LEADERSHIP TEAM
Nakisha M. Lewis
Nakisha M. Lewis
Nakisha M. Lewis (She, Her, Hers) is a Black lesbian feminist and lifelong advocate for racial and gender justice and equity. She has spent more than twenty years mobilizing for racial justice, women’s rights and LGBTQ equality. As the President & CEO of Breakthrough, she spearheads the organization’s work to amplify the voices and experiences of marginalized people and transform dominant narratives in media and popular culture.
Nakisha is a nationally and internationally recognized leader in the gender justice movement and the Movement for Black Lives. She is the former Program Officer and Senior Strategist for Safety at the Ms. Foundation for Women, where she created a national portfolio for women and girls through a Black, queer, feminist lens, and is a chief architect of the philanthropic movement to invest in women and girls of color. Nakisha most recently served as the Director of Civil, Human, and Women's Rights at the AFL-CIO, where she led the labor movement’s efforts to advocate for the rights of historically marginalized working people. In 2016, she co-founded the #SheWoke Committee, the catalyst for the Congressional Caucus on Black Women and Girls. She is a Board Officer for Power Rising, a national network and annual convening of Black women, girls, femmes, and allies.
A gifted storyteller and impact strategist, Nakisha has been at the vanguard of narrative and cultural change for decades. She has conceptualized, implemented, and directed game-changing arts installations and multimedia campaigns in partnership with the New Museum, #DefendBlackWomanhood, #BlackLivesMatter, and #SayHerName. Through her storytelling work, she amplifies the voices of people too often invisibilized and unheard, addressing systemic harms and shifting narratives in all the spaces where they exert power, from media and popular culture to philanthropy and politics.
Nakisha has served on the boards of Resource Generation, Emerging Practitioners In Philanthropy, Project Hip Hop, and New York Blacks In Philanthropy. A prolific reader and writer, she is the creator of Sappho’s Reads: A Black Lesbian Book Club and is published in several periodicals and nonprofit journals, including The Chronicle of Philanthropy, Huffington Post and NBC News.
BOARD OF DIRECTORS
SUNIL SAVKAR
Board Chair
Sunil Savkar is a partner with the New York office of Debevoise & Plimpton LLP. Sunil focuses his practice on complex debt finance transactions. He primarily advises private equity firms, credit funds and their respective portfolio companies in a broad range of domestic and international financing transactions, including leveraged buyout financings, direct lending, mezzanine and subordinated debt financings and high yield offerings. His transactions include large cap as well as middle market financings in a variety of industries such as technology, consumer and healthcare. Sunil has a JD from Columbia University School of Law and a Master’s of Engineering and BS from Cornell University.
SUNIL SAVKAR
Chairman of the Board
MAGGIE BANGSER
Maggie works with social justice initiatives and their funders to design, plan, implement and evaluate the change they seek to create. She offers technical expertise in the rights of vulnerable groups and strategies to reach them based on over twenty years living and working in East and Southern Africa. Maggie founded and directed Women’s Dignity in Tanzania which re-framed the global conceptualization of obstetric fistula in a human rights context. Prior to that she was a Program Officer at the Ford Foundation, and at the International Women’s Health Coalition. Maggie holds a Master’s degree in Public and Private Management from Yale University. Her Bachelor’s degree is in Political Science from Amherst College, from which she received an Honorary Doctorate in 2009.
MAGGIE BANGSER
Treasurer
Marilia Bezerra
Marilia serves as Managing Partner of CARE Enterprises Inc., a for-profit subsidiary of CARE focused on creating economic opportunity for people experiencing poverty globally.
Prior to CEI she founded and lead Aldeia Works, a boutique consulting firm focused on supporting philanthropists, corporations and nonprofits in the creation of meaningful social impact. Before Aldeia, Marilia helped develop partnerships and managed the rapid growth of Purpose.com, a company using new media to deploy the collective power of millions of citizens and consumers to help solve some of the world’s biggest problems. Previously, she was a member of the executive leadership at the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI), serving as the Director of Commitments. During her five years working with President Clinton, she took a central role in building the organization from its start-up phase to the successful catalyst for action and global convening body it is today. In New York, Bezerra also served as the business and financial manager for AEA Consulting, a management consulting company with a client base of leading nonprofit cultural organizations throughout Europe, the Americas, and Asia.
