Leadership
As ICCR’s Chief Executive Officer since January 2016, Josh Zinner oversees programs and operations for the organization, and is the lead external organizational representative. Josh has more than 25 years’ experience as a non-profit leader, coalition-builder and policy advocate. Josh is also a long-time public interest lawyer who has spent his career working to promote social and economic justice and corporate accountability. For the eight years prior to coming to ICCR, Josh co-directed the New Economy Project, an organization that works with community groups on economic justice issues and is at the forefront both locally and nationally in the fight against discriminatory financial practices.
Among earlier roles, Josh founded and ran the Foreclosure Prevention Project at South Brooklyn Legal Services for more than a decade. He helped to build and lead an influential statewide coalition of over 160 organizational members, New Yorkers for Responsible Lending, which fielded successful campaigns to achieve groundbreaking legislation and regulation to curb financial abuses. Previously, he worked with Oxfam America on private sector campaigns including access to medicines work; as a housing lawyer with low-income seniors; and as a social worker for five years working with adjudicated youth, street children, and homeless adults. Josh was previously a member of the Consumer Advisory Board of the federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
Rabbi Rachel Kahn-Troster (she/her) is ICCR’s Executive Vice President, working with faith and values-based investors to catalyze their assets for social change. She serves as the primary internal manager for the organization, and partners with the CEO in developing and implementing the organization’s overall vision and strategy.
Before joining ICCR in 2021, Rachel spent nearly fourteen years at T’ruah: The Rabbinical Call for Human Rights, most recently as Deputy Director. Ordained in 2008 from the Jewish Theological Seminary, where she was a student activist and leader, she is a noted speaker and writer on Judaism and human rights. She first came to T’ruah in 2007 to organize against U.S-sponsored torture in the war on terror. She initiated campaigns against human trafficking and forced labor, to end solitary confinement, to fight against mass incarceration, and for human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories. Rachel is the original #tomatorabbi, having spearheaded T’ruah’s critical partnership with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers in Florida. Rachel lives in Teaneck, New Jersey, with her husband, Dr. Paul Pelavin, and their daughters Liora and Aliza.
Staff
Misha Ahmad supports ICCR’s conference programming and provides cross-programmatic support for the Health Equity and Advancing Worker Justice programs. Misha has a B.S. in Global Studies with a concentration in Global Health and minors in Integrative Biology and Arabic from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She recently obtained an MSc in Global Health from Georgetown University with specializations in health economics and financing, health policy, global health program development, and maternal, neonatal, child, and reproductive health (MNCRH). She continues to work on some of these initiatives as a research associate for the Georgetown University Initiative on Health Economics, Financing, and Outcomes (IHEFO). Prior to receiving her master’s degree, Misha worked on a variety of fundraising, service, and advocacy initiatives for UNICEF for eight years.
Kyle Cheseborough supports ICCR’s fundraising, membership cultivation and retention campaigns. He builds on a long administrative career of rendering high-quality service in challenging development and membership roles. Much of that time has focused on education and advocacy in not-for-profit settings in New York City. Just prior to joining ICCR Kyle assisted the Executive Director and development team of New Alternatives for Children, a leading social service agency devoted to the welfare of poor children with special medical needs in birth, foster and adoptive families. He co-managed NAC’s donor database and played a key role in researching prospective board members and individuals for NAC’s major donor campaign.
Kyle returns to The Interchurch Center where he served for four years as Special Assistant to the Executive Director of The American Guild of Organists, a global membership organization and publishers of The American Organist magazine. While there he served as the Executive Director’s administrative support liaison to the National Council, Regional Councilors and to the Executive Committee. Internally, Kyle supported the director of development, membership coordinator, financial administrator, program assistant and the magazine editorial personnel.
For many years he maintained a professional music career as a church singer, oratorio soloist and opera singer. Kyle sang with the choirs of the Cathedral of the Incarnation in Garden City, Long Island. And then for more than a decade with the choirs of Grace Church in New York. As a member of the Grace Church congregation, he was proud to have his professional administrative and music careers converge in the search for the current Organist and Master Choristers. Kyle facilitated the work of the committee that vetted, interviewed and auditioned all candidates for that position.
