Kopernik

Hiromi is in charge of the Kopernik Japan Secretariat.  Prior to joining Kopernik she was engaged in various organizing committees & secretariats for international sports events and expositions as a liaison officer, event planner/operator and PR officer. She also worked as a freelance Japanese/English/French interpreter and translator in business, entertainment and diplomatic areas. Hiromi holds a B.A. from the University of the Sacred Heart.

Deni was born in Jakarta but raised in Padang, West Sumatra. He lived in Aceh for six years after the 2004 tsunami, working with local and international NGOs in the fields of livelihoods and community development, agriculture,  agroforestry, cooperatives, permaculture systems, health and disaster risk reduction. He also worked for one year in West Sumatra on a disaster risk reduction project following an earthquake in the region. Deni is a member of the Disaster Forum in West Sumatra and participated in the emergency response to the 2009 earthquake in West Sumatra and the 2010 tsunami and earthquake in the Mentawai Islands.

Alex was born and raised in Pontianak, West Borneo. He started working with non-profit organizations in 1996 while based in Kupang, East Nusa Tenggara, Indonesia. Since then, Alex has worked in a variety of project administrator and management positions, and most recently has been working in the field as a community development organizer in Tianyar Village, Karangasem District, Bali. He graduated from Kupang’s Widya Mandira University in Business Management. He is married with two daughters.

With a passion for community development, Monica feels honored to work with Kopernik, an organisation she believes will bring her to the dream of making the world a better place to live in. She graduated from University of South Australia, a school affiliated with Taylor's University Malaysia, with a B.A in Communication and Media Management. Monica has experience in broadcasting and has volunteered with a local NGO and Microfinance Institution in Bali as an assistant field officer. Additionally, Monica worked as a Creative Intern for MTV Indonesia, publishing several episodes of music television shows, and is secretary for Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA) for Bali region.

Tomo Hamakawa is currently based in Japan and has worked for international and local development NGOs across Asia and Africa. Most recently, he worked for the Children's Investment Fund Foundation as a Performance Measurement and Effectiveness Manager based in India first and then London. Tomo has a BA in Social Anthropology from Harvard College, a Master in Public Policy from the Harvard Kennedy School, and was a fellow in the Asia Pacific Leadership Program at the East-West Center in Hawaii. He also currently serves as an Assistant Professor with the Global Health Leadership Program at the University of Tokyo.

Scott Guggenheim is the senior social policy adviser for the AusAID-Indonesia Partnership Program and former lead social scientist for East Asia and Pacific at the World Bank. His main focus during the past twenty-five years has been the use of social policy and analysis to help development agencies improve the quality of their operations.

Scott was instrumental in the shift to better integration of social development in the World Bank structure and the architect of many large-scale community development programs. Of note, these include the Kecamatan Development Program, a $1.3 billion community development program covering 34,000 villages across Indonesia; the National Emergency Solidarity and Employment project in Afghanistan, which was the first community development and emergency public works program after the bombing; and the Empowerment of Female-Headed Household (PEKKA) program which supports advocacy and micro-finance for poor widows in conflict areas across Indonesia. Scott has a Ph.d. in Social Anthropology from Johns Hopkins University. He lives in Jakarta, Indonesia and doesn't sleep much.

Adam Kilgour is Managing Director of public and corporate affairs firm Diplomacy Pty Limited. He is a founding director of the Climate Institute and Chairman of Stirling Henry Global Migration. Adam has had a distinguished career as a political and corporate affairs adviser. He has been an adviser to Victorian and Commonwealth Government Cabinet Ministers. Adam also founded public affairs firm CPR and was its Executive Chairman for 17 years. Adam has also been a Managing Director of the ASX listed Photon Group. Adam is a regular panellist on the ABC 702 Spin Doctors segment and a constant commentator on politics and corporate life in Australia.

