author of At The Lightning Field, a lyric
essay and parallel text to Walter De Maria’s re-
nowned artwork, as well as A Diary of Mysteri-
ous Difficulties, a novel based on spam which
is being published serially in The Brooklyn Rail.
Christopher Robbins
Ghana Think Tank,
United States of America
Christopher Robbins is an American Artist that
focuses his art practice in the realm of Public
Art and Social Sculpture. Robbins works inter-
nationally, using physical and conversational
processes to create interactions between stran-
gers in order to build community and problem-
solve. He has exhibited at the National Museum
of Wales, FACT, the Venice Biennale of Archi-
tecture, and ZKM. In 2006, he co-founded the
Ghana ThinkTank, a growing network of think
tanks from Ghana, Cuba, El Salvador, Mexico,
Iran, Afghanistan, Serbia and the US prison sys-
tem, who work to solve problems in the“devel-
oped”world. While initially developed as an art
project, the GhanaThinkTank has begin to have
influence outside the art world as well.

8. Susana Rochna
Hivos,
Costa Rica
Susana is a Chilean Anthropologist who left
Chile in 1990 for Canada where she obtained a
Masters Degree in Social Science at the Univer-
sity of Regina. Before leaving Chile, she worked
as an Anthropologist working on Indigenous
political rights and on Human Rights –during
Pinochet’s dictatorship—with a particular em-
phasis on Easter Island, where she had lived in
the mid 80’s. In 1998, she joined Hivos’Regional
Office in Central America, based in Costa Rica,
where she has worked ever since in charge of
two portfolios: Human Rights and Arts & Cul-
ture. Recently, she has been in charge of the co-
ordination of a regional program called Actors
for Change, funded by SIDA, which combines
cultural activists (“art-itivist”), human rights de-
fenders and media workers.
Sally Szwed
Creative Time,
United States of America
Sally Szwed has contributed to Creative Time’s
programs since 2008, joining the team full
time in January 2012. She organizes the annual
Creative Time Summit and manages the Global
Residency Program. Previously, she served as
Program Manager of EFA Project Space, at the
Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts, in New York
City, where she produced exhibitions, work-
shops, and other events. Sally has organized
numerous public programs, including a series
of parties welcoming new artists to the city, ex-
perimental wine tastings, and recent projects
for Open Engagement and Flux Factory. She
holds a BFA in Sculpture from Syracuse Univer-
sity, and an MA in Curatorial Practice from Cali-
fornia College of the Arts.

9. Nato Thompson
Creative Time,
United States of America
Since January 2007, Nato Thompson has or-
ganized major projects for Creative Time in-
cluding the annual Creative Time Summit, Liv-
ing as Form (2011), Paul Ramirez Jonas’s Key
to the City (2010), Jeremy Deller’s It is What it
is with New Museum curators Laura Hoptman
and Amy Mackie (2009), Democracy in Ameri-
ca: The National Campaign (2008), Paul Chan’s
acclaimed Waiting for Godot in New Orleans
(2007) and Mike Nelson’s A Psychic Vacuum
with curator Peter Eleey. Previously, he worked
as Curator at MASS MoCA where he completed
numerous large-scale exhibitions including
The Interventionists: Art in the Social Sphere
(2004) with a catalogue distributed by MIT
Press. His writings have appeared in numerous
publications including BookForum, Frieze, Art
Journal, Art Forum, Parkett, Cabinet and The
Journal of Aesthetics and Protest. The College
Art Association awarded him for distinguished
writing in Art Journal in 2004.
Rebeca Eunice Vargas
Somos Guerreras,
Guatemala
Rebeca EuniceVargas (1984), also known as Re-
beca Lane, is a poet, an actress and a rapper. As
a poet, she’s been committed to her liberation
as a woman, discussing the heterosexual roles
imposed on her body, and the colonization and
militarization of the land she’s been born in,
Guatemala. Rebeca is a theater actress in role
plays on social topics, such as sexual diversity,
feminism, violence and hip hop. She started to
record rap songs in 2012 as a poetry exercise
without foreseeing what would come out of it.
Her rap lyrics are about her experience having
a female body and about the struggle of wom-
en against sexism. She speaks out about social
problems in Guatemalan society, such as the
consequences of war and the lack of justice.
Rebeca is the founder of “Somos Guerreras”, a
movement that builds a community of women
that like hip hop culture and want to transform
it to become more equal and not sexist.
Photocredit: The photograph was taken by Carlos Euler, 2014. It’s
a role play and Hip Hop musical called“La Eskina”.

10. Wisnu Wisdantio
Lifepatch,
Indonesia
Born in an urban area, Wisnu Wisdantio has
witnessed how rapid development brings
both urban problems and environmental is-
sues. These issues drove him to become active
as an urban planner after finishing his studies
in architecture in 2007. Beside this, he is chief
editor for www.landscapeindonesia.com since
2010, which is a platform for natural landscape
and environmental issues using travel writ-
ing and visual documentation. Starting with a
contribution to Lifepatch’ project ‘Jogja River
Project’, Wisnu joined the team in January
2013. Lifepatch is a community-based organi-
zation working on the creative and appropriate
application in the field of art, science and tech-
nology. Nowadays, Lifepatch is Wisnu’s second
home where he evokes community conversa-
tions about architecture, urban design and
landscape photography through discussion,
workshops, and other events.