Christina is the Senior Director for Climate Change & Environmental Justice at ICCR. She has thirty years of experience with non-governmental and faith-based advocacy organizations on human rights, sustainable development and corporate engagement on sustainability and equity issues.
Christina manages a team at ICCR that works with investors to encourage a Just Transition to a clean energy economy, enhanced methane management and disclosure across the natural gas supply chain, adoption by companies of science-based targets for GHG emissions reductions, financial sector decarbonization, and alignment by companies of their climate lobbying and trade association memberships with the goals of the Paris Agreement.
Prior to joining ICCR staff, Christina engaged in shareholder advocacy with Fortune 500 corporations on a range of environmental and health equity issues. She began her career on human rights and sustainable development issues in the Philippines and in subsequent years, advocated on human rights and international debt, trade and development issues in Washington, DC, where she lives with her family. She is active in St. Mark’s Episcopal Church on Capitol Hill and holds an M.A. from the University of Oxford.
Penelope works as ICCR’s Operations Associate, providing administrative and technological support to the office. She graduated from Brown University in 2019 with a B.A. in Computer Music & Multimedia.
Dr. Rebecca DeWinter-Schmitt (she/her/hers) is the Associate Director of the Investor Alliance for Human Rights, connecting institutional investors and their allies with the tools and strategies to promote human rights and responsible business conduct.
Rebecca is an expert in business and human rights whose two-decade career spans key consulting, advocacy, and academic roles to promote corporate respect for human rights. Prior to joining the ICCR team, Rebecca resided with her family in Berlin where she supported public and private sector organizations, to include the German government. She has advised companies in various industries on identifying and addressing their human rights impacts and co-founded a risk management consultancy specializing in helping organizations mitigate human rights risks associated with operating in complex environments. She has contributed extensively to standard setting in the private security industry.
Until August 2019, she directed the Human Rights in Business Program housed at American University Washington College of Law’s Center for Human Rights & Humanitarian Law. The Program promoted human rights and justice for people adversely affected by business and economic activity and educated the legal and business communities on corporate responsibility issues. Before joining the Center, Rebecca was an Assistant Professor at the School of International Service, where she taught courses on human rights and corporate social responsibility. Rebecca earned her PhD at the SIS for research pertaining to the anti-sweatshop movement.
Rebecca started her career as Program Associate to Amnesty International USA’s Just Earth! Program on Human Rights and the Environment. Since then, she has served on AIUSA’s Business and Human Rights Group as a volunteer thematic expert.
Anita Dorett has been working with the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility (ICCR) and the Investor Alliance for Human Rights (an initiative of ICCR) since August 2018 on human rights programs, and in January 2021 took on the role of Director of the Investor Alliance for Human Rights. As Director, Anita mobilizes investor leverage to engage corporations on human rights due diligence based on the UN Guiding Principles for Human Rights and other international human rights standards and laws across multiple sectors.
Anita has a Master’s in Law from Columbia University, New York focused on Business and Human Rights. Her studies included international human rights law, extractive industries and sustainable development, human rights and development and international environmental law. Anita was selected to participate in a full-year Business and Human Rights Clinic on responsible investment in land in collaboration with land rights NGO, Landesa, focused on commercial agriculture in Malawi. In connection with this work, Anita was awarded a 2018 Graduate Fellow from the Advanced Consortium on Cooperation, Conflict and Complexity of the Earth Institute, Columbia University.
Anita brings with her 25 years of experience as a corporate attorney primarily in the technology and telecommunications industry. Prior to joining ICCR, Anita was an Associate General Counsel at IBM focused on global regulatory compliance including anti-bribery and corruption work and has worked in global roles at Dell Computers and British Telecommunications. She has worked internationally including in South East Asia.
