In 1979, Debbie had the pleasure of meeting the late singer-songwriter and social activist Harry Chapin here in Arizona.  She became involved with the organization he had founded called World Hunger Year (WHY.)  Because of her eagerness to address the issue in our community, she started the first pilot program for national chapter development for WHY.  Debbie learned about the power of the media, the difference that one person can make and that working together as a community makes change possible.  After Harry’s death, she realized that if she wanted to continue working in the non-profit arena, she needed to get a degree.  Debbie was fortunate to find that ASU offered the American Humanics (AH) program and was able to earn her degree in non-profit management.  She served as AH Student Association President and Fundraising Chair and was awareded the George F. Miller Outstanding Leadership award. 

She completed her Senior Internship with Camp Fire Boys and Girls and was hired as the Public Relations Director in 1988.  With 13 years of work with the local Camp Fire council, her role evolved into the Development Director for the agency.  Wanting to move away from youth development and back into an area that had global-impact, she accepted the position as the Development Director for Body Positive an HIV and AIDS Research and Resource Center in 2001.  She raised more than $7 million dollars in the fight against HIV and AIDS from 2001-2008 through a major gifts program, annual giving campaign and a targeted mix of special events.  Currently she consults with a variety of nonprofits assisting them with their fund development needs.  She is also the 2009 AIDS Walk Co-Chair with Body Positive founder Kirk Baxter.

Jenny Holsman is the Executive Director of the Arizona State University Alumni Association. She is responsible for marketing and membership, alumni records administration, business relations, events and programs, member services, donor development and the advancement of the Association’s strategic goals. Ms. Holsman also serves as the strategic coordinator of all on campus, community and business relationships for the Association. She joined ASU in 2007 after working as a litigation defense attorney at Jones, Skelton & Hochuli, P.L.C. for five years. Her prior experience includes leadership roles in international and local non-profit organizations, legal and finance organizations. Jenny is a doctoral candidate in Public Administration at ASU and holds a Juris Doctor and Masters Degree in Political Science from Syracuse University.

Kristin is associate professor of anthropology in the Department of Social & Behavioral Sciences at Arizona State University @ the West campus, where she has taught since 1992. Her central research and teaching interests focus on urbanism and migration in transnational context, and she is trained in a broad interdisciplinary range of cultural studies and social theory. She always keeps an eye on race/ethnicity and difference, in cultural representations, social practices, and political-economic relations, such as in her sociolegal research on the “cultural defense” strategy used in criminal cases of gender/sexual violence involving US diaspora Asians, and on the effects of US “third-worlding.”

She published a book based on her research on Egyptian artisans in Cairo, where she lived for three years. Her current research narrates contemporary cultural, racial, spatial practices of discipline and resistance at the intersection of urban culture and social space in Phoenix.  She teaches courses on migration and culture, urban studies, cultural diversity, transnational studies, and social anthropology, and engages her students with the local/global community through fieldwork, web projects, and other activities.

Kristin lends a hand in community migration and social justice issues through her involvements with No More Deaths and other organizations, is one of the founding members of the Ethnic Studies program at West campus, and has helped to coordinate the annual series of Border Justice events there since 2003. Her amazing voyage around the world with the Semester at Sea in 2006 broke her out of the area studies model in which she was trained as a Middle East specialist, so that now she directs ASU’s summer study abroad program in Costa Rica. She is a bit of a technophile, enamored with integrating digital media into her various projects (http://www.west.asu.edu/koptiuch/), and tries to practice anthropology as much performance art as social science.

Shailesh Ghimire, is the Director of Interactive Marketing at AIR Marketing in Phoenix, Arizona. Over the course of his career he has managed a range of web-related projects from website design/implementation, Search Engine Optimization, Pay-per-click (Search Engine Marketing) and Social Media. His experience also encompasses sales and traditional marketing in the form of marketing collateral development, messaging and technical support.

Recently, he and his wife Aimee launched SabdaMala.Com, an educational website teaching Nepalese reading and writing to Nepali kids growing up in the West. He is also on the board of Two Rivers Church in Gilbert, Arizona - a non-denominational church he and Aimee helped found in 2004. For over seven years he was intimately involved with the National Scholarship Program (NSP) through his former high school student organization (SEBS.org). NSP is a non-profit that provides scholarships to disadvantaged children in remote areas of Nepal to complete high school.

Shailesh was raised in Kathmandu, Nepal and has two young daughters with another child on the way. He has a B.A. in Physics from Whitworth University and a M.B.A in Entrepreneurship and Marketing from University of Wisconsin - Madison. He was the winner of the 2003 G. Steven Burrill Technology Business Plan Competition held at UW-Madison. He enjoys playing soccer, working out, swimming, hiking, travelling and spending time with family/friends.