Board / Staff

Jana Stardelova joined Ariadne in April 2022 as the Grants and Engagement Manager. She is a migration and gender expert with more than 10 years of experience in the international humanitarian, as well as NGO sectors. She has worked in diverse humanitarian settings, in this context, she has supported program development, developed emergency field response, and conducted research on migration management, human trafficking, gender equality, and human rights issues. She is one of the co-founders of the NGO Tiiiit! Inc., which is based in Skopje, North Macedonia that works on improving women’s rights through art and culture.

Based in Brussels, Debora identifies trends and opportunities, promotes membership, and liaises with other funders’ networks. Debora has 15 years’ experience of professional and volunteer activities for foundations, NGOs and international organisations. Before joining Ariadne, she worked for a few years as an independent consultant. Previously, she managed the anti-discrimination work of the Open Society Initiative for Europe (OSIFE) focusing on Western Europe for five years. From 2008 to 2011, she managed the European Programme for Integration and Migration (EPIM), a grant-making initiative of NEF. Formerly, she worked for UNESCO in Cuba and Mexico and for Handicap International Belgium. She studied international relations, political sciences, culture and development studies, in Italy (Padua), France (Sciences-Po Paris), and Belgium (University of Leuven).

Molly is Ariadne’s Administration and Events Officer. After completing her Bachelors degree in International Relations at Rey Juan Carlos University in Madrid, she joined IFOAM Organics Europe as an Events and Membership Assistant. She has experience organizing physical, virtual and hybrid events, as well as developing membership engagement strategies.

Her main interests lie within the fields of migrant rights, climate justice and youth engagement.

Maya is Project Manager for Ariadne’s Digital Power initiative. She has been working in the international security and safety field for over 6 years. Previously, she has worked as a web developer, a systems administrator, and a research assistant who studied the politics of hackers and opensource. She has facilitated safety workshops at events all over the world with social justice organisations, foundations, and small nonprofits.

Maya specialises in organisational security, which is different from security for individuals. She loves to nerd out about systems, and how organisational structures feed into digital safety.

Martin has been working in philanthropy and philanthropy networks long enough to realise that we all need to work together for meaningful or even systemic change – and that trust, openness and a willingness to step into discomfort are crucial elements of this path.
He has served (and is still serving) as Executive Director of Renewable Freedom Foundation, he is a member of Leap Collective, PEX and #VertrauenMachtWirkung, an alumnus of the Global Engagement Lab, and has supported EDGE Funders Alliance and other networks and initiatives inside and outside the philanthropic sector. He co-founded and co-led the Center for the Cultivation of Technology, a host organisation for open source and tech for social change projects, and is especially interested in the intersections of issues, approaches and solutions.
He holds a PhD in History and Culture from the University of Cambridge and MAs in similar fields of the humanities where imagination meets analysis.
Martin is unsure about the usefulness of bios and invites anyone who has read this far to contact him and chat about philanthropy, social change, activism, care, community health, organising – or obscure fiction and food.

Walter is Regional Director for Central and Eastern Europe at the C.S. Mott Foundation. Based in the Foundation’s London office, Walter oversees grantmaking in Central and Eastern Europe and has specific responsibility for programming in the Western Balkans. Prior to joining Mott in 1998, Walter had a career as a lawyer, working in private practice in Washington, D.C., and Prague, and as a legal services attorney in Memphis, Tennessee. His interest in civil society development grew from observing the sweeping changes taking place in CEE in the 1990s and the important role the civil society sector played in transforming the region. Walter was born in Maryland and grew up in Connecticut. Before entering college, he spent a year studying abroad as an American Field Service student in Turkey. He is a graduate of Hamilton College in Clinton, New York, and the University Of Virginia School Of Law.

Carola is the Secretary General of Assifero, the Italian national membership of grant-making associations. She is also a human rights lawyer and has worked extensively with Italian rights-based NGOs. In 2002, she established a Human Rights Coordination Office for Volontariato Internazionale per lo Sviluppo and in 2011 became the first woman elected as its President. She has also served as a member of the Executive Board of the worldwide network of the Salesian of Don Bosco development NGOs, and as spokesperson of a network of 88 Italian human rights NGOs leading international and national advocacy.