Gina Falada joined the ICCR staff as the Associate Director of the Advancing Worker Justice program in May 2022. Gina is responsible for building investor capacity to engage companies around key issues impacting frontline workers in the U.S. and Canada, including freedom of association and collective bargaining, wages and benefits, and workplace health and safety. Gina supports ICCR members and allies through monthly working group meetings, builds partnerships between investors and worker-led organizations, and runs ICCR’s bi-weekly Advancing Worker Justice Newsletter.
Prior to joining ICCR, Gina previously served as a Senior Program Associate at Investor Advocates for Social Justice (IASJ), an active faith-based member of ICCR. During her six years with IASJ, Gina worked closely with faith investors, worker-led organizations, and civil society partners to lead shareholder advocacy campaigns focused on the corporate responsibility to respect human rights across the value chain.
Gina graduated with honors from Grinnell College in 2016 with a B.A. in Anthropology and French, and completed an interdisciplinary concentration in Global Development Studies.
Pedro is the Associate Director of the Climate Change and Environmental Justice and focuses primarily on the Just Transition Campaign. Before joining ICCR, he worked as a Senior Policy Advisor for the Chilean Ministry for the Environment and at the Chilean National Congress where he participated in discussions on environmental issues such as a just transition, green hydrogen, a coal phase-out, lithium extraction, and renewable energy.
Since college, he has been a social activist and environmental advocate and has a vast experience working in coalitions with grassroots movements and civil society organizations. Pedro has a MSc in Human Ecology from Lund University and graduated from Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile with a BA in History and a minor in Law. He was born in Puerto Montt, Chile, and currently lives in Ithaca.
Emmy is a Program Associate on the Climate Change and Environmental Justice team. In this role, she provides support and conducts research for the Methane, Just Transition, and Climate Lobbying campaigns.
Emmy graduated from NYU with a BA in Political Science and minors in Spanish and Middle Eastern studies. Prior to joining ICCR, she worked for the International Refugee Assistance Project, where part of her portfolio focused on climate displacement. While in college, she interned at the Indigenous rights organization Land is Life and was a recipient of the Cultural Vistas Fellowship, which allowed her to intern at a childhood literacy organization in Buenos Aires. She is also a graduate of the Conservation Leadership Institute, a grassroots organizing initiative of the Jackson Hole Conservation Alliance. Emmy grew up in Wyoming and now lives in California.
Mary is the Director of Foundation Relations and Membership Strategy for ICCR, and supports the preparation of grant proposals and reports across program areas. Prior to this role, she worked on the Just Transition campaign as part of ICCR’s Climate Change & Environmental Justice team. Before joining ICCR, Mary worked on equity and access issues in education. She supported the national replication of Accelerated Study in Associate Programs (ASAP) at the City University of New York (CUNY), and worked on several other CUNY-based collaborative initiatives with the goal of increasing college access and success at the city and state levels. Mary holds an MA in the humanities from the University of Chicago.
Esaba provides administrative and program support to the ICCR Program Team.
Esaba has a B.A. in Political Science with minors in Gender Studies and International Studies from Stony Brook University. In 2018, she completed her M.A. in International Relations at the Maxwell School in Syracuse University with additional specializations in Peace, Security, and Conflict. Esaba has worked for a variety of organizations, including the World Food Programme, law offices, and nonprofits.
Meg is the Senior Director for Health Equity at ICCR for leadership of ICCR’s shareholder engagement and advocacy on global and domestic health issues. She provides leadership, expertise, and strategic direction to develop and implement coalition members’ shareholder engagement strategies with corporations. Meg also supports member engagements with corporations, including companies in the pharmaceutical, health insurance, food and beverage, and other sectors, around access and affordability of medicine, prevention of algorithmic harms in health care and nutrition insecurity.
