Trustees and advisors

Faith Abiodun was recently named Executive Director of United World Colleges International. Previously he was Executive Director at Future Africa, a public sector leadership organization, and Collaborative Impact Director at Catalyst 2030, a coalition of the world’s leading social enterprises working to achieve the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals. He is a strategic leadership consultant, international affairs analyst, writer and speaker.

Nelson Graves is the president of Nouvelles-Découvertes and founder of News Decoder. An experienced educator and administrator, he has taught and worked on three continents. He was a correspondent, bureau chief and regional managing editor at Reuters, holding posts in Washington, Paris, New Delhi, Kuala Lumpur, Milan and Tokyo. He later served as admissions director at Johns Hopkins University’s graduate program in international relations in Europe, and has worked with schools around the world.

Christian Henry is an executive recruiter within the education and non-profit practice at Conley Search. He co-founded the high school study-abroad program The Island School as a science teacher before serving in business officer and fundraising roles. He has previously consulted on marketing strategies to engage public and independent schools with enrichment programming. He is on the board of several non-profit educational organizations including the Centre for Ocean Research and Education, Beacon Hill Seminars and a Cambridge, Massachusetts public elementary school.

Lauren Heuser is a media management professional based in Toronto. She previously served as News Decoder’s Chief Strategy Officer and before that held editorial roles at two national Canadian news publications. Heuser holds a law degree from the University of Toronto and an MBA from INSEAD.

Alan Main is a purpose-driven leader recognized for creating strong, performance-driven cultures and diverse leadership teams. Alan has gained senior-level experience at companies like Roche, Bayer and Sanofi, including several years running multi-billion dollar enterprises. Alan is passionate about helping leaders develop and build successful businesses and is active in the non-profit sector in leadership development and supporting entrepreneurship, particularly for the African continent.

Nolwazi Mjwara is a communications consultant at the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in Paris, France. She has previously held roles in social media and communications at the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers and UNICEF. Nolwazi holds a Bachelor of Social Science from the University of Cape Town, a Bachelor of Arts from the University of the Witwatersrand and a Master of Arts specializing in communications from the American University of Paris.

Sue Phillips has spent more than three decades in senior leadership posts in media and public affairs. At the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, she held senior production roles in London, Moscow, Rome and Washington before serving as CBC’s London Bureau Chief. At Al Jazeera, she worked as London Bureau Chief and then as Director of Foreign Bureaux. She held senior positions at News World International, the Doha Film Institute and the National Museum of Qatar. Sue is a Patron of the Borneo Nature Foundation and a founding Director and Trustee of the Frontline Club in London.

Martha Clement Rochford is a PR and communications consultant who has held leadership roles in nonprofit, professional services, government and international organizations. Rochford earned a bachelor’s in English from St. Lawrence University and master’s in Public Communication from The American University in Washington, DC. Informed by her years living and working in Europe and Asia, writing for a global audience and serving as an adjunct professor, Rochford views global citizenship, journalistic skills and media literacy as essential competencies for the next generation.

Carlos Rubio is an international journalist who has lived and worked in 15 countries on five continents. He has held senior positions in the newsroom and in the field, both in print and broadcast media. Rubio was Australia correspondent for the Spanish news agency EFE and a news editor with Al Jazeera English in Qatar and with Euronews in Lyon. Rubio has four degrees — in journalism, development studies, refugee studies and Asian politics — from universities in London, Sydney and Madrid. He currently teaches at journalism schools in France.

Betty Wong was global managing editor of Reuters from 2008-2011, with 29 years of experience at the Wall Street Journal and Reuters. She covered white collar crime on Wall Street from Ivan Boesky to Michael Milken in the 1980s, led U.S. corporate news coverage from the dot com bubble to rubble and was global equities editor for Reuters.

Tim Agnew has more than 30 years of experience in commercial finance and economic development. He is a principal of Masthead Venture Partners, a Cambridge, Massachusetts venture capital firm, and serves on the boards of the Maine Venture Fund and CEI Community Ventures. Before joining Masthead, he was chief executive officer of the Finance Authority of Maine.

Jui Chakravorty is the Special Projects Editor at Nikkei Asia based in Tokyo, where she is in charge of conceptualizing, managing and executing editorial projects working with journalists around the world. Chakravorty founded b-yond tv, a digital journalism startup in San Francisco, which trained aspiring journalists in under-resourced communities. Chakravorty worked internationally at Reuters and also served as deputy bureau chief in Mumbai where she managed a nationwide team that covered India’s corporate news.

Savannah Jenkins is a dual American-British graduate student at Panthéon-Assas University in Paris in Media and Globalization. A former News Decoder Communications Manager, she has interned with the Statistics and Data Directorate at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.  After receiving her master’s degree, Jenkins hopes to work in the humanitarian sector in a communications role.

Aralynn A. McMane is director of Global Youth & News Media. A journalist and journalism educator, she works around the world in the interests of young readers, news media and media literacy. With the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers, she directed activities concerning the young and introduced publisher-educator partnerships in more than 20 countries. She helped improve the news publishing infrastructure for the non-government press in emerging democracies in Asia, Africa and Eastern Europe. She has served as an advisor for several UNESCO sectors.

Giuliana Nicolucci-Altman works at Alp Analytica as an environmental sustainability and climate security consultant while studying to receive her master’s degree in Human Rights and Humanitarian Action from Sciences Po Paris. A former News Decoder Student Ambassador from School Year Abroad France, she has a bachelor’s degree in International Relations and Sociology from the Johns Hopkins University in the United States. She has worked in refugee humanitarianism at Relief International and eachOne.

Tom Osenton is a best-selling author and leading growth strategist for nonprofits. Tom spent more than 25 years in senior management positions at CapCities/ABC and Billboard, and served as president, CEO and publisher of The Sporting News Publishing Co. He has worked on three Olympic Games and written three best-selling business books, including “The Death of Demand,” which introduced a groundbreaking economic theory based on analysis of more than 50 years of data from S&P 500 companies.

Charlotte Parker works at Acumen, a non-profit venture fund working to change how the world tackles poverty by investing in companies, leaders and ideas. Before moving to San Francisco, she served as a fourth-grade teacher through Teach for America in South Texas and helped launch the NationSwell Council, a membership network and events series for service-minded leaders, in New York City. She has worked as a freelance reporter in South America.