About us
Board of Directors and Staff
Debbie Berger, Founder and Board Chair
Debbie Berger was born and raised in Hawaii although she spent much of her youth in Japan. After studying economics and French at Smith College, Ms. Berger worked for JP Morgan in New York, Tokyo and then London during which time she ran interest rate derivatives trading books in a broad variety of markets.
Upon leaving JP Morgan Ms. Berger attended law school in London and subsequently spent several years in the non-profit world, first at Comic Relief (UK) and then at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development where she ran the Client Risk Management Group advising developing Eastern European countries on how to best manage their financial risks as they moved toward a free market system.
In 2004 Ms. Berger founded Unbound Philanthropy. Based in New York, the foundation promotes the ideal of self-determination by working to equalize the distribution of opportunities in refugee and immigrant populations worldwide. In 2007 she returned to Hawaii and founded The Learning Coalition or TLC. TLC's goal is to assist Hawaii’s public schools by building and strengthening a grass roots movement around their transformation into world class institutions of 21st century learning.
Bill Reeves, Founder and Board Member
William Reeves is a director and co-founder of BlueCrest Capital Management Ltd. Based in London, BlueCrest manages investments for a predominantly institutional investor base across 15 diverse funds. Until April 2000, when he left to establish BlueCrest, Mr. Reeves was a Managing Director at J.P. Morgan in London and head of macro strategy and trading within the proprietary trading group. Prior to that, Mr. Reeves was a fund manager at Salomon Brothers Asset Management Limited and at Fisher Francis Trees and Watts, with responsibility for managing leveraged capital. He has also worked for JP Morgan New York where, from 1991 to 1993, he was a Vice President in charge of a team managing the company's leveraged multi-currency proprietary investment portfolio. Mr. Reeves is a US Trustee of the Children's Investment Fund Foundation. He holds an MA in Philosophy from New York University and a BA in English from Yale University. Mr. Reeves was born in Honolulu and raised in Richmond, Virginia where his parents were both educators.
Richard Graham
Richard Graham joined the Board of Unbound Philanthropy in 2008. After studying social anthropology at Manchester University, Richard worked with a local NGO on a project on the Egyptian/Sudanese border supporting nomadic pastoralists to adjust to the flooding of their summer pastures after the construction of the High Dam at Aswan. He returned to the UK to run campaigns for Survival International, a human rights organization championing the rights of indigenous people. Richard then took up the post of Relief Coordinator for Oxfam in Sudan, running humanitarian aid programs for both drought and conflict-affected communities in Darfur and Southern Sudan. He left this post to work on Oxfam’s humanitarian program in Afghanistan, and then to coordinate Oxfam Australia’s humanitarian response to the drought in East Africa.
Since then, Richard has worked at Comic Relief, first as a Grants Officer, and now as Head of International Grants. He has overall responsibility for the development and implementation of Comic Relief’s grants strategy. This includes allocating grants worth about £30 million a year, looking for new and innovative ways to create change, ensuring the portfolio performs to a high standard, and driving a robust approach to monitoring, evaluation and learning. He is also responsible for bringing the lessons from grant making to bear upon Comic Relief’s policy, advocacy and communications work.
Richard’s voluntary positions have included a spell on the BBC Appeals Advisory Committee, trusteeship of Creative Exchange, and YCare International and Unbound Philanthropy, being an advisory board member of the London School of Economics’ ‘Non Governmental Public Action’ program.
Hilary Weinstein
Hilary A. Weinstein has served as a Board Member for Unbound Philanthropy since its inception in 2004. She currently serves as Vice President of the Community Preservation Corporation (CPC), a nonprofit community development lending consortium sponsored by 80 New York area banks and insurance companies. CPC has invested seven billion dollars into the development of affordable housing in low and moderate income communities of New York since 1974. Ms. Weinstein joined CPC in 2001, after relocating from Austin, Texas where she served as Director of Development for the Austin Housing Authority. She received a Masters of Public Administration in Housing and Urban Development from Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government in 2000.
Prior to the Kennedy School, Ms. Weinstein worked in Washington D.C. for nine years – in the roles of Chief of Staff and Legislative Director to Congressman Jesse L. Jackson, Jr. (2 nd C.D.-IL), Legislative Director and Counsel to the National Rainbow Coalition, and Contract Attorney at the law firm of Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer and Feld. In addition to the M.P.A., Ms. Weinstein holds a Bachelors of Arts (1986) from Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts and a Juris Doctor (1989) from Southern Methodist University School of Law in Dallas, Texas. Born in Boston, Massachusetts and raised in San Antonio, Texas, she currently resides in Manhattan.