Meg has been working in the field of public health for 25+ years in varying capacities, including as a teacher, health educator, advocate, community researcher, and consultant. Prior to joining ICCR, she designed tools and trainings to scale access to palliative care in community settings. As a strategy consultant, she focused on building public-private partnerships to support efforts to improve access to healthcare. This involved engaging stakeholders and thought leaders from both the business and community sectors to develop a shared agenda to tackle complex health problems. As a community researcher, she collaborated with members of the education, health, government, and spiritual/faith sectors to form a coalition to target systems-level changes linked to reduced transmission of HIV among Young Men of Color Who Have Sex with Men (YMCSM). In addition to coalition-building, Meg brings expertise in curricula development, capacity-building, research and program design in areas such as HIV and STI prevention, reproductive health, and reducing chronic disease risk.
Chavi is responsible for strategic campaign development, coordination with members and allies, and implementation and evaluation of investor actions related to ICCR’s corporate engagement on equitable global supply chains. She earned her J.D. from Yale Law School and has a Master’s in Development Studies from Oxford University. She is a recipient of the Marshall Scholarship. She practiced for over a decade at WilmerHale LLP and Jenner & Block LLP, advising companies on criminal and enforcement matters with the U.S. government related to the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) and forced labor in supply chains, as well as comprehensive and preventative compliance program building and testing in these areas. She also has substantial experience litigating on behalf of trafficked domestic workers.
Prior to entering private practice, she served as the legal and policy assistant to the special gender adviser to the Office of the Prosecutor for the International Criminal Court in The Hague, The Netherlands. In that role, she advised the special gender adviser on law and policy related to sexual and gender-based crimes in international criminal law. She was a senior policy officer at the Ministry of Justice, Kingdom of the Netherlands, and focused on issues of immigrant integration, women’s rights and diversity.
She is currently a Professor from Practice at the University of Michigan Law School, teaching on corporate responsibility, anti-corruption law, and supervising students in the Human Trafficking Lab and Clinic.
Sehr works with staff and members to develop protocols and tools to help measure the impact of members’ corporate engagements, and to conduct research to identify relevant external corporate benchmarks as they relate to key issue areas, and embed those benchmarks into ShareEx to enhance members’ capacity to leverage that information in their engagements.
Sehr has over eight years of experience working with companies to build, measure, and communicate corporate social responsibility (CSR) programs that merge business objectives and social purpose. She has worked with corporate clients across a range of industries, including minerals and mining, media, construction, consulting, technology, telecommunication, financial and apparel industries. As a certified trainer, she has designed and delivered CSR trainings on a variety of issues including employee volunteering and engagement, supply chain management, business and human right, stakeholder engagement, communicating CSR programs, and evaluating cross-sector partnerships and their impact.
In addition to her work with companies, Sehr has also worked with non-profit and public-sector clients to enhance their ability to build cross-sector partnerships for sustainable development that leverage the resources and competitive advantage of all three sectors to achieve results that can not be realized by working alone.
Sehr holds a MSc. in Sustainable Development from the University of London, and a B.A. in Economics, from Bryn Mawr College.
Andrene have over 15 years of accounting and finance experience with various nonprofit organizations. Prior to her joining ICCR, she worked at a religious organization, and before that, she worked almost ten years for a healthcare organization that provides care to seniors and the disabled. She has an MBA in Accounting and Finance. She loves spending time with her family, especially her younger son who means the world to her. Finally, she loves live entertainment and is a huge sports fan; basketball, tennis and football are her favorites.
Susana has over 25 years of experience in communications in both the for-profit and nonprofit sectors in the U.S. and overseas. As ICCR’s Director of Communications, she is responsible for managing relationships with the press, developing strategic communications for the organization and ICCR’s priority programs, and overseeing ICCR’s suite of internal and external communications channels. Prior to joining ICCR, Susana worked on a wide variety of consumer goods and services accounts in the travel, food, and apparel industries at Publicis Groupe and Saatchi and Saatchi, Inc.
Susana credits her eight years of expat experience in Europe and Latin America with instilling in her a sense of global citizenship and igniting a passion to work in the nonprofit sector. She considers it a privilege to help tell the remarkable stories of ICCR members’ advocacy to catalyze positive change at some of the world’s largest companies. “The models of sustainable investing and shareholder engagement were first pioneered by our members over 50 years ago and the fact that these practices are now mainstreamed in global financial markets is a testament to their power and success”.