David Madden is an entrepreneur who has been at the forefront of using technology for social change. He is a co-founder of Avaaz.org, the world's largest online political movement with more than ten million members operating in 14 languages. David is also a co-founder of Australia's GetUp!, an internationally recognized social movement with more members than all the country's political parties combined. He is also the co-founder of Purpose, a company that uses technology to mobilize citizens and consumers to help solve some of the world's biggest problems. David's work has been recognized in publications such as The New York Times and The Economist and he was, together with Jeremy Heimans, named one of the "Top 10 People who are changing the world of the Internet and Politics" by the World E-Government Forum.

David started his career with Inspire!, the online foundation behind the award-winning service ReachOut.com. He has played executive roles in technology companies dstore, Peek and Jetsetter, and has consulted to the World Bank and the UNDP. David has a Masters in Public Policy from Harvard and degrees in Law and Arts from the University of New South Wales in Sydney. He is the co-author of Imagining Australia: Ideas for Our Future (Allen & Unwin).

Richard Manning is a governance and community development expert and has worked in Indonesia for more than 22 years.   He served as district administrator of 3 districts in Timor Leste with responsibility for the overall management of local government and security services. Richard has extensive knowledge of Indonesian government structures, processes and access to a vast network of government officials at national, provincial and district levels.  He has extensive practical understanding of governance issues (e.g. management of local government, elections, management of security forces, etc) at all levels from communities to national government resulting from work with international NGOs and multilateral agencies.

Nigel is Technical Evangelist and Product Manager with the Microsoft Public Safety Initiative. Prior to joining the Vine team Nigel led Microsoft's research on humanitarian collaboration, working in Afghanistan and elsewhere on innovative collaboration technologies to make communities more resilient and development more effective.

Nigel is an advisor to the ICT4Peace foundation and the Institute for State Effectiveness. Before joining Microsoft Nigel worked for the United Nations, most recently as a global Pandemic contingency planner for the UN System and before that with the UN Joint Logistics Center where he was deployed to Iraq, the 2004 Tsunami in Indonesia, the Sudan and a number of other crises. At UNJLC Nigel managed the mapping and information management teams and led logistics coordination in the field for major emergencies. Nigel has a PhD in Complex Adaptive Systems from the Australian National University, has worked as a researcher and lobbyist, founded technology startups, received a number of patents, and has jumped off way too many cliffs over the years.

Lisa Witter is an experienced executive, social entrepreneur, communications strategist, writer, and social commentator with expertise in philanthropy, politics, women’s issues, health, social innovation, new media, international development, corporate social responsibility, and leveraging pop culture for social change. She frequently gives workshops and lectures in these areas for the public, private, and not-for-profit sectors. In 2010, she was named one of 197 Young Global Leaders by the World Economic Forum.

As chief strategy officer of Fenton, the largest public interest communications firm in the country, she heads-up the firm’s work in innovation and global expansion/partnership and co-leads the practices in women’s issues, health, social entrepreneurship and global affairs for clients such as The Elders, Atlantic Philanthropies, Nobel Peace prize winner Wangari Maathai, International Criminal Court, William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, National Geographic, The American Medical Association, David and Lucille Packard Foundation, Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Half the Sky transmedia project, and Stonyfield Farms.

She serves as an expert panelist for the Center for Disease Control and Prevention as well as the Institute of Medicine on violence prevention. She also co-leads the Clinton Global Initiative’s Action Network on Women and Girls.

Witter is co-author with Lisa Chen of The She Spot: Why Women are the Market for Changing the World and How to Reach Them. She is a co-founder of the award-winning SheSource.org and was honored as an outstanding activist and expert on women’s issues by Oxygen.com in 2000. She co-founded two programs to encourage people to run for political office: Emerge and the Institute for a Democratic Future.

She has appeared on NPR, MSNBC, FOX News, CBS Early Show, and O, The Oprah Magazine, and has been published in numerous publications including Newsday, The Seattle Times, The Huffington Post, and AlterNet. In 2004, Witter was a contestant on the Showtime reality show, “American Candidate.”