Craig received his computer science degree with distinction at Harvard, and continued his graduate studies at Stanford. There, he saw a world-changing idea and left academia for the garage that became Google.

Fourteen years later, another world-changing idea propelled him to the Khan Academy, where he is Dean of Infrastructure. He's excited by the potential of Echidna Giving to be world-changing idea number three. Craig chose the name "Echidna Giving" despite the fact it's not, technically, the echidnas doing the giving.

For more information on how we approach philanthropy, please visit The Giving Pledge and Bolder Giving.

Mary earned her degrees – S.B. and M.Eng – at MIT. When not studying computer science, she worked with the Girl Scouts of Flint, where she engineered the perfect toasted marshmallow for the benefit of her campers – perhaps her first fusion of analytical thinking and social change. That combination led her to the on-line community organizing of Big Tent, to a Coro Fellowship in public affairs, and to her philanthropic work with Craig. She’s never met an echidna she didn’t like, or indeed any echidna at all.

For more information on how we approach philanthropy, please visit The Giving Pledge and Bolder Giving.

Kim brings over 25 years of innovation in philanthropy, charitable giving and impact investing to our work. Prior to helping Craig Silverstein launch Echidna Giving in 2011, she served as founding CEO/President of Schwab Charitable a national leading provider of donor-advised fund and charitable trust service for 11 years.

Under her leadership, the organization grew from a start-up to the largest charity in California and one of the top ten in the US, attracting over $5 billion in contributions and facilitating more than $2 billion in grants. Kim also co-founded the rapidly growing impact investing strategy consulting firm Tideline to advise some of the most influential foundations in the United States and leading financial service companies.

Aside from launching and growing social change start-ups in the financial industry, Kim is a sought-after thought leader. She has taught and lectured on impact investing and strategic philanthropy at Haas School of Business, University of California at Berkeley and has been a guest speaker on governance at Stanford Graduate School of Business. She is published and widely quoted, including in The Wall Street Journal, BusinessWeek, CNBC, Investment News, Stanford Social Innovation Review, Chronicle of Philanthropy and Trust and Estates Magazine.

Kim has also brought her expertise to the boards of major non-profit organizations and private companies, including the Board of Directors of Certified Financial Planner Board of Standards Inc., Northern California Public Broadcasting, Inc. (KQED television and radio), the Center for Social Sector Leadership at Haas School of Business, and Whittier Trust Investment and Wealth Management.

She received an undergraduate degree in Human Biology from Stanford University. She also completed the executive MBA-SEP program at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, post-graduate work at the Mass Media Institute at Stanford, as well as coursework in governance at Harvard Business School's Governing for Nonprofit Excellence Program. Despite her fine education, Kim still struggles with spelling “echidna” correctly. She was delighted to discover their babies are called puggles, which she can spell perfectly.

Erin joined Echidna Giving from Room to Read, the widely known and internationally lauded NGO she co-founded to advance literacy and gender equality. During her tenures as COO and CEO, Room to Read helped over 12 million children in 15 countries pursue a quality education. Erin was instrumental in the design and implementation of the organization’s scalable, replicable model. She oversaw global operations including a technical assistance unit called Room to Read Accelerator, fundraising teams in North America, Europe, Australia and the Asia Pacific region, and a worldwide staff of more than 1,500 employees.

Erin captured her experiences and insights as co-author of Scaling Global Change: A Social Entrepreneur’s Guide to Surviving the Start-up Phase and Driving Impact. The book is a how-to guide for social entrepreneurs who have a vision to change the world and need a strong organizational foundation to do it, utilizing Room to Read as an organizational case study.

Under her leadership, Room to Read was recognized with multiple prestigious awards, including the U.S. Library of Congress Literacy Award (David M. Rubenstein Prize), the UNESCO 2011 Confucius Prize for Literacy and the Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship. In addition, Erin was selected as the World Economic Forum’s Schwab Foundation Social Entrepreneur (2014); recognized as a Global Impact Featured Member for 2017 by the Young Presidents’ Organization; and awarded the Women’s Bond Club Isabel Benham Award (2014). Erin was also named one of Fast Company’s Extraordinary Women (2012) and was a contributor to Fortune’s Most Powerful Women Insider Network.

