Board of Directors

Catherine’s interest in educational issues and empowering girls defines her career and volunteer involvement. Catherine has served on the board of Pacific Crest School, a Montessori middle school in Seattle, since 1990. Her role with the school has included serving for ten years as its Assistant Director in charge of finance, human resources and admissions. Catherine currently serves as the school’s Admissions Director. Catherine is also a Board Member and Vice President of the Girl Scouts of Western Washington.Catherine attended YaleCollege and Northwestern University School of Law. She began her legal career as a corporate lawyer at a large Seattle law firm specializing in mergers and acquisitions. After the arrival of her two children, she began a private practice advising post-IPO public companies on securities law compliance and reporting. Catherine retired from the practice of law in 2006.

Mike was an executive for 32 years with Exxon Mobil Corporation, one of the largest companies in the world with over $25 billion in revenues and over 50,000 employees. Traveling and living around the globe, Mike has developed and overseen multi-million dollar oil and gas projects, and managed dozens of multinational teams.Mike also has been an active volunteer. He previously served 10 years as President of the Kingwood (Texas) Volunteer Fire Department, and he chaired Exxon’s Houston-Area United Way Campaign. In 2003, he moved with his wife to Crested Butte, Colorado, where he has continued serving on a number of boards, including Adaptive Sports Center, which enhances the lives of people with disabilities by promoting and providing successful outdoor adventure activities and experiential education. He assumed the position of Board President in 2008. Further, Mike serves on the Crested Butte Union Congregational Church Council. Mike started supporting “Journey with an Afghan School” several years ago. In addition to raising funds to build and supply two schools in Afghanistan, he has engaged his entire community in building bridges of understanding between Afghans and Americans. In the fall of 2008, he traveled to Afghanistan with a team from Crested Butte to attend the dedication of a new school for 1,500 girls.

Eliza is a parent of two children living in Seattle. She has always had a passion for education and has dedicated much of her time as a community volunteer for the Pacific Crest School, a PK-8 Montessori school. She is a member of the Board of Directors of the school and has been instrumental in transforming its fundraising structure. Her belief in combining clear communication with community building as critical aspects of fundraising has increased the fundraising revenues of the school significantly. In her capacity as a board member she has been involved with strategic planning, fundraising, and reviewing the finances of the school.

Eliza has a degree in Art from the University of Vermont and has worked in many different mediums including fabric, metal and glass.

Over the years, Carolyn has built up an extensive career in the direct marketing arena. She has provided leadership and direction for both corporations and not-for-profit boards. Carolyn was Vice President of the Direct Marketing Group for US Bank Corporation in Minneapolis and a Director of Personal Card Marketing for American Express in New York. In these leadership positions, she created business teams, launched new programs, developed annual and strategic plans, managed complex projects and managed and trained staff.

In 1998, Carolyn retired as a corporate marketing executive. She traded in her pumps for running shoes to better keep up with her two daughters. Today, Carolyn is happily involved with her family as a family manager and community activist. Over the past 10 years her involvement has included the Vice President of the Aspen Youth Center Board, Vice President of Sedgwick Street Fund, member of the Aspen Chapel Board of Trustees (which serves people of multiple faiths in the community), Co-President and member of the Aspen Middle School Parent Council. She currently volunteers her time within the community especially for the Aspen Middle School, Aspen School District, and Aspen Chapel. Carolyn has also been an Au Pair Community Coordinator, Eco Education board member and Voyager Outward Bound School Trustee.

Carolyn received her MBA from the Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University in 1996 and earned a BA degree in Psychology from Northwestern in 1981. For the past few years, she has served as “Journey with an Afghan School’s” lead in the Aspen community, helping to link families and students to their sister school in Afghanistan.

Dr. Suzanne Griffin has eight years of current experience developing, managing and leading training, education and medical programs in Afghanistan. She also served in Afghanistan in the US Peace Corps. Dr. Griffin has moderate fluency in spoken Dari.

Dr.Griffin’s professional experience includes 29 years of leadership in higher education with expertise in strategic planning, program development and management, training, building partnerships and serving culturally diverse populations. Her career also includes 25 years of successful grant proposal development for humanitarian agencies, state education departments, community colleges and universities.

Dr. Griffin’s academic work has focused on teaching English as a Second/Foreign Language (ESL/EFL) and training TESL/TEFL teachers and literacy teachers. She has published textbooks and co-produced video programs for ESD/EFL learners. Her doctoral dissertation focused on the interaction between learners’ perceptual modes and the media of instruction in the acquisition of literacy among adult learners who are not literate in their native language. Her findings had implications for the teaching methodologies used in instructing illiterate refugees in the United States.

Born in Birmingham, Alabama, Angi grew up in a family with a heart for social justice. Her father, Federal District Judge Hobart Grooms, was a key player in the desegregation movement, desegregating all public facilities, including schools, in Alabama. Later, in an at-large election in a city of 400,000, Angi was the second woman and youngest person ever elected to the Birmingham City Council, where she served two terms. Among other appointments, she also served as Chair of the Citizen’s Advisory Board that spearheaded the development of a new community school system for adult education. In addition, she started “Today in Birmingham,” a public service TV interview program that ran for 12 years. Moreover, Angi is a businesswoman. She owned a commercial business, which, at that time was the largest independent interior design business in Alabama: Southeastern Interior Concepts. She also sat on the Birmingham Chamber of Commerce Executive Committee.

A recipient of scholarships from The Miss Alabama and Miss America Pageants, which helped pay for college, Angi received a Bachelor of Interior Design from Auburn University’s School of Architecture. While Miss Alabama, Angi was selected for the first Miss America-USO Tour in South Vietnam, where she and five other women entertained 80,000 troops and visited 18 hospitals. Subsequently, she was appointed by the Secretary of Defense to the Defense Advisory Committee for Women in the Armed Services.

Angi has collected money and supplies to help “Journey with an Afghan School” build a school for over 1,000 girls in Afghanistan, and she has nurtured a strong relationship between her California community and the Afghans.

Around the first anniversary of September 11, 2001, Dave and his wife, Joyce Manchester, sought opportunities to support education, especially for women, in Afghanistan, in part to honor their good friends who were on the plane that struck the Pentagon. They also believe that investment in education in Afghanistan, Pakistan and elsewhere is critical to countering the appeal of extremists and to demonstrating that Americans are compassionate and caring people. This led them to be found members of an NGO called Our Voices Together in 2005, and later the Safer World Fund at Global Giving Foundation.

In 2007 Dave and his wife started the Afghan Education Giving Circle of Northern Virginia, under which they collaborated with friends and colleagues to make large grants to educational projects in Afghanistan. Focusing on projects that had the clear support of their communities, and offer opportunities to develop a long-term relationship with the community, their first grant was to “Journey with an Afghan School.”

For the past 19 years, Dave’s work has focused specifically on the health and employment of people with disabilities. In his current position at Mathematica Policy Research, he directs a center that encompasses 35+ researchers with advance degrees who devote most of their effort to disability policy research on a wide array of topics, primarily for federal agencies, in one of the country’s leading policy research firms. Previously, Dave had faculty positions in Economics at the University of Maryland, Dartmouth College and the University of British Columbia. He has a Ph.D and M.S. in Economics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a B.A. in Russian Language and Literature from Dartmouth College.