Mary R. Page
Director, Human Rights and International Justice

Email: mpage at macfound dot org

Mary R. Page is Director of the Human Rights and International Justice area in the Program on Global Security & Sustainability.

Page joined the Foundation as a program officer in 1990, was promoted to Assistant Director in 1997 and Director in 2000. Prior to her arrival at MacArthur, Page was engaged in research and development of computer-assisted instruction programs at Stanford University; mathematics education research and teaching at the University of Chicago; and English composition and early childhood education at Holt, Rinehart & Winston, publishers, where she was a Senior Editor. She has consulted on projects in African education, mathematics for limited English speakers and U.S. public opinion & foreign policy.

Page received her undergraduate degree from Harvard University and her master's degree in teaching from the University of Chicago.

Kole A. Shettima
Director, Africa Office, and Co-Chair, Higher Education Initiative in Africa

Kole Shettima is the Director of the Foundation's Africa Office in Abuja, Nigeria. He is responsible for grant making in the Population & Reproductive Health area, Human Rights and International Justice, and the Partnership for Higher Education in Africa.

Prior to joining the Foundation in 1999, Shettima taught at the University of Maiduguri (Nigeria), the University of Toronto, and at Ohio University. He was State Coordinator, and National Education Coordinator of Women in Nigeria; Coordinator of the Working Group on Nigeria, Toronto; and Co-chair of the Economic Justice Working Group of the Inter-Church Coalition on Africa, Toronto. Shettima is on the board of several organizations including the Center for Democracy and Development. He has published in several academic journals including Africa Development, Review of African Political Economy, African Studies Review and Journal of Asian and African Studies.

Shettima has a Ph.D. from the University of Toronto, a Masters Degree from Ahmadu Bello University in Zaria and his undergraduate degree is from the University of Maiduguri where he has also been a faculty member.

Tatiana Zhdanova
Director, Russia Office and Co-Chair, Higher Education Initiative in Russia

Email: tzhdanov at macfound dot org

Tatiana Zhdanova is the Director of the Russia Office, and Co-Chair of the Higher Education Initiative in Russia.

Prior to joining the Foundation in 1992, Zhdanova held a teaching position at the Moscow State Pedagogical University, specializing in British and U.S. studies, and in the English language. In 1983, she joined the U.S.A. and Canada Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow, where she worked for the following nine years as researcher in the U.S. Foreign Policy Department. While at the institute, her major research interests included U.S. and Soviet/Russian foreign policy, Soviet /Russian-American relations, and international security.

Zhdanova graduated from the Moscow State Pedagogical University, where she majored in linguistics, British and U.S. Studies, and pedagogy. She received her Ph.D. in Political Science from U.S.A. and Canada Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

Sharon Bissell Sotelo
Program Officer

Email: sbissell at macfound dot org

Sharon Bissell is a Program Officer for the Population & Reproductive Health area in the Foundation's Mexico Office. In conjunction with the Mexico Office Director, she manages PRH grantmaking and the Mexico office's overall operations.

Prior to joining MacArthur in 2001, she was Development Coordinator for five years at the Grupo de Información en Reproducción Elegida (GIRE), a leading reproductive and sexual rights organization in Mexico. She also worked as a consultant in project development with numerous Mexican women's health organizations and national networks. Originally from Washington State, Bissell has lived in Mexico and worked in the field of sexual and reproductive health rights since 1996.

Bissell has a Master's Degree in Literature from Tulane University.

Brandee M. Butler
Program Officer for Human Rights and International Justice

Email: bbutler at macfound dot org

Brandee Butler is a Program Officer for Human Rights and International Justice in the Global Security and Sustainability Program.

Before joining the Foundation in 2006, Brandee practiced law at the Alliance for Children's Rights, a legal non-profit organization that helps children in the dependency system gain access to education, health care, and other benefits and services in Los Angeles County.  Brandee was also a volunteer at Save Africa’s Children, a foundation in Los Angeles that supports community-based organizations serving children affected by HIV/AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa.  Prior to practicing at the Alliance, Brandee was awarded the Yale Law School Bernstein Fellowship for International Human Rights and worked on issues of child trafficking at the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) in Libreville, Gabon.  Her work entailed documenting and developing strategies to improve the state protocol for repatriating victims of child trafficking, advocating for bilateral coordination of repatriation/reunification protocols, and developing awareness campaigns on child trafficking and exploitation.  Brandee also practiced civil litigation at a law firm in Los Angeles, and interned at Rape Crisis Center in Cape Town and the Center for the Study of AIDS at the University of Pretoria in South Africa, where she researched and wrote about the legal and human rights implications of South Africa’s AIDS crisis. 

