Eric Donnelly has served as a director and as Chief Executive Officer of Crossroads Impact Corp since December 2017. Mr. Donnelly has spent his 25-year career focused on supporting small businesses and developing low to moderate-income communities with an emphasis on Hispanic homeownership. He served as CEO of Capital Plus Financial (a national Certified Community Development Financial Institution “CDFI”) from 2014 to 2021 after having been hired by the company’s founder in 2012 to scale the 25-year social enterprise. Mr. Donnelly grew the company into one of the largest CDFIs in the country and under his leadership has achieved its B Corp certification further reinforcing the company’s commitment to community impact as well as shareholder value growth. He is an active Hispanic entrepreneur and leader whose passion it is to improve underserved and underbanked market segments. Mr. Donnelly is a graduate of Southern Methodist University with a Bachelor of Arts in Economics. Mr. Donnelly is the lead independent director of the board of InBankshares, a community bank based in Raton, NM serving the New Mexico and Colorado Front Range markets. He was a participant in the BBVA Momentum program for Social Entrepreneurs, a 2017 graduate of the Stanford Latino Entrepreneur Initiative and a continuing mentor to Latino entrepreneurs participating in the Stanford program. He is also on the board of One Million Truths, an interactive platform that allows Black Americans to share their personal experiences and ongoing struggles with racism.

Kellie has recently retired from working in the healthcare insurance industry for over 25 years. Most recently she had been working in a national position as a Vice President of Broker Relations with Cigna. While her most recent position concentrated on the broker/consultant relationship side of the business, most of her experience over the years has been with employers.

Kellie has worked with a broad range of employer sizes (150–10,000+ employees), industries, and insurance needs. Her various roles have worked with the employer in both Sales Management and Account Management capacities. Her different positions also provided her the experience of working and living in multiple regions of the country (Ohio, Georgia, and Texas).

Kellie graduated from the University of Akron with a B.A. in Biology/Medical Technology. Kellie now resides in Houston, TX with her husband Chad.

Mariela Poleo is an international energy executive with experience in major capital projects and asset management, currently leading a nonprofit foundation for Citgo Petroleum Corporation. Mariela is a global citizen, born in Venezuela and having lived in Venezuela, England, and Norway before moving to Houston, Texas in 2011. Her travels are the result of an extensive career with Equinor ASA and its predecessor, Statoil, where she has supported major strategic decisions relating to projects and assets, in multiple countries and with financial oversight of multibillion-dollar projects.

Mariela holds a Master of Science degree in Engineering Management and a Bachelor of Science Degree in Architecture, as well as an Advanced Management Program at IESA and has done many courses in the oil industry, and leadership.

Mariela is currently the manager and president of the Simon Bolivar Foundation, where she led the transition of an economic model where there is greater impact by supporting a higher number of vulnerable populations, victims of disaster, poverty, and conflict. During her tenure, she has launched several processes to provide immediate access to resources to help mitigate COVID 19 in Venezuela, and support health and nutrition programs in Venezuela and Latin America region. She also served as the Interim General Manager for Government and Public Affairs, where she headed the corporate social responsibility programs in four main pillars, education, environment, disaster relief and resilience, and health. She is also leading the 2020 CITGO ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) reporting.

Ms. Poleo served Equinor ASA and its predecessor Statoil in multiple roles for 21 years, including Head of Finance and Control, Exploration North America and Development & Production USA Offshore, as well as other key roles in major international assets.

Mariela’s passion is travelling and learning about new cultures, empowering women, and helping others.

Samantha Schnee is the founding editor and board chair of Words Without Borders, a non-profit website that expands cultural understanding through the translation, publication, and promotion of the finest contemporary international literature. WWB’s publications and programs open doors for readers of English around the world to the multiplicity of viewpoints, richness of experience, and literary perspective on world events offered by writers in other languages. WWB seeks to connect international writers to the general public, to students and educators, and to the media and to serve as a primary online location for a global literary conversation. Since 2003, WWB has published thousands of pieces of fiction and poetry from over 150 countries.

Samantha also works directly with select authors, translating their work from Spanish into English. Her translation of The Goddesses of Water, a collection by Mexican poet Jeannette Clariond, is forthcoming from Shearsman Books in the UK and World Poetry Books in the US. Her translation of Carmen Boullosa’s penultimate novel, The Book of Anna, which was nominated for the Jan Michalski Prize, was published by Coffee House Press last year; and her translation of Boullosa’s Texas: The Great Theft, which was published by Dallas press Deep Vellum in 2014, was shortlisted for the PEN America Translation Prize. She is currently at work on a translation of Boullosa’s latest novel, The Book of Eve, which has been shortlisted for the Mario Vargas Llosa Biennial Novel Prize.

Since 2014 she has been a trustee of English PEN, one of the world’s first non-governmental organizations and among the first international bodies advocating for human rights, specifically those of persecuted writers; she chaired their Writers in Translation committee from 2014-17. Separately, she has served as secretary of the American Literary Translators Association since 2017. Born in Glasgow, Scotland, she lives in Houston, Texas with her husband and three sons, all of whom participated in AMIGOS programs.

John advises endowments, foundations, and nonprofit organizations. John joined Goldman Sachs as a municipal securities credit analyst in 2009, overseeing $35 billion in risk assets. John previously served as a healthcare bond analyst at Moody’s Investors Service overseeing a portfolio of hospitals covering $8.6 billion in debt outstanding. John was also a part of the Higher Education and Not-For-Profit ratings team at Moody’s. John is an Eagle Scout and a Presidential Management Fellow finalist and has a BA from Bowdoin College and an MPA/ID from Harvard University. John resides in Mