Our Advisory Panel and Partners
Networks of Change is fortunate to work with a team of experts from the media, human rights and legal professions who volunteer their time to guide and advise us. We invite you to meet our Advisory Panel and Partners.
Paul Tooher
former night Managing Editor, The Providence Journal
A career media professional, Paul regularly lends his media development savvy to Networks. Holding a wide variety of journalism positions at The Providence Journal in Rhode Island spanning 35 years, Paul served as their night Managing Editor, producing the daily paper for 17 years, before retiring in 2013. Concurrently, Paul was Editor-at-Large for the Institute for War & Peace Reporting (IWPR), a London-based media development organization. During his 10-plus years with them, Paul edited and syndicated IWPR-produced articles written by local journalists from around the world to over 300 news organizations in the United States. Previously, Paul founded and operated Globalbeat, a groundbreaking syndication service for the Center for War, Peace and News Media, a training program in the Journalism Department at NYU. Paul served as Chair of the New England Society of Newspaper Editors where he organized exchange programs for journalists from Russia and Iran. In 1997 Paul spent a year in Russia to establish a Moscow-based news and advertising exchange program that served regional newspapers throughout the Russian Federation. He has also conducted journalism training programs in Macedonia and Albania. The author of several articles on Russia and India that appeared in newspapers across the U.S, Paul has been awarded fellowships from Pew International Journalism Program and the German Marshall Fund. When he’s not tweeting for Networks or coaching us on developing our Africa Media Matters Program, a radio broadcast providing critical information on the evolving media environment in Africa, Paul may be found traveling with his wife, Nora, visiting their children and grandchildren who live around the world, or walking his gentle-giant dog, Moose, in the woodlands around their home in Massachusetts.
Adrienne van Heteren
Co-founder and Director, Small Media Foundation, London
Adrienne co-founded the Small Media Foundation in London in 2011 to support the free flow of information in closed societies. Adrienne has an extensive and successful track record in media. In 1993 she was one of the founders of Press Now. She has worked in management positions at Open Society Institute’s Network Media Program, the Institute for War and Peace Reporting, the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe, USAID and BBC Media Action across a range of media development projects. Her has worked in the former Yugoslavia, Serbia, Kosovo, Hungary and Russia, and for the past eight years on west Asia. During the Balkan Wars, Adrienne was Director of Development and External Relations for the oppositional underground radio station B92. In late 1997, she worked for OSI Network Media Program from Hungary where she managed projects in over 28 countries, including a special assistance program for independent media in Russia. In 1999 she joined the UN/OSCE mission to Kosovo as Head of Independent Media Development and Donor Relations, working to restore Radio Television Kosovo and rehabilitate the terrestrial transmission network. In 2002 Adrienne moved to Moscow where she worked with the Glasnost Defense Foundation. Following, she joined IWPR in London as Director of Development. In 2006 she helped set up Jadid Media, a multimedia journalism development organisation. Adrienne joined the BBC World Service Trust in 2007 to manage its development activities in west Asia. Five years ago, Adrienne and her team setup an independent organisation supporting freedom of expression.
Sameena Nazir
Strategic Program Advisor
Founder and Executive Director PODA, Pakistan
Sameena is an internationally recognized development expert whose 25-year career includes work at some of the leading global organizations. She spent seven years at Global Rights: Partners for Justice in Washington, DC, as Director of the Women’s Rights Advocacy Program and designed legal literacy projects for women in Afghanistan, Morocco and Yemen. She created their Advocacy Bridge Program, training over 100 human rights defenders to use human rights mechanisms at the UN in New York and Geneva. Before joining Networks of Change as our Strategic Program Advisor in 2018, Sameena was on the Asia/Global Team at the National Endowment for Democracy. Earlier in her career, she was a Senior Researcher at Freedom House in New York City where she conducted a three-year study, Survey of Women’s Rights in the Middle East and North Africa, a comparative analysis of women’s rights in 18 countries. From 2007-2016, she led PODA (Potohar Organization for Development Advocacy), an NGO that promotes education, economic and human rights in rural Pakistan. Under her strategic direction and leadership, PODA has grown into one of the most highly respected groups in Pakistan, known for its cutting-edge work in rural development and women’s rights.Networks of Change is proud to work with PODA as our media partner in Pakistan.Sameena received the 2010 Benazir Bhutto Human Rights Award in Pakistan and InterAction’s 2009 Annual Humanitarian Award in Washington, DC. She was appointed to the Punjab Commission on the Status of Women in 2015 to monitor conditions of women in prisons and shelters. She was Vice President of the Women’s International League for Peace & Freedom in Geneva. She holds an MA in Rural Development from Cornell University in New York, Fellow of Law and MA English Literature degrees from Punjab University and a journalism diploma from the Institute of Journalism in Berlin. She is fluent in English, Punjabi and Urdu.
Stephanie Willman Bordat
Founding Partner MRA, Mobilising for Rights Associates, Morocco
For over two decades Stephanie has led and worked side-by-side with diverse civil society groups, development associations and lawyers across the Maghreb to promote women’s human and legal rights. In 2012, she co-founded MRA (“woman” in Arabic), an international women’s rights organization based in Rabat, Morocco. Her organization collaborates with activists and groups throughout the region to address root causes of discrimination against women. Together, they work for grassroots micro-legal changes in behaviors and practices to support macro-level reform. Stephanie’s expertise centers on human rights education, strategic cause-lawyering, action-research, national law reform and international advocacy. She is often called on to mentor groups in writing shadow reports and provide advocacy leadership, particularly in the use of United Nations mechanism to help groups understand and use international human rights systems and standards in their work.She is a frequent lecturer on women’s legal and human rights, teaches at the university level and has widely published academic articles and opinion pieces on women’s rights issues. She has lived in and worked on violence against women and family law issues with women’s rights organizations in a number of countries in Europe, the Middle East and South Asia.Stephanie was a Fulbright Fellow at the Mohammed V University Law School in Rabat, has both civil and common law degrees from Columbia University in New York and Paris I-Sorbonne law schools, and a degree from Swarthmore College. Following law school, she was an appellate law clerk in the US. She speaks English, French, the Moroccan dialect of Arabic and Spanish. Stephanie’s regional expertise in the Middle East and North Africa is crucial to Networks of Change as we work together with MRA to develop programming in the region.
George Blundall
Training Consultant
George is a clinical social worker and intellectual property attorney with 16 years of experience working in psychiatric hospitals, mental health clinics and social service agencies; and 15 years experience as a career law clerk to a US Circuit Judge at the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. He holds an M.S.W. from the University of Connecticut, a J.D. from Franklin Pierce Law Center, and advanced training certificates in family therapy from Philadelphia Child Guidance Clinic and the Mental Research Institute in Palo Alto, California. He also has been certified as an HIV/AIDS trainer and “trainer of trainers” by the State of Massachusetts. He is a member of the California Bar. George has provided individual and family therapy to patients and their families; trained and supervised other clinicians, students and paraprofessionals; and consulted to schools and social service agencies. He has served on the adjunct faculty of the Boston College School of Social Work, the University of Connecticut School of Social Work and the University of Maine. He developed and implemented HIV/AIDS training programs for employees of a child welfare agency providing adoptive services for children at risk and led the development of agency policies responding to the legal mandate of confidentiality of AIDS status and the ethical mandate of providing information to adoptive parents.At Networks of Change, George provides pro bono oversight to the organization’s training programs for staff and project participants on the psychosocial and sociological effects of massive social disruption, as well as coping mechanisms when working with victims.