Before co-founding Room to Read, Erin worked at Goldman Sachs & Co, Unilever and several technology start-ups. She has spent extensive time working and living in Asia, where she saw firsthand the need to enhance educational systems. Erin holds a combined bachelor’s and master’s degree in international relations and economics from The Johns Hopkins University in Washington, D.C. Throughout her career, Erin brings a deep commitment to data, transparency, scaling impact and operational excellence to everything she does. She is hoping to observe an echidna in the wild, perhaps by joining a 10-echidna love train.

Dana Schmidt is a Program Director for Echidna Giving, where she leads our grantmaking strategy on early childhood development and co-leads grantmaking on adolescent skills and mindsets. Before joining Echidna in 2016, Dana was a program officer at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, where she helped to develop and run a ten-year, $125 million grantmaking initiative to improve the quality of education that children receive in the developing world. While at Hewlett she oversaw grantmaking related to education in India and East Africa. In addition, she led the Foundation's international grantmaking for Open Educational Resources (OER).

Earlier in her career, Dana spent time teaching secondary school students in both Kenya and Zambia. She graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Stanford University with an undergraduate degree in Economics and African Studies and earned her master's degree in International Educational Administration and Policy Analysis from the Stanford University School of Education. Her master’s thesis explores the impact of the elimination of primary school fees on enrollment in Kenya. Dana speaks Swahili and French and and is our chief Puggle writer. Her stuffed toy echidna has yet to dig up her office floor, which she appreciates.

Emily Kaiser-Termes is the Administrative & Grants Manager for Echidna Giving, where she is responsible for managing grants and special projects for the team. Emily joined Echidna Giving in November 2019. Prior to coming on-board, Emily managed a team of grants managers at Silicon Valley Community Foundation that supported a diverse portfolio of funds ranging from scholarships to fiscal sponsorships to advised funds. She transitioned to the field of philanthropy after completing an M.A. in International & Intercultural Communication at American University in Washington, DC. Prior to graduate school, she worked in marketing and advertising in Colorado and received her B.A. from the University of Northern Colorado.

Emily has experience producing events, negotiating agreements, building teams, and developing and refining workflows. She strives to ensure every process is efficient in order to reduce the burden on grantees and on her team. Emily is usually on the hunt for her next meal, much like an Echidna, which eats 40,000 individual ants and termites a day.

Samantha (Sam) Tanyingu has worked with Echidna Giving since 2019 and serves as the Director of Accounting. She manages the finance, accounting, and human resources for Echidna Giving.

Sam has also applied her years of managerial accounting experience working with Tideline Advisors, an impact investment consultancy firm. Before Echidna, she worked as an outsourced Controller; she managed several venture capital-backed startups where her efforts were vital in successfully helping them get established, navigate funding rounds, and securing over $60M in investments. Sam honed her accounting skills working several years as a Controller and Accounting Manager at AC&E and Emerson US. At Emerson, she was responsible for overseeing the accounting department in the multi-million dollar Latin America region.

Sam lends her time as a mentor with the non-profit Big Brothers Big Sisters. She also volunteers as a court-appointed guardian ad-litem with ChildAdvocates, an organization committed to being a voice for abused and neglected children.

Sam holds a BBA in Accounting from the University of Houston and completed post-undergraduate coursework in finance at Colorado Technical University.

The word 'echidna' has followed Sam who as a child competed in the Scripps National Spelling Bee but was eliminated in the third round after failing to nail the spelling of this little creature. Echidna is now etched in her mind and she will never fail to spell it correctly again.

Cynthia B. Lloyd, PhD, is an independent research consultant focusing in more recent years on issues relating to girls’ education and transitions to adulthood in developing countries. From 2009-2016 she was a Senior Consulting Associate at the Population Council and prior to that, for the previous 20 years, was Director of Social Science Research (1989-2009). In the 1980s, she served as Chief of the Fertility and Family Planning Studies Section in the Population Division of the United Nations, and in the 1970s she was in the Economics Department of Barnard College, Columbia University. She holds a PhD in Labor Economics from Columbia University.

