Maria Torres-Springer is the Ford Foundation Center for Social Justice Vice President for US programs. She oversees the foundation’s domestic programming for Civic Engagement and Government, Creativity and Free Expression, Just Cities and Regions, Technology and Society, Future of Work(ers), and Gender, Racial, and Ethnic Justice.

Previously, Maria spent almost 15 years in public service with the City of New York. Maria served as commissioner of the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development, the nation’s largest municipal housing agency.

Afua Atta-Mensah joined the Community Voices Heard team in September 2016 as the Executive Director. Prior to joining as the Executive Director, Afua served on the Community Voices Heard board. From her work in Ghana, West Africa to the urban centers across America, Afua has worked to improve the quality and quantity of fair and equitable housing, defend racial and social justice initiatives, and galvanize support for programs benefiting low-income families.

She was awarded the Fulbright Fellowship in support of her work at the International Federation of Women Attorneys (FIDA) advocating on behalf of indigent women in Ghana. During her tenure at FIDA Afua represented indigent women in court and was a visiting university lecturerat Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology , where she taught a course on women's rights in the context of Ashanti-tribal law.

Afua and her husband are proud residents of Central Harlem. She is the mother of two children and holds a law degree from Fordham Univ. School of Law, and a BA in Sociology and Africana from Trinity College.

Hollie Russon Gilman is a Fellow in the Political Reform program at New America and teaches at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs. She is the author of Democracy Reinvented: Participatory Budgeting and Civic Innovation in the United States. She served in the Obama Administration as the White House Open Government and Innovation Advisor in the Office of Science and Technology Policy. She holds a PhD from Harvard’s Department of Government and a BA in political science from the University of Chicago.

K. Sabeel Rahman is the President of Demos, a think-and-do tank committed to building a more inclusive and equitable democracy and economy. He is also an Associate Professor of Law at Brooklyn Law School, where he teaches constitutional law and administrative law. Rahman is a leading scholar of democracy, law, and inequality, and is the author of Democracy against Domination (2016), which won the American Political Science Association's Dahl Award.