We Are Professionals, Entrepreneurs, and Creatives Working for Change
Our Team is an eclectic group of professionals, entrepreneurs, and creatives. Coming from diverse backgrounds and fields, we work together to amplify the impact of your initiative.
Board
Sonia Succar Ferré
Sonia Succar Ferré
Sonia is the President of Futura Climate and a Strategic Advisor for The Adrienne Arsht Rockefeller Foundation Resilience Center. In 2020, Sonia launched the Community Resilience Pod, a mobile 40-foot container that provided food, supplies, and solar-powered WIFI to over 300K people in Florida. The Pod’s success led to a $1.2 million grant to design permanent Resilience Hubs to provide more resources to underserved communities in Miami-Dade County and potentially scale the program. The Resilience Hubs Network was recently launched, which you can read more about here.
Adam Schlenger
Adam Schlenger
Adam’s work is currently focused on the support and development of ocean-based solutions for transitioning to a low carbon economy. As a Founding Partner of the NEXUS Impact Accelerator, he utilizes the power of the NEXUS Global ecosystem to build cross-sector partnerships to accelerate initiatives aligned with the UN SDGs. Additionally, as Co-Chair of the NEXUS Futurism Working Group, he drives social impact in emerging technologies that are poised to significantly alter social, economic, and political conditions worldwide in the next few decades.
Christopher Mackin
Christopher Mackin
Christopher Mackin spent 18 years as a wealth advisor but always had a special connection to the outdoors. His spiritual journey began after a transformative trip to Sedona, leading him to combine his passion for finance and the environment by serving environmentally conscious business owners. He is now a serial entrepreneur, explorer, philanthropist, and Reiki Master, with ventures in investment syndicates, retreat hosting, sustainable water technology, and ocean health. His purpose is to make the world a better place, but starts first with himself everyday.
Team
Desiree Tavera
Desiree Tavera
Raised between the US and Peru, Desiree Tavera brings together a wealth of experience in nonprofits, tech public policy, disaster relief, and event production, working for major companies like Hotels.com, HotelPlanner.com, and Airbnb. An avid surfer and environmental advocate, she embarked on relief missions in Haiti, Nepal, Greece, and Peru. Realizing the importance of proactive development, Desiree founded Far Away Projects in 2015, supporting global social impact programs aligned with the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Through an incubator model, her organization accelerates early-stage activists and organizations. Desiree also advises Vesta, a coastal carbon capture technology company, and serves on the board of The Future of Cities, promoting sustainable urban futures.
Charlie Coleman
Charlie Coleman
Charlie Coleman is a seasoned professional in the for-profit and nonprofit spaces. As Director of Operations at Far Away Projects he brings a wealth of experience to nonprofit management and has a passion for driving impactful change. Drawing upon his expertise in operational strategy, process optimization, and team leadership, Charlie ensures the smooth functioning of Far Away Projects. His dedication to efficiency and his knack for quick and effective problem-solving contribute to the organization’s ability to support worldwide grassroots initiatives. Charlie splits his time between remote communities in the forests of western Canada and in the high-plateau desert of central Mexico learning about plant and animal husbandry.
Annie Coleman
Annie Coleman
Annie Coleman is a holistic project manager with communications strategy, large-scale event production, and community real estate experience. She is skilled in systems planning, strategic problem solving, facilitation, and interpersonal relations. Annie is currently the Communications Director of Far Away Projects and is based in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. When she isn’t producing gatherings for Burning Man Project in her downtime, you can often find her foraging for rocks, climbing some trees, or cooking up a saucy meal.
Thabo Abbate
Thabo Abbate
Thabo has a deep background in providing finance, accounting, and tax solutions to businesses and non-profits. Thabo is the founder of Arbitus Group where he has been providing CFO services for startups since 2017. His specialty is the streamlining of the financial backends of organizations to enable their teams to focus on growth and scaling. At Far Away Thabo‘s focus areas are to automate processes, ensure compliance, and to strategically leverage financial information to make better decisions.
Prior to founding Arbitus Group Thabo spent over 5 years as a consultant with PWCs Risk Management Solutions practice. During his time at PWC he spent many years providing consulting services to Fortune 500 clients across multiple industries. He has worked as an automation consultant, accounting specialist, and auditor.
Andrea Stambaugh
Andrea Stambaugh
Originally from Austin, Texas, Andrea’s formative years were shaped by the great outdoors, immersing herself in extended backpacking and canoeing trips. Growing up she was encouraged to pursue her passions which included competitive gymnastics, painting, photography, and kung fu (where she earned her black belt). As a teenager she started a youth culture magazine and photography business where she discovered her love for creative and authentic storytelling. Andrea studied socially-conscious, culturally-relevant marketing at LMU in Los Angeles and is passionate about helping nonprofits develop and communicate their authentic story.
Tech Advisory Committee
Andrew Garcia
Andrew Garcia
Andrew’s work life is centered around all things Goodshuffle. His source of inspiration growing up was his mom, who ran her own small business. He saw firsthand the amount of hard work she put into her business and the source of pride it was for her. Now Andrew is building GoodShuffle, a company whose sole purpose is to supercharge SMB’s in the events industry. It is immensely gratifying that he now gets to support business owners in their journey and helps make their dreams a reality.
Leo Fink
Leo Fink
Leo is a co-founder of Linguee, a translation search engine that provides an online dictionary for a number of language pairs and is similar in function to a translation memory. Additionally, he spent five years working in the machine learning and artificial intelligence research team at Dropbox.
Currently, he sits on the board of DeepL, a translation AI company, and is also actively involved in angel investing.
Carl Dean
Carl Dean
Carl Dean II has worked at Google/Alphabet for 10+ years and is currently a Partner Platform Engineer on YouTube’s TV & Media team, which oversees the development and integration of technologies between YouTube and large Media Companies. Throughout his time at Google he has worked on numerous products that have aligned his passion for driving social impact through innovations in technology – building infrastructure to connect communities and address the digital divide.
Fundraising Advisory Committee
Noah Mihan
Noah Mihan
Noah Mihan is the former Executive Director of the Kratt Brothers Creature Hero Foundation. He graduated with a degree in civil and environmental engineering from Princeton University in 2019 and founded the Princeton Conservation Society in 2016. The organization helps college students participate in hands-on environmental restoration work and produce nature documentaries of their own. Noah has received scholarships from Fulbright and the Kathryn W. Davis Projects for Peace for his documentary work, which has been featured by PBS.
Milene Tabory
Milene Tabory
Milene Tabory, born and raised in Lima, Peru, developed a strong advocacy drive from her upbringing. Previously working as a victim witness advocate for the State of Massachusetts, she gained valuable experience in championing the rights of victims. Now, Milene focuses her passion on environmental advocacy, aiming to mitigate the impacts of the climate crisis. With extensive research and commitment over the past few years, she has dedicated herself to making a positive impact. As a Fundraising Advisor for Far Away Projects, Milene collaborates closely with the team to formulate and execute effective fundraising strategies. She excels in cultivating donor relationships, contributing to a sustainable future for all and making a significant impact on the organization’s mission.
Partners
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