Board of Directors

President, Breakthrough Strategies

Gail Kaneb brings decades of experience to Tostan's board. Gail is a change catalyst, working with individuals, groups, and corporations to identify what they want to achieve, what the obstacles are, and how to surmount them. She was also managing director of a business that doubled in size while the overall industry was shrinking, due to in large part to their unique management and leadership style. Using a mixture of workshops and personal coaching, Gail has taken her expertise to individuals, companies and organizations throughout North America, and has done extensive training for the Young Presidents Organization. Gail has her degree from Mount Holyoke College and has developed and run many training, coaching, and organizational tools and methodologies.

 

Primary role: Gail's primary role within the board is as chair with an emphasis on organizational and fiscal development.

Retired Vice President of Human Resources, Colgate-Palmolive Company

From 1986 until 2009, Barbara has held positions of increasing responsibility in human resource, project management, change management and organizational development at Colgate-Palmolive Company. While there, she worked with various divisions of Colgate including Latin America, Global Information Technology, Global Business Services and Global Research and Development. In her last position at Colgate, Barbara led the newly formed Global HR Operations team which implemented the global standardized process and system for Performance Management, People Development, and Compensation. She has been involved in multiple strategic projects including the implementation of an enterprise resource planning software in Latin American countries, the implementation of shared services in the global human resource function, the merger and relocation of an acquired company, and the start-up of the human resources department in a subsidiary company, for which she won the Colgate Chairman's "You Can Make a Difference" Award. She is respected for her practical knowledge, her relationship building skills, and her broad business background. Barbara graduated magna cum laude from Colorado State University with a Bachelor’s degree in Accounting.

Primary Roles: Since joining the board, Barbara has been a leadership resource to Tostan in human resources, financial management and organizational development.

Jim Greenbaum

Founder and Managing Director, The Greenbaum Foundation

Jim Greenbaum is the Founder and Managing Director of The Greenbaum Foundation and also the Executive Producer of the upcoming Robert Bilheimer modern day slavery documentary film "Not My Life." Through his foundation, Jim focuses primarily on international innovative human rights projects benefiting children and youth such as abolishing all forms of modern day slavery, ending female genital mutilation/cutting, fighting child abuse, neglect, sex trafficking of children, forced prostitution, the using of children as soldiers.

More recently, Jim began supporting projects aimed at improving world health via promoting whole foods plant based diets, and also innovative projects promoting the humane treatment of animals. Jim looks to assist new, creative and well managed organizations in getting off the ground, providing those organizations with guidance, networking, and funding during their early years. On occasion, Jim will assist more established organizations during periods of expansion.

Prior to leaving the business world in 1999 for the non-profit arena, Jim was the Founder and CEO of Access Long Distance. A graduate of the University of Virginia, Jim has also been an active member of YPO since 1988, and has been involved with YPO’s Social Enterprise Network (SEN) since it’s earliest days. Jim is also a long time member of the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI), and recently launched a CGI Initiative to work towards educating YPO’ers about Child and Slave Labor. To further that end, Jim is the Champion of the YPO Group, ACTION – CHILD AND SLAVE LABOR. Jim is also working on a database project to network the 25,000+ YPO/WPO Members and Spouses with respect to their involvement and interests in the non-profit world. 

 

Cheikh Seydil Moctar Mbacke, Ph.D. is a Statistician/Demographer with broad experience in international development, capacity building, management, and training. He has his PhD from University of Pennsylvania (1986), and spent 6 years at the Centre for Applied Research on Population & Development (CERPOD) in Bamako, Mali as head of the Training Division. He also spent 14 Years at Rockefeller Foundation as Program Officer for Pop Sciences (92-99), Director for Africa (1999-2003), Vice President for Admin and Regional Programs (2003-2005), and Senior Advisor (2005-2006). He is now part-time senior adviser to the Population Program of the William & Flora Hewlett Foundation based in Dakar, Senegal, where he is helping in the development and implementation of the Foundation's activities in Africa. Cheikh has devoted his career to human and institutional capacity building in Africa and has contributed to the training of scores of African scientists as well as the creation of three major African institutions. 

Executive Director, Tostan

Having lived and worked in Senegal since 1974, Molly Melching has received international recognition for her groundbreaking educational programs that have led communities to affect life transforming changes including the abandonment of female genital cutting and child/forced marriage. More than 4,500 communities in Senegal, Guinea, The Gambia, Somalia and Burkina Faso have made public declarations for abandonment of harmful traditional practices following a human rights-based education program implemented by Tostan, the NGO founded by Molly in 1991. Other breakthroughs include - reduction in infant and maternal mortality, wide-spread school and birth registration, and the emergence of female leadership. Molly received the Humanitarian Alumni Award from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1999, the Sargent Shriver Distinguished Award for Humanitarian Service in 2002, and. Sweden's Anna Lindh Award for Tostan's work in human rights in 2005. In 2007 Tostan won the Conrad N. Hilton Humanitarian Prize, the largest and most prestigious in the humanitarian field.

 

Primary Roles: Within the Board of Directors, Molly represents the interests of Tostan’s participants and staff, as well as the founding vision and current philosophies of the organization. Molly is Tostan’s primary fundraiser.  

Anne Charlotte Ringquist has a Master’s degree in Social Anthropology. Her academic studies have primarily dealt with African culture and development, focusing on gender-related issues. Anne Charlotte is also a textbook writer.

Long interested in African culture, over the past decades Anne Charlotte has lived in various parts of the continent together with her husband, a Swedish diplomat. She lived in Kenya from 1977 to 1981, where she worked in education. After a period in Austria from 1981 to 1984, she returned to Africa, this time living in Tunisia for three years. In 1987, Anne Charlotte moved to Sweden, where she worked in education for six years, spending time developing and teaching courses in social studies for immigrants. Between 1993 and 1999 Anne Charlotte lived in Saudi Arabia, where she, among other activities, gave lectures to foreign companies on inter-cultural communication and worked for the Swedish Migration Board in a camp housing war refugees from the first Gulf War.

In 2000, Anne Charlotte moved to Senegal, where she soon became aware of Tostan’s work and immediately identified with its methods. She became a Tostan volunteer, attending many events and producing both documents and films on Tostan’s program and organization. Anne Charlotte continued in this role until leaving Senegal in 2004. Upon her return to her home country, she founded Tostan Sweden, an organization whose goal is to gather support in Sweden for Tostan’s activities.

Primary Roles: Anne Charlotte has focused her efforts with the Tostan Board of Directors on public relations, fundraising and advocacy work in Scandinavia and Europe.