InterAction
Leadership Team
 Sam Worthington, President and
CEO
Sam Worthington assumed the President and CEO position of InterAction on October 10, 2006. InterAction is the nation’s largest alliance of relief and development nongovernmental organizations working overseas. Mr. Worthington has served as the Vice Chair of InterAction’s Board of Directors, chaired its PVO Standards and Membership committee, and was co-chair of its Commission on the Advancement of Women. Previously, he served since 1994 as Chief Executive Officer of Plan USA. Plan is a global, 62 country, child-focused development organization. Mr. Worthington also sat on Plan’s global executive management team and chaired Plan’s national CEO team.
Mr. Worthington’s numerous leadership roles include Chairing the global NGO Impact Initiative on behalf of the office of the UN Special Envoy for Tsunami Recovery (President Clinton). He currently serves on the Advisory Committee for Voluntary Foreign Assistance (ACVFA) at USAID, the Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC) at the United Nations, sits on the Boards of the U.S. Global Leadership Campaign, The Alliance to End Hunger, and is a Trustee of Religions for Peace. Mr. Worthington is a founder of the Hope for African Children Initiative (HACI) and until recently served on its Program Policy Council. HACI is a partnership of leading NGOs working to address the impact of AIDS on children.
Mr. Worthington has a Masters degree with distinction from the Monterey Institute of International Studies and a Bachelor’s degree from the University of Vermont. He also did post graduate research at the Institut Universitaire des Hautes Etudes Internationales in Geneva and was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Humanities from Rhode Island College.
As a Fulbright Scholar, he analyzed and evaluated United Nations international development program methodologies at the International Labor Office in Switzerland.
Mr. Worthington’s extensive experience includes various media appearances on the three major news networks, CNN ‘Headline News’, NPR ‘Talk of the Nation’, Voice of America’s ‘World Service’, USA Today, The New York Times, The Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal. Mr. Worthington was featured on the PBS television series “The Visionaries”.
Sam has worked and traveled overseas for over fifteen years. Sam and his wife Renée along with their three children Rachel, Jamie and Lindsay, live in Bethesda, Maryland.
 James
Keough Bishop, Vice President, Humanitarian Policy and Practice
Mr. Bishop has been the head of Humanitarian Policy and Practice
at InterAction since 1995, working with the forty members engaged in
disaster response, including the relief of affected populations. A founding
member of the Sphere Project Management Team, he has helped guide the
pioneering rights based approach to humanitarian assistance since its
inception in the late nineties. Prior to joining InterAction, he was
a U.S. Foreign Service Officer for 33 years. During that time his assignments
included Ambassador to Niger, Liberia, and Somalia as well as Deputy
Assistant Secretary of State for Africa (81-87) and Principal Deputy
Assistant for Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs (91-93). For six
years in the late nineties and early 2000s he was a member of the International
Peace and Justice Committee of the U.S. Catholic Bishops' Conference.
Sylvain Browa, Senior Manager for Partnership and Development Impact
Sylvain Browa joined InterAction as the Program Manager for the Africa Liaison Program Initiative (ALPI) in April 2004. ALPI seeks to create a venue outside of the traditional procurement sphere, for African and US NGOs and USAID (three key stakeholders in the implementation of US foreign assistance to Africa) to collaboratively, in a tripartite effort, identify, discuss and address common challenges at the policy, practice, and operational relationship levels.
As Senior Manager for Partnership and Development Impact, Sylvain is in charge of collaborative work on key development issues such as the MCA, Aid Effectiveness, the MDGs and institutional support to Southern NGOs. He liaises with other Northern and Southern NGO platforms and a number of bilateral and multilateral development institutions.
At InterAction, Sylvain facilitates dialogue and collaborative work between
100+ US PVO field offices, six USAID country missions and the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC), and over 400 national NGOs in Africa. He plans and organizes annually InterAction’s Washington Week, which brings together US policy makers and African NGO leaders to exchange on US financial aid and assistance to Africa.
Sylvain led the development of InterAction’s Partnership Assessment and Monitoring Tool to promote structured, equitable and effective partnerships among NGOs working in development. He led the design and implementation of InterAction’s first field research on the development of the first MCA compact in Madagascar.
Sylvain has more than 15 years of experience in the management of international development programs and relationships in Africa and Southeast Asia, including professional experience with southern NGOs, U.S. PVOs and USAID. Sylvain holds an M.A. in international development management from The American University in Washington, D.C. He joined InterAction from Pact, a U.S.-based PVO, where he had served for seven years as their Washington-based program manager for a number of African and South East Asian countries.
Sylvain's professional experience covers the areas of international secondary education, refugee camp management, democracy and good governance, microfinance, small and micro-enterprise development, community-based natural resource management, agricultural development, organizational capacity assessment and strengthening, grants management, civil society strengthening, and HIV/AIDS and primary health care program development.
