Rebecca Snavely: Executive Director / Co-Founder

The executive director and co-founder of Action Kivu, Rebecca is a co-founder of Vital Casting, working as a casting director with the mission of inclusion and representation. Also a freelance writer, Rebecca worked for two years as a Web producer and staff writer for Los Angeles Times entertainment.  She has traveled with documentary teams to Ethiopia, Kosovo, Serbia, and to report on Action Kivu’s work in Congo in order to share the stories of humanity’s connectedness. She co-founded Action Kivu with the ethos that the Congolese have the knowledge and skills for what they need, but have been systematically raped of the necessary resources through international corruption and conflict. She operates according to the Aboriginal activists group’s motto that we are not here to help others, but that our liberation is bound up with others’. (See full quote here.) Raised in Oregon, Rebecca has adopted Los Angeles as home.

Catherine Haight: Co-Founder

Catherine, a co-founder of Action Kivu, is a film editor who has worked on multiple television series and feature films. Projects she has been involved with include Transparent, Puzzle, Troop Zero, New Girl, and Mozart in the Jungle. Cate was drawn to the rich and diverse stories of the people of Congo and hopes that through Action Kivu’s work the broader world might hear those stories. Raised in New Hampshire, she makes her home in Los Angeles.

Mo Hyman: Board Member / Treasurer

As the co-founder and Executive Director of College Access Plan, a non-profit that prepares underserved students to succeed in college, Mo brings to Action Kivu’s work in Congo her expertise in fundraising and her core belief that all students, regardless of socio-economics, geography, or background, have the right to equal access to education.  Mo obtained her MA in English from the University of New Mexico and a Masters of Public Administration from USC. Eight summers leading adventure trips for high schoolers at a camp based in Michigan fueled her love of nontraditional education; nearly two decades in the classroom as a community college professor at Pierce College and Pasadena City College in the Los Angeles area built her passion for educational equality and access.

Alyssa Newman: Board Member

Alyssa is the director of responsible sourcing for Rivian, an electric vehicle maker. Prior to Rivian, she led responsible minerals and community resilience across Google’s worldwide operations, products, and supply chain. With over 20 years of experience in the energy and environmental sector, Alyssa has worked in a broad range of Corporate Social Responsibility functions (private sector, government, and global nonprofits). She supports long term strategic program development and use of innovative tech to drive action, most notably the award winning VR film and campaign Journey of Gold, and the short doc Ukweli. She co-founded Congo Power to address equity issues in mineral supply chains, and bring the benefits of the clean energy revolution to emerging and conflict economies. She's an advisor and board member to several nonprofits (Native Renewables, Action Kivu, Human Needs Project, and We Players) working at the intersection of conflict-human rights-climate change-conservation. When she's not working on humanitarian causes, she's running-biking-swimming-adventuring, producing stories, or working in her garden.

Rebecca Carroll: Advisory Board Member

Rebecca Carroll is a cultural critic and Editor of Special Projects at WNYC, where she develops, produces and hosts a broad array of multi-platform content, including live events, podcasts, and REBEL, her weekly conversation series on race and culture for Morning Edition. Rebecca is also the author of several interview-based books about race and blackness in America, including the award-winning Sugar in the Raw, and her personal essays, cultural commentary and opinion pieces have been published widely. Her memoir, Surviving the White Gaze, is forthcoming from Simon & Schuster.

Kevin Sites: Advisory Board Member

Award-winning backpack journalist and author Kevin Sites traded a high-profile career as a network news producer and correspondent (ABC, NBC, CNN) to become the first Internet correspondent for Yahoo! News. In his groundbreaking Hot Zone project, he covered nearly every war in the world in one year earning multiple awards, including the 2006 Daniel Pearl Award for Courage and Integrity in Journalism. While reporting on the war in Congo he met Amani Matabaro, and later introduced Catherine and Rebecca to Amani, the visionary community leader and founding director of Action Kivu.

He’s the author of three books on war, all published by Harper Collins imprint, Harper Perennial. The latest, Swimming with Warlords: A Dozen-Year Journey Across the Afghan War, was released October 2014. He’s also the author of, In the Hot Zone: One Man, One Year, Twenty Wars and The Things They Cannot Say: Stories Soldiers Won’t Tell You About What They’ve Seen, Done or Failed to Do in War.

In 2010, Sites was chosen as a Nieman Journalism Fellow at Harvard University and in 2012, he was selected as a Dart Fellow in Journalism and Trauma at Columbia University. He’s currently an Associate Professor of Practice at the Journalism and Media Studies Centre at the University of Hong Kong as well as contributor to many print and online publications including, Vice Magazine, Aeon, Men’s Health, Parade and Salon.