Jody is a feminist activist, strategist, researcher, and writer, driven by a commitment to creating a world of safety, dignity of freedom for all girls and young people. Jody is the Director of Our Collective Practice, building on decades of work to move power and resources to girls and young feminists. She also co-leads the With and For Girls Collective, a donor organizing collaborative advocating for more and better resources to support girls’ power.

 

Jody has over 25 years of experience working across regions, movements, and sectors to advance social justice, transformative philanthropy, and girls’ and young feminists’ rights. For a decade, she led the largest philanthropic initiative focused on supporting girls’ rights at the NoVo Foundation and more recently co-led the Global Resilience Fund, a participatory fund that resources young feminists working in crisis contexts. Jody’s work has spanned the globe and she has lived and worked across the East and Horn of Africa, Togo, and the US, holding a range of roles in humanitarian contexts, philanthropy, direct services, and as a youth worker supporting girls’ power building. Jody is one of the co-creators of the Stories of Girls' Resistance, a feminist storytelling project dedicated to documenting a true recount of history grounded in the role of girls’ resistance across social movements. A staunch believer in the power of girls, Jody got her start as a youth activist and spent her early career working with systems impacted young people where her commitment to supporting their resistance, power and dreams was rooted and has remained at the center of all her work.

 

Jody holds a M.S. in Social Work from Columbia University. She currently serves on the advisory hub of the Children’s Rights Innovation Fund and was a founding Board Member of the Girls First Fund and Purposeful.