Nadira Narine is Senior Director of Strategic Initiatives, primarily responsible for research and analysis, coordination and support of ICCR’s Advancing Worker Justice program area, which brings shareholder advocates and allied worker-led and focused organizations together to advance dignity and justice for working people, with a particular focus on corporate operations in US and Canada.
Nadira participates in number of spaces dedicated to advancing worker justice, racial justice, and equity, bringing the perspective of responsible investors who are seeking to activate our investments, strategic partnerships, and movement-building strategies to influence and achieve meaningful gains for workers’ rights in the U.S. and Canada.
She has been a staff member at ICCR since 2004.
Nadira was born in Trinidad. She obtained a BA, from CUNY’s Brooklyn College and MA in Political Science from The CUNY Graduate Center.
Chris is a Program Associate on the Climate Change and Environmental Justice team, providing support for the Climate Finance campaign. Chris graduated from Columbia University with a BA in Political Science and a concentration in Latin American and Caribbean Studies. Prior to joining the ICCR, Chris worked as an ESG consultant, supporting asset managers and portfolio companies in assessing and managing environmental, social, and governance risks. He was born in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic and currently lives in New York.
Tracey leads our work on Paris-aligned corporate climate lobbying. With over 23 years of experience in shareholder engagement and responsible investment, Tracey has brought expertise in climate change impacts, global active ownership strategies, corporate governance, and sustainability disclosure regimes to ICCR. Prior to ICCR, she has worked for several ICCR members, including a labor pension fund, a faith-based investment manager, and a sustainable mutual fund company. Tracey also served as Director of Policy and Advocacy at USSIF, and as an Investment Team Director at Ceres. She has authored several guides on shareholder advocacy, including 21st Century Engagement: Investor Strategies for Incorporating ESG Considerations into Corporate Interactions, which she co-published with BlackRock. Tracey also has experience in worker rights issues and child safety online, where her work was nominated by the UN-supported PRI for Stewardship Campaign of the Year. She began her career path as an Environmental Journalist.
As an Alliance Program Associate Aditi provides research, engagement and program management support for the Investor Alliance’s many initiatives. Aditi recently completed a Master’s at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs with a specialization in communications, technology policy, and data analytics. Previously, she has worked on issue-based advocacy and development communication for global and Indian clients in CSR and public affairs. She is also a Political Science (Hons.) graduate from Lady Shri Ram College, New Delhi with a Master’s degree in Development Studies from Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai.
David Schilling joined the staff at the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility (ICCR) in 1994 and has worked with ICCR members and allies to engage corporations, cross-sectoral and multi-stakeholder initiatives on human rights in corporate operations and global supply chains. He has participated in delegations to a number of countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America visiting factories and meeting with workers and non-governmental organizations. For the past ten years, David has provided staff leadership for ICCR’s programmatic initiatives to counter human trafficking and modern day slavery in the US and globally.
He has co-authored, ICCR’s Social Sustainability Resource Guide; Effective Supply Chain Accountability: Investor Guidance on Implementation of the California Transparency in Supply Chains Act and Beyond with CBIS and Calvert and Investing in the ‘Rights Way:’ A Guide for Investors on Business and Human Rights.
David is currently chair of the Advisory Board of the Global Social Compliance Program, member, International Advisory Network of the Business and Human Rights Resource Centre, RFK Center Compass Education Advisory Committee and the UNICEF CSR Advisory Group and coordinator, along with ICCR members of the Bangladesh Investor Initiative, a global collaboration in support of the Accord for Fire and Building Safety. He also serves on the Steering Committees of the Responsible Labor Initiative of the Responsible Business Alliance, the Leadership Group for Responsible Recruitment, and the Coalition to End Forced Labor in the Uyghur Region. He is also a member of the UN Global Compact Expert Network.
