Everette R. H. Thompson is a program officer for the Human Rights program at the Heising-Simons Foundation. Everette has over 20 years of experience in community organizing, organizational development, and movement building. He is a Southerner by birth and choice, and has dedicated his career to strengthening organizational infrastructure in the South. Prior to joining… Continue Reading

Karimah Nonyameko is a program officer with the Human Rights program at the Heising-Simons Foundation. Prior to joining the Foundation, Karimah worked for the National Alliance on Mental Illness South Carolina (NAMISC) as the Ending the Silence Lowcountry Regional Program Manager. Before joining NAMISC, Karimah worked with Encore.org’s Generation-to-Generation Program designing an online learning community… Continue Reading

Gina Peralta is a program officer with the Human Rights program at the Heising-Simons Foundation. Prior to joining the Foundation in 2019, Gina served as the director of site management at The W. Haywood Burns Institute (the Burns Institute), a national nonprofit organization dedicated to advancing racial and ethnic equity in the justice system by… Continue Reading

Yalda Mohammadi is a program associate for Human Rights at the Heising-Simons Foundation. Yalda brings a demonstrated commitment to working and volunteering in the nonprofit sector, with a focus on women’s and immigrants’ rights. Some of her previous roles include teaching at-risk communities with the Institute of Reading Development, mentoring refugee families from Afghanistan, and co-leading statewide capacity… Continue Reading

Claudia Avitia is a program manager for the Human Rights program at the Heising-Simons Foundation. Prior to joining the Foundation in 2017, Claudia provided technical and project coordination support at Esri, an international supplier of geographic information system (GIS) software, web GIS and geodatabase management applications. She also previously worked in human resources and finance.… Continue Reading

Chhandasi Pandya Patel is a program officer for the Human Rights program at the Heising-Simons Foundation, where she focuses on immigrants’ rights grantmaking, and on the criminalization of immigrants. She previously worked on immigrant integration policy and demography at the Migration Policy Institute in Washington DC. Earlier in her career, she served as a program… Continue Reading