Kiki Schaefer, Board Member
After graduating from SUNY Purchase in 1986 with a BFA in Modern Dance, Ms. Schaefer performed and studied in NYC with modern dance greats Mel Wong, Larry Clark, Jennifer Muller, and Ron Brown. From 1987 – 1991, Ms. Schaefer performed with Jean Erdman and the Theater of the Open Eye as dancer, and later also served as Project Producer. In 1989, Ms. Schaefer returned to her native Honolulu to teach dance (both modern and hula) for one year at Iolani School. In 1995, she earned a Master of Science in Arts Administration from Boston University.
Ms. Schaefer’s passion for building community grass roots member driven non-profit organizations provided focus on insuring arts programming in educational curriculum and most recently in the development of youth and adult lacrosse leagues in both Rhode Island and Hawaii.
Ms. Schaefer has a passion for building community grassroots, member-driven non-profit organizations. Past projects have focused on promoting arts programming in educational curricula. Most recently, Ms. Shaefer has developed youth and adult lacrosse leagues in both Rhode Island and Hawaii.
In 2002, Ms. Schaefer returned to Honolulu, Hawaii with her family. Since 2006, Ms. Schaefer has worked with Punahou School as the Director of Alumni Relations. In this position, Ms. Schaefer is tasked with affecting and engaging 24,000 Punahou Alumni throughout the world to create opportunities to further lifelong relationships with the School and each other.
Taryn Higashi, Executive Director
Taryn Higashi became Unbound Philanthropy’s first Executive Director in June 2008. From 1997 to 2008, Ms. Higashi worked at the Ford Foundation, where she managed the Migrant and Refugee Rights Portfolio and also served, from 2002, as Deputy Director of the Human Rights Unit. In 2006, Ms. Higashi received the Standing Up for Justice Award from the National Korean American Service & Education Consortium and YKASEC-- Empowering the Korean American Community of New York City. In 2008, Ms. Higashi received a 40th Anniversary Community Change Champion Award from the Center for Community Change and was honored by Grantmakers Concerned with Immigrants and Refugees (GCIR) for her contributions to GCIR and to the field of immigrant-related grantmaking. Also in 2008, Ms. Higashi received a Human Rights Visionary Award from the Border Network for Human Rights and an award from the National Immigration Law Center for exemplary, long-term dedication and support to advance immigrants’ rights. In 2009, Ms. Higashi was a co-recipient with Geri Mannion of the Carnegie Corporation of New York of the Robert V. Scrivner Award for Creative Grantmaking from the Council on Foundations. From 1999 to 2008, Ms. Higashi served as a board member of GCIR, where she was co-chair from 1999-2005. Before joining the Ford Foundation, Ms. Higashi was a program officer at The New York Community Trust, where she coordinated the Fund for New Citizens. She has also worked as a staff attorney and program coordinator for Safe Horizons in New York City, and as an associate at the law firm O'Melveny & Myers. Ms. Higashi is a graduate of George Washington University Law Center and received her BA from the University of California at San Diego.
Tony Tate, Program Officer, International Programs
Tony Tate began working with Unbound Philanthropy as a program officer in January 2009. His work at Unbound focuses primarily on managing the migrant children and youth and migrant women and girls portfolios. Before joining Unbound, Tony worked for seven years as a researcher at Human Rights Watch, first as their in-country researcher in Burundi, later as the Africa researcher in the Children’s Rights Division. He investigated and published reports on human rights violations in numerous countries in central, eastern and southern Africa. Prior to working at Human Rights Watch, Tate was a case manager at the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. Together with senior trial team members, he helped successfully prosecute two Rwandans for genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. Tony began his career focused on Africa as a Peace Corps volunteer in the Comoros Islands. He holds a J.D. from the City University of New York School of Law, an M.A. in international affairs and certificate in African Studies from Columbia University, and a B.A. from the George Washington University. Tony is a member of the advisory committee of the Children’s Rights Division of Human Rights Watch and the Board of Visitors of CUNY School of Law.