Her research at the Population Council focused on education, transitions to adulthood, as well as gender and family issues. She chaired the NAS panel on transitions to adulthood in developing countries along with major report – Growing Up Global; the Changing Transitions to Adulthood in Developing Countries (2005) and is the author of many books and peer-reviewed articles, including New Lessons, the Power of Educating Adolescent Girls (2009).

Ruth Levine, PhD, is the Chief Executive Officer of IDinsight. She was a policy fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University for the 2019-20 academic year. She was the program director of Global Development and Population Program at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation between 2011-19. Previously, Ruth was a deputy assistant administrator in the Bureau of Policy, Planning and Learning at the U.S. Agency for International Development. In that role, she led the development of the agency’s evaluation policy. Ruth spent nearly a decade at the Center for Global Development, as a senior fellow and vice president for programs and operations; she co-founded the Center’s Global Health Policy Program. She also designed and evaluated health and education projects at the Inter-American Development Bank and the World Bank.

Girindre Beeharry leads the foundation’s efforts to produce global public goods (data, evidence, innovation) that can inform local education policy reform in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa.

Girindre previously served as director of the foundation’s India Country Office, overseeing the foundation’s work in health, sanitation, financial inclusion, and agriculture, in service of India’s most vulnerable communities. Before that, he was the director of strategy of the Global Health division and worked to ensure that life-saving technologies would be accessible by the people for whom they were developed.

Prior to joining the foundation in 2005, Girindre worked in business development for immunization at Becton, Dickinson, and Co. He also worked as a senior health economist in the Latin America and Caribbean Region at the World Bank from 1997 to 2002.

Girindre studied Economics at the universities of Paris and Oxford. He has worked in Latin America, Asia, and Africa since 1994.

Judith-Ann Walker is an Afro-Caribbean female development practitioner with 19 years of experience working in Nigeria where she supports several international development programs as an independent advisor and evaluator. She is a founding member and current Coordinator of the indigenous non-profit, the development Research and Projects Centre (dRPC).

Judith-Ann has peer review publications on development effectiveness, early marriage, gender and development and girls’ education. Her 2005 publication, Development Administration: Women’s Education and Industrialization, by Palgrave, Macmillan Press, is a recommended text for students of education and development. Across West Africa, Judith-Ann was supported by the Ford Foundation to conduct a 2 year review of girls education interventions and interventions to end early marriage in 16 ECOWAS countries.

Beth is a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, DC, and adjunct professor at Georgetown University. While staff at the World Bank until late 2014, she was the Bank's senior spokesperson and professional head for global policy and strategic issues related to education development and human development. She continues to do research on topics such as household investments in human capital; the linkages between education, poverty and economic development; returns to human capital; and gender issues in development. Beth is also currently a Commissioner of 3ie and board member of a few NGOs. Beth has a Ph.D. in Economics from Yale University and a Master’s and BA from the University of the Philippines.

Sonja Giese is founding Executive Director of DataDrive2030, a social enterprise that aims to democratise early years data, making relevant data accessible, understandable and actionable by all key stakeholders. This is her most recent venture, in a career in development spanning almost 30 years. In 2014, Sonja founded Innovation Edge, an impact first investor focused on solving early childhood challenges in South Africa. She led the organisation for eight years, demonstrating the ability to take ideas from source to scale.

Prior to Innovation Edge, Sonja held senior leadership positions within the University of Cape Town’s Children’s Institute, international NGO Absolute Return for Kids (ARK) and the ECD donor consortium, Ilifa Labantwana. Sonja has also initiated and led local community-based programmes and large-scale research initiatives, and has consulted extensively to policy makers and philanthropists.

She has a degree in science from the University of Cape Town, a passion for systems change and a commitment to closing the opportunity gaps in early childhood.