Brandee graduated in 1999 with a B.A. from Harvard University and received a J.D. from Yale Law School in 2002. 

Raoul J. Davion
Program Officer and Co-Chair, Higher Education Initiative in Africa

Email: RDavion at macfound dot org

Raoul Davion is the Program Officer for Human Rights and Africa Higher Education in the Program on Global Security and Sustainability. He represents the Foundation within the Partnership for Higher Education in Africa, a collaboration of the MacArthur, Ford, Carnegie, Rockefeller, Mellon and Hewlett Foundations, and has responsibilities for human rights programming in Mexico, Nigeria, and internationally.

Prior to joining the Foundation in 2001, Davion was based in South Africa with the Institute of Natural Resources, a non-governmental organization in Pietermaritzburg affiliated with the University of Kwa-Zulu Natal. Within the Institute’s focus on the nexus between people and environment, his work addressed rights of access to natural resources by rural communities and the social impacts of large-scale development projects in sub-Saharan Africa within an Environmental Impact Assessment Framework. Before this Davion worked at the African Development Bank, where he interned with the Bank’s Social and Environmental Policy division, and the Center for Neighborhood Technology in Chicago.

In 1993, he obtained his bachelors degree in politics from Princeton University, where he received the Henry Richardson Labouisse fellowship and the Certificate in African Studies. In 1996, he received his MA in sociology from the University of Kwa-Zulu Natal.

Steven J. Gerber
Program Officer

Email: sgerber at macfound dot org

Steven Gerber is a Program Officer in the Human Rights and International Justice area of the Foundation’s Program on Global Security and Sustainability.

Gerber joined the Foundation in August 2006 after spending several years as a communications attorney in the private sector, most recently as senior counsel for legal and regulatory affairs for one of the top ten cable television companies in the U.S.  Prior to his work in the private sector, Gerber worked as Director of the International Criminal Court Project at the World Federalist Association and the Coordinator of the Washington Working Group on the International Criminal Court. He spent eight months as an international lawyer at the Human Rights Chamber for Bosnia and Herzegovina drafting decisions under the European Convention on Human Rights. He also served as acting Legislative Counsel for the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights.

Gerber received his J.D. from the American University Washington College of Law, his M.A. in International Law and Organizations from the American University School of International Service, and his B.A. from The Johns Hopkins University.
 

Milena Novy-Marx
Program Officer

Email: mnovymar at macfound dot org

Milena K. Novy-Marx is a Program Officer in the Global Migration and Human Mobility area of the Foundation's Program on Global Security and Sustainability.

Novy-Marx joined the Foundation in September 2003 after having spent several years as an economic and management consultant in the private sector, where she worked on issues of business strategy, antitrust and competition policy. Prior to her work as a consultant, Novy-Marx served as Economist at the World Bank in Bangkok, Thailand, managing a program on privatization of state-owned enterprises and regulation of services such as energy and telecommunications. She also worked for the Institute for EastWest Studies in Prague on reform of social policy in former Communist countries.

Novy-Marx received her M.P.A. and Ph.D. in Economics and Development from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University and her B.A. in Political Science from Yale University.

Godwin Odo
Program Officer

Email: godyodo at yahoo dot com

Godwin Odo is a Program Officer in the Foundation's Africa Office in Abuja, Nigeria. He is responsible for grantmaking in the Global Challenges area and assists the Country Director in the Population and Reproductive Health area.

Prior to joining the Foundation in February 2005, Odo worked as a Staff Counsel with the Constitutional Rights Project, and as a Program Associate with the Global Rights: Partners for Justice - both in Nigeria. He also was Secretary of the Electoral Reform Network, a coalition of 72 Nigerian NGOs working for a credible and transparent electoral process in the country. Previously, Odo was a researcher with the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Health, and has interned with the Equality Programme of INTERIGHTS in London. He has written widely on the African human rights system, right to health, elections and constitutional reforms.

Odo holds an LL.M in International Human Rights Law from the University of Essex; a Barrister at Law degree from the Nigerian Law School; and an undergraduate law degree from the University of Nigeria, where he was President of the Law Society. He is qualified as a solicitor and advocate of the Supreme Court of Nigeria.