Mona Cadena is the Deputy Director of the Western Regional office for Amnesty International, USA. She has comprehensive experience working on a range of human rights concerns, including the death penalty, custodial sexual misconduct, small arms and light weapons (including electroshock and stun weapons), torture and terror, and women's human rights. Mona serves as one of the primary media spokespeople for the Western Regional office in addition to her extensive work with state level elected officials, city counsels, commissions, and police departments across the country to pass and implement policy initiatives that promote and uphold human rights throughout state institutions. Mona has a Bachelors degree in political science and a certificate in policy development from the University of Colorado, Boulder. She has done significant post-graduate work in International Relations with a special focus in Human Trafficking, Migration and Child Soldiers from Trinity College.

Marilyn Hempel is the founder and Executive Director of Blue Planet United, and she edits its news journal, the Population Press. A committed environmentalist, she has embraced the slogan “no matter what your cause, it’s a lost cause without population stabilization.” Having lived and worked in developing nations and studied population issues for many years, she believes that the interactive problems of overconsumption and overpopulation must be addressed in industrial and developing nations alike. They are also intertwined with the empowerment of women worldwide. Since participating in the United Nations International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo, September 1994, she has given more than 200 speeches to organizations throughout the United States. She also attended the United Nations International Conference on Women in Beijing in September 1995. In 1999, she was part of a United Nations delegation that inspected family planning clinics and services throughout China.

Marilyn grew up in Southern California—and in East Africa, where her father was Chief of the Social Research Section of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa. She is a former high school and college teacher. She holds an M.A. from the Claremont Graduate University, an Ed.Cert. from McGill University, and a B.A. from Pitzer College.

Carina Koury-Jones, daughter of URE founders Mal and Carol, shares her parents' concerns about the world and for its future.  Since spending her first grade year in Costa Rica, Carina has traveled throughout the world living in and learning about different cultures.  In 2005 she spent two months teaching and caring for children in Tanzania.  This experience opened her eyes to the great need for cross-cultural understanding and cooperation.  Although she calls Martha's Vineyard home, Carina is in her fourth year at the Massachusetts College of Art in Boston, majoring in Art Education with a concentration in Community

Education. It is her hope that her own generation and future generations will become better informed and more involved with sharing the world equitably and in greater harmony with the planet that sustains us all.

Nan Grogan Orrock got her start in politics through the Civil Rights Movement. She stepped into the Movement when she stepped into the streets on Aug. 28, 1963 to join the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. She went on to work for SNCC in Atlanta and Mississippi, led a community civil rights project in Virginia's Black Belt counties, helped launch an alternative newspaper and joined women's empowerment efforts in Atlanta.

Nan is the President of WiLL (Women Legislators Lobby), a national network of progressive women state legislators who stand against excessive military spending and work to redirect those federal dollars to the greatly underfunded human services and environmental protection needs. WiLL is a program of WAND, Women's Actions for New Directions.

Stefanie McLaughlin has been with the Zoological Society of Milwaukee since 2002.  She has a B.S. degree from the University of Minnesota – Twin Cities majoring jointly in Wildlife Conservation and Animal Science with a minor in Biology.  Stefanie works closely with Dr. Gay Reinartz with all aspects of the Bonobo SSP and the BCBI programs.

Dr. Parish currently teaches courses at USC on love, marriage and the experience of being a wife and on the cultural impact of Darwin's theories. She also teaches courses in USC's new alternative premed major in Health and Humanities. She is on the Board of Directors for the Arusha Project, a non-profit organization devoted to helping HIV infected women in Tanzania. Other activities include an advisory position with the organization Up the River Endeavors, which is devoted to addressing sustainable development, global peace and social justice. Her work was recently featured in Ms. Magazine and she has appeared on Nova, National Geographic Explorer, NPR, and Discovery Health Channel productions.