Dr. Dhir Jhingran is the Founder Director of Language and Learning Foundation (LLF), an NGO focused on continuous professional development of teachers and teacher educators on language, literacy and multilingual education programs. LLF works closely with state governments to catalyze education system reform at scale in India.

Dhir has worked in the education sector for 30 years, within and outside the Indian Government. Within the Government, as a member of India’s premier civil service, Dhir served as Principal Secretary of Education with the Government of Assam, as Director in the Ministry of Human Resource Development in policy-making roles and as Project Director of numerous large-scale programs for universal primary education. He has also handled several other profiles, such as Senior Advisor to UNICEF India, Advisor to the Ministry of Education in Nepal, Asia Regional Director and Chief Program Officer, Literacy with Room to Read and as Country Director, TESS India. He has made significant contributions to the development and implementation of early grade reading programs in several countries in Asia and Africa as well as several states in India. Dhir has authored two books in primary education based on empirical research and has contributed to several books and journals.

Dhir holds a master’s in economics and a PhD in Education.

Theo Sowa is the CEO of the African Women’s Development Fund. She is also Commissioner for the International Commission on Financing Global Educational Opportunity and a Vice Chair of the Educational Workforce Initiative. She specializes in international development and human rights with particular emphasis on women and children’s rights and protection. She was Senior Programme Advisor on the UN Study on Children and Armed Conflict (the Machel Report). Her work includes advisory roles to African and other international women and children’s rights leaders, plus policy development and advocacy. She is a board member of the UBS Optimus Foundation and of the Graça Machel Trust; an Africa Advisory Board member of the Stephen Lewis Foundation; and a Patron of Evidence for Development. Theo was awarded a CBE in June 2010. Her TEDex talk is available here.

Dr. Dhir Jhingran is the Founder Director of Language and Learning Foundation (LLF), an NGO focused on continuous professional development of teachers and teacher educators on language, literacy and multilingual education programs. LLF works closely with state governments to catalyze education system reform at scale in India.

Dhir has worked in the education sector for 30 years, within and outside the Indian Government. Within the Government, as a member of India’s premier civil service, Dhir served as Principal Secretary of Education with the Government of Assam, as Director in the Ministry of Human Resource Development in policy-making roles and as Project Director of numerous large-scale programs for universal primary education. He has also handled several other profiles, such as Senior Advisor to UNICEF India, Advisor to the Ministry of Education in Nepal, Asia Regional Director and Chief Program Officer, Literacy with Room to Read and as Country Director, TESS India. He has made significant contributions to the development and implementation of early grade reading programs in several countries in Asia and Africa as well as several states in India. Dhir has authored two books in primary education based on empirical research and has contributed to several books and journals.

Dhir holds a master’s in economics and a PhD in Education.

Ishita supports the Echidna Giving portfolio in India. Ishita Chaudhry is an independent consultant and feminist facilitator, with 19 years of experience rooted in working with women and girls globally from underserved and marginalized communities. An Ashoka Fellow and INK Fellow, she is the Founder and Managing Trustee of The YP Foundation (TYPF) in India, where she worked as Executive Director from 2002-2016 to advance the leadership and rights of adolescent girls and young people.

In her career, she has facilitated collaborative learning that addresses women’s rights, adolescent and youth leadership, wellbeing and care, environmental justice, education, health and gender. She has worked with civil society organizations, women’s and environmental justice funds, private foundations, government donors and technical agencies facilitating strategic thinking in organizational culture, institutional development and strengthening, programme planning, and resource mobilization.

Ishita has worked with a diverse group of stakeholders, that include Prospera - International network of Women’s Funds, Global Greengrants Fund, Global Alliance for Green and Gender Action (GAGGA), the Global Partnership for Education - World Bank, Oxfam, World Health Organization (WHO), United Nations Populations Fund (UNFPA), UNICEF, Children’s Investment Fund Foundation (CIFF), Ford Foundation and the John. D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation amongst others.

Ishita has served in several advisory groups for governments, including the United Nations High-Level Task Force for Population and Development (ICPD), UNESCO's Global Advisory Group for Sexuality Education, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare Government of India, an advisory committee member for the Directorate of Education (DoE), Government of Delhi, State Council for Research Training and Education (SCERT) and Delhi Commission for the Protection of Child Rights.