The Charles Leopold Mayer foundation mission is to provide long term core grants to civil society organisations and movements advocating for a just transition towards sustainable societies. Juliette oversees different programmes on independent journalism and media, corporate accountability and fair trade, protection of whistleblowers and whistleblowing, and internet governance. Previously, Juliette worked in NGO’s in Brussels, Tirana (Albania) and Paris on European policies and international relations. She has studied political sciences.

Nienke Venema is the Director of Democracy and Media Foundation (SDM), an Amsterdam-based foundation committed to independent journalism and a strong and vigorous democracy. As the foundation’s first director, she has been responsible for setting it up as a professional grant-making organisation. SDM provides both project and long-term core grants to civil society actors and organisations focusing on concerns of fundamental rights and freedoms and/or media innovation. It also acts as an idealistic shareholder in media companies, with a strong focus on safeguarding editorially independent journalism.

In addition to concerns of fundamental rights and freedoms, Nienke focusses on the role foundations and venture philanthropy can play in safeguarding the future of independent journalism. Previously, she was the director of Humanity in Action in The Netherlands, an international educational organisation that runs programmes on social justice. Nienke holds a BA (Hons) in Social and Political Sciences from the University of Cambridge and an MSc in International Relations from the University of Amsterdam.

Jon oversaw the philanthropic activity of the family of the late Sir James Goldsmith for many years, much of which is directed towards environmental advocacy and campaigning.  He was closely involved in the development of the UK Environmental Funders Network and has co-authored multiple reports analysing tens of thousands of philanthropic grants from environmental funders, both in the UK and across Europe.  He is a steering group member of the European Environmental Funders Group and served two terms on the management board of the US Environmental Grantmakers Association.  He now works with a range of foundations through The Hour Is Late.

Dr. Pia Gerber was already addressing the issue of right-wing extremism and democratic culture while studying for her degree in social pedagogics. In her first career, she worked with disadvantaged young people and migrants from Eastern Europe, and was involved in political education on the subjects of National Socialism and feminist theory. After obtaining a second degree in political science and education at Heidelberg University, she worked as a municipal women’s rights officer, as a trainer for social workers, and finally as an academic assistant on the Executive Committee of the Freudenberg Foundation, Weinheim, Germany. She was awarded a doctorate for her dissertation on social innovations in the charitable foundation environment. Since 2008, she has been the Executive Director of the Freudenberg Foundation. She was a Deputy Chairperson of the Amadeu Antonio Foundation and a member of the Council on Integration of the German Government and is still a partner of the German Children and Youth Foundation and the CIVIS media Foundation.

Brandee M. Butler is Deputy CEO at the Fund for Global Human Rights where she oversees the Fund’s operations in pursuit of its mission to provide resources and support to frontline human rights activists and movements. Previously, she served as a division director at the Open Society Initiative for Europe leading the Civil Liberties Division.

Brandee has over 15 years of experience working with international foundations, civil society organizations, and the private sector to promote human rights. She has served in leadership and grantmaking positions, supporting human rights funding at the C&A (now Laudes) Foundation in Amsterdam and Levi Strauss & Co. in Brussels. Earlier in her career, Brandee received the Yale Law School Bernstein Fellowship for International Human Rights to combat child trafficking in Gabon. She later practiced law at the Alliance for Children’s Rights in Los Angeles and specialized in international justice as a program officer at the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. Brandee has published articles on structural racism, modern slavery, gender-based violence, and supply chain transparency. She currently serves on the boards of Women Win and Ariadne Funders Network. She received a BA with honors from Harvard University and a JD from Yale Law School and is currently based in Barcelona.

Susan Treadwell, Deputy Director of the Open Society Initiative for Europe, passed away in November 2020 after a long battle with cancer. 

Susan was an Ariadne member from the network’s earliest days and served on the Advisory Board from 2017.  She was a lively presence at all of our events, both onstage and off, and could usually be found by following the sound of her infectious laugh.  Always ready with a question or thoughtful observation, she challenged us to do better and think bigger while helping to create a warm and welcoming community wherever she went.

During her 17 years at OSF, she was a champion of human rights and gender and racial justice movements across Europe and proved herself time and again to be a visionary and strategic thinker. 

With Susan’s passing, we have lost a great mind and a bright light in the human rights and philanthropic sector.