Up The River Endeavors (URE) - Associates Liaison

Working in close coordination with the URE sounding board and the funders, the Associates Liaison maintains good communication with the current associates, as named and approved by the sounding board. In addition, the Associates Liaison does the following:

• Provides the sounding board and funders information and research on potential associates for their consideration.
• Works cooperatively with the Worldwide Visionaries on the approved "hot potato" project.
• Meets monthly with the sounding board to participate in discussions on the status and operation of the consortium.
• Assists the sounding board and funders with research and information on topics to be considered for the annual meeting of the consortium.
• Responds to requests from the funders for information and/or research data on URE-specific topics.
• Participates in the planning, facilitating and evaluation of the URE annual meeting in Martha’s Vineyard.
• Other duties as appropriate.

While sounding board members do not act independently of the group as a whole, they are, on occasion, asked to take action on behalf of the funders or the group. This is done with prior consultation and, whenever possible, includes the
funders in the communication process.

Dr. Gay Edwards Reinartz has been the Conservation Coordinator for the Zoological Society of Milwaukee for over 20 years, and her role with the organization is multi-faceted. 

For over 20 years, she has coordinated a captive breeding consortium for North American zoological institutions by serving as the Species Coordinator for the Bonobo Species Survival Plan (SSP).  As the SSP Coordinator, she helps coordinate efforts to develop effective methods for population management, captive propagation and husbandry for Pan paniscus, and to manage the captive bonobo population for long term viability by maintaining demographic stability and selectively breeding individuals to reduce the loss of genetic variability.

In addition to these duties, she also develops and implements the ZSM’s national and international conservation programs, particularly the Bonobo and Congo Biodiversity Initiative (BCBI) in the Democratic Republic of Congo, for which she has been the program director since 1997.  The BCBI is a field-based, holisitic conservation program to study and protect the bonobo in its only federally protected habitat, the Salonga National Park, Democratic Republic of Congo.  Destruction of rain forest habitat, poaching and 4-year long civil war threaten this rare ape in the wild.  The BCBI program conserves this critically endangered great ape and its habitat through a multi-disciplinary program consisting of a) population assessment and monitoring (on-going surveys), b) guard training and anti-poaching efforts, and c) educational and economic opportunities for villages surrounding the park. 

For the past 17 years, Janelle Yamarick has built her non-profit career as both a leader and coalition builder on reproductive justice and health issues in Georgia. Currently, she has spent the past 11 years as the Community Services Director for the Feminist Women’s Health Center where she is in charge of fundraising, media/public relations, political advocacy, community education and outreach, volunteer programs, and marketing. During tenure there, she has created programs to reach, educate, and empower underserved populations such as homeless women, refugee women, and Latinas. She has also designed their Young Women’s Leadership Project, a program that has since its inception graduated 2,000 young women to become leaders and activists in the women’s movement.

Prior to her tenure at the Center, Janelle was the Executive Director of GARAL, the Georgia affiliate of NARAL. During her time at GARAL, she established the organization as a political force in Georgia politics, while she increased the membership and the organizational base by seven times. She also represented over 40 NARAL affiliates organizations on the national NARAL board and she became a national trainer on grassroots organizing, political organizing, board development and fundraising in the mid-1990’s. Janelle currently serves on the board of the League of Women Voters-Atlanta/Fulton County, as Treasurer on Georgia Shares, on the medical advisory board for Refugee Family Services and on the advisory board for the Women’s Resource Center at Georgia Tech.

Currently serving as National Field Director of Women’s Action For New Directions (WAND), Tanya Wallace moved to the deep south in 1991 to launch a career of empowering people of color. Her professional experience includes work with UNITE HERE (formerly the Union of Needletrades, Textiles and Industrial Employees), the AFL-CIO, the U.S. Department of Commerce Census Bureau, and the Association of Flight Attendants.

She has an advanced knowledge of community and political structures, a successful record of coordinating grassroots organizations, and coalition development. Her opinions and contributions have been featured in YSB magazine, The Los Angeles Times and on ABC Nightly News. She is an active member of her community and currently serves as the Program Chair for the National Council of Negro Women Greater Atlanta Millennium Section, and Vice President of Membership with the League of Women Voters Atlanta/Fulton County.