She has served as an advisor to the Global Fund for Women and is a Founding Member of the transnational alliance Realizing Sexual and Reproductive Justice (RESURJ) and the global consulting firm, The Torchlight Collective. Ishita currently serves on the Board of Directors of IPAS and the Independent Advisory Board for the Amplify Change Fund.

Jacklyn supports the Echidna Giving portfolio in the East Africa Region covering Uganda, Rwanda, Kenya, and Tanzania. Jacklyn is an economist, researcher, and policy analyst with over 11 years of research experience in several dimensions of economic development. She holds a Doctorate in Economic Policy from the Martin School of Public Policy and Administration, at the University of Kentucky, USA. She is a scholar of governance and political economy.

Over the past eight years, Jacklyn has supported the education sector in Uganda in different capacities, as an independent researcher and an advisor to the Ministry of Education and Sports. She strongly believes in the power of a good education system in transforming lives of children, especially girls from marginalized backgrounds.

Jacklyn is the Director of a growing think tank based in Kampala, Ace Policy Research Institute.

Allie is an Administrative & Grants Associate for Echidna Giving. She provides support for the organization's operations and grants administration, alongside supporting the President and other team members.

Prior to joining Echidna Giving, Allie was an Operations Associate at Open Philanthropy, where she focused on employee engagement, administrative support, and event planning. She comes to Echidna with experience in international education, having been a volunteer for the Peace Corps in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, working to improve literacy standards at a rural primary school. Allie was also a Member Support Specialist for a clean-energy start-up, and she graduated from UC Berkeley where she was active in Model UN, majored in Political Economy, and minored in Middle Eastern Studies and Public Policy.

Allie loves Greek mythology, which made her a bit concerned about the “echidna” name at first. She was relieved to learn that Echidna Giving is named after the cute animals, not the terrifying monsters!

Apara is a Program Associate at Echidna Giving, where she is responsible for sourcing new grants, tracking research developments in the girls’ education field, and managing our social media presence. Apara joined Echidna Giving in October 2021 after completing her Master’s Degree in International Education Policy Analysis from the Stanford Graduate School of Education. Her MA thesis studied how the Indian government’s increased reliance on private schools to deliver education has naturally led to schools that are segregated by caste.

Apara’s interest in girls’ education is largely motivated by her time as a government school teacher in urban South India, where she lived and learned how disparities in educational opportunities detrimentally hinder children from marginalized backgrounds — especially girls at intersections (lower SES, “low” caste, special needs, etc.). She is also inspired by the wisdom of the women in her family, especially her Amma, who was the first girl in her family to graduate from secondary school and attend college. From her, Apara has learned the power of feminism as a belief and a daily practice.

Apara can identify with echidnas, whose active body temperature is second lowest in the animal kingdom, because she is also always cold. Apara can usually be found wearing a very large coat or sitting under the direct sun, missing her warm home in India.

Ben Piper is the Director of the Global Education Program at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Based in the foundation’s Ethiopia office, Benjamin Piper supports grantees that work to improve foundational literacy and numeracy in low- and middle-income countries

Before joining the foundation, Benjamin was the senior director for Africa education for RTI International, where he provided support to large-scale education projects across sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. Earlier, he was the chief of party for the Kenyan national literacy program Tusome, a set of randomized controlled trials in Kenya called PRIMR, and Kenya’s National Tablets Programme. He was the principal investigator for Learning at Scale, a multi-country study of highly effective large-scale education programs and for an external evaluation of programs aimed at increasing playful pedagogy at large scale funded by the Lego Foundation. He was also the principal investigator for Science of Teaching, an effort funded by the Gates Foundation to increase knowledge about the technical details of how to improve pedagogy at large scale.

Benjamin has a doctorate in international education from the Harvard Graduate School of Education and master’s degrees in international education policy and school leadership from the Harvard Graduate School of Education and Furman University, respectively. He has lived in East Africa since 2007 and currently resides in Addis Ababa.