He was a regional advisor to the Institute for Human Rights and Business; member of the Independent Monitoring Working Group for six years which supported independent monitors at Gap supplier factories in El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala; member of President Clinton’s Anti-Sweatshop Task Force and the Global Reporting Initiative’s Working Group on the Apparel, Footwear Industry.
A United Methodist minister, David has worked as Assistant Dean of the Chapel, Stanford University; worked closely with Cesar Chavez helping to build support within the religious community for the farm workers struggle for justice while serving as a minister in northern California; co-directed the Riverside Church Disarmament Program in New York City and was program coordinator of the Fellowship of Reconciliation-USA.
David has a bachelor’s degree from Carroll College in Wisconsin in philosophy and religion; masters of divinity from Union Theological Seminary; a graduate of the International Fellows Program, Columbia University and has an advanced professional studies certificate from Pacific School of Religion.
For anyone remotely connected to responsible investing or corporate responsibility Tim Smith requires little to no introduction. He is one of ICCR’s founding staff members and has been a leader in our field for over five decades.
Tim currently serves as ICCR’s Senior Policy Advisor, where he supports ICCR’s work around responsible political engagement, deepening engagements with asset managers, and responding to the pushback on ESG, as well as serving as a mentor for ICCR members and staff.
Tim served as ICCR staff for 30 years including 24 years as its Executive Director. In 2000, Tim joined Boston Trust Walden where he led the organization’s shareholder engagement efforts for 22 years. In 2007, 2012, and 2013, Tim was named one of the “Top 100 Most Influential People in Business Ethics” by Ethisphere Institute. In 2010, he received the Bavaria Award for Impact at the third annual Joan Bavaria Awards for Building Sustainability into the Capital Markets. In 2011 and 2012, he was named one of the most influential people in corporate governance by the National Association of Corporate Directors, and in 2016 Tim received ICCR’s Legacy Award for his enduring record of demonstrated influence on corporate policies.
Tim has served on multiple boards and chaired advisory councils for several different institutions. He currently serves as chair for Shared Interest, which mobilizes economic resources for communities in Southern Africa.
Tim earned a BA from the University of Toronto and Masters of Divinity degree from Union Theological Seminary.
Anna Stefanovic is the Program Associate of the Investor Alliance for Human Rights. She is an international affairs and human rights professional with experience in human rights policy, monitoring, reporting, and advocacy. Anna began her career working in the immigrants’ rights movement, where she coordinated a legal aid program for detained immigrants and asylum seekers in the D.C. metro area. She later joined the United Nations, where she worked as a human rights officer in Sudan and South Sudan, supported African Union-led peace negotiations in Addis Ababa, and developed human rights policy for peacekeeping operations at UN Headquarters in New York. Anna holds a Master of International Studies and Diplomacy from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) and a Master of Public Administration from Baruch College, City University of New York.
Craig supports the communications goals of ICCR and the Investor Alliance for Human Rights as the Communications Associate. He is a communications professional with prior experience at nonprofits and associations such as REACH for Uganda, the American Academy of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery, and Reingold, Inc. Craig graduated from Northwestern University with a B.A. in Communications Studies with a minor in Political Science. He was born and raised in the DC Metro Area and currently lives in Brooklyn, NY.
Julie Wokaty is ICCR’s Associate Communications Director, and helps guide the organization’s technological growth. A member of ICCR staff since 1999, Julie is editor of The Corporate Examiner, a magazine that spotlights current issues involving corporate responsibility. She also edits the annual Proxy Resolutions Book, which tracks institutional shareholder activity. Over the years she has learned not to be surprised at the many different spheres in which ICCR members become involved. “It takes energy to see a problem and back it up with commitment,” she said. “Our members go the extra step.”
Born in Oklahoma City, Julie taught for two years at Ohio State before she came to New York. She served on multiple human rights committees, wrote for an Irish American newspaper and was a human rights observer in Northern Ireland before she came to ICCR.
Julie has a Masters Degree in English from Ohio State and a B.A. magna cum laude from the University of Oklahoma.