 Nasserie Carew, Director of Public Relations
As
Director fof Public Relations at InterAction, Nasserie Carew is responsible
for all internal and external communications, including a comprehensive
public relations effort focused on media outreach, advocacy and online
presence. With an extensive background in media relations and branding,
she brings over 10 years of public and private sector experience to InterAction.
Carew recently served as the senior public relations program manager
for the Center for Health Communication at the Academy for Educational
Development. In this role she managed several communication initiatives,
including: Project Safe Neighborhoods, funded by the Department of Justice,
and the National Immunization Coalition Partnership Project, funded by
the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Prior to joining AED, she held the position of director of communications
for the YWCA USA. In this capacity, she had overall responsibility for
the national communication policies and strategic positioning of the
YWCA USA. She oversaw the development and implementation of internal
and external communications, including the YWCA’s multi-million-dollar
branding campaign.
As a specialist in strategic external communications with non-profit
organizations, Carew has developed and managed numerous national and
international media campaigns on innovative programs and policy initiatives.
 Dr. Suzanne Kindervatter, Vice President of Strategic Impact
As head of the Strategic Impact Team, Dr. Suzanne Kindervatter oversees InterAction’s work on program effectiveness and impact, as well on expanding InterAction’s external partnerships and furthering the organization’s long-standing commitment to gender integration and women’s empowerment. In addition, Dr. Kindervatter manages InterAction’s strategic planning and human resource functions. Over the past 25 years, she has worked in 20 countries, in the areas of: education, microenterprise development, organizational capacity building, evaluation, and gender and development.
Dr. Kindervatter also continues to serve as InterAction’s Director of the Commission on the Advancement of Women. For the past decade, she has led efforts for enhancing InterAction members’ capacity for integrating a gender perspective into their operations and programs and for promoting gender equality in donor and UN agencies.
From 1991-93, she served as Director of the Better Life Options for Girls and Young Women Program at the Centre for Development and Population Activities (CEDPA), where she managed a 15-country initiative to expand rights and opportunities for adolescent girls. As Technical Services Director of OEF International (1979-1991), she was recognized as a pioneer in participatory approaches to women in development. She is widely known for her user-friendly training materials and guides for development practitioners, such as Choose a Future: Issues and Options for Adolescent Girls (CEDPA), Women Working Together for Personal, Economic, and Community Development, and other materials available through Unifem’s Women’sInk publications.
Dr. Kindervatter played an important role in organizing NGO participation in and follow-up to the 1995 UN Fourth World Conference on Women. She has served on the boards of the Association of Women in Development and Women’s Edge, and was founding chair of US Women Connect. From 2003 to the present, she has been a member of the World Bank’s External Gender Consultative Group.
She holds a Master’s degree in Educational Foundations/Asian Studies from the East West Center/University of Hawaii (1971) and an Ed.D. in International Education from the University of Massachusetts (1978).
 Todd D. Shelton, Senior Director of Public Policy and External Affairs
Todd
Shelton acts as Senior Director of Public Policy and External Affairs. Prior
to joining InterAction, Mr. Shelton was the Senior Government Relations
Associate with the Sheridan Group, serving as lead lobbyist for multiple
non-profit NGOs and successfully advocating for funding increases and
policy initiatives for U.S. Global AIDS programs, debt relief, trade
reform and family planning. He also served as Congressional Liaison Officer
at USAID where he represented over 30 country/ regional programs to key
committees and members’ offices of the U.S. Congress and guided
successful efforts to secure development assistance to Russia, Ukraine,
and Eastern Europe. Mr. Shelton has extensive experience in managing
integrated grassroots, media and legislative strategies to achieve policy
outcomes, and has designed and executed education and rebranding campaigns
for established NGOs that enhanced program funding opportunities and
secured favorable policy changes.
Mr. Shelton holds a degree in Government and a certificate in Public
Policy from the University of Virginia.
 Barbara Wallace, Vice President for Membership
Barbara Wallace is the Vice President for Membership. Barbara is
responsible for promoting InterAction's strategic engagement with the
leadership of member organizations, developing long-range plans for
membership development and expansion and building a strong U.S. NGO
community.
Barbara came to InterAction from RESULTS and RESULTS Educational Fund,
where she served initially as Managing Director and then Executive
Director from 2001-2006. She represented RESULTS in the National
Anti-Hunger Organizations Coalition and InterAction and served on the
boards of the Basic Education Coalition and the U.S. Alliance to End
Hunger.
She continues to serve as chair of the Alliance to End Hunger's
Presidential Task Force, created to bring issues of hunger and poverty
forward as major issues for all candidates in the next presidential
election.
Prior to RESULTS, Barbara worked at Landmark Education where her she
managed multiple departments, volunteer recruitment and leadership
development. Barbara's experience as a businesswoman began while still
in college, at which time she started the first of two successful
businesses in the printing industry, generating impressive revenue and
industry innovation. For several years, Barbara volunteered with
organizations that fought for Native American rights and educational
opportunities for the impoverished. Participation in the ceremonial life
of Native American people and long-term activism in Native American
issues are cherished parts of her life.
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