Bezerra received a master's of science degree (with distinction) in global affairs from New York University in 2007. Bezerra received her law degree from the Federal University of Ceará in 1996. Before graduating she founded the Andanças Art School, an institution dedicated to providing art education and bridging the gap between children from the most privileged areas and children in the slums of her native Fortaleza. During her early career, she also deeply engaged in political activism as a student union leader and manager of political and advocacy campaigns.
MARILIA BEZERRA
MALLIKA DUTT
Founding President Emeritus
Mallika Dutt is a leading innovator in human rights, multimedia, and culture change. She combines her creative advocacy for social justice with a spiritual healing practice that connects planet, people, and purpose. Her work inspires a diverse community of change-makers dedicated to replacing the social norms that perpetuate inequality and violence with the bedrock value of respect for all.
Mallika is the founder of Breakthrough and served as President and CEO of the organization from its founding in 2000 through early 2017.
Mallika has worked for more three decades to expand and deliver civil rights, economic and environmental justice, progressive public policy, and global health.
Her achievements include co-founding Sakhi for South Asian Women, initiating the Ford Foundation’s work on police reform in India, and acting as Associate Director of the Center for Women’s Global Leadership at Rutgers University that led the global movement that recognizes women’s rights as human rights, In 2012, Mallika received an honorary doctorate from Mount Holyoke in recognition of her pioneering accomplishments.
Mallika graduated from NYU Law School and holds a Masters in International Affairs and South Asian Studies from Columbia University as well as an A.B. in International Affairs from Mount Holyoke College. She recently received a certificate in shamanic studies and energy medicine from The Four Winds.
MALLIKA DUTT
Founding President Emeritus
MICHAEL J. HIRSCHHORN
Michael Hirschhorn is the founder and CEO of mebl | Transforming Furniture. Formerly, from 2008-2015, he was Executive Director of the International Human Rights Funders Group (now Human Rights Funders Network)). From 2003-08, Michael served as Executive Director of the Coro New York Leadership Center and, from 1995-2001, as Executive Director of the Literacy Assistance Center in NYC. From 2001-03, Michael worked as a non-profit strategy consultant, primarily in the fields of education, human rights, and leadership development. Earlier, he was an Assistant to the Chancellor of the NYC Public Schools and a Visiting Non-Profit Executive at Yale’s School of Management. In addition to Breakthrough, Michael serves on the boards of WITNESS, Just Vision, Documented, and several other non-profits and grantmakers focused on human rights, education and art/video for social change. Michael received a BA from Yale University in 1981 and an MBA and MSW from Columbia University in 1989.
MICHAEL J. HIRSCHHORN
DARNELL L. MOORE
Darnell has long been a fan of Breakthrough’s work. He was previously a member of the Breakthrough team as the U.S. office’s Head of Strategy & Programs, before becoming Director of Inclusion Strategy for Content & Marketing at Netflix.
Darnell is an award-winning writer and activist, a leader in the Movement for Black Lives, and a tireless advocate for justice and liberation. He is co-managing editor of The Feminist Wire and the author of No Ashes in the Fire. His writings have appeared on several media platforms, including the Guardian, MSNBC, EBONY, Advocate, and within academic journals.
Darnell has spent the last two decades working in the fields of education, youth programming, community development, and media. All that he has done is organized a singular mission, namely, to do the little he can in community to transform society by ending the intersecting injustices of gender-based violence, racism, LGBTQI discrimination, and the other structural forces that keep people on the margins.
When he is not working, he is likely sitting on his stoop, at all times of the night, laughing with friends or on a plane traveling and wishing he were still on his stoop with his friends.
DARNELL L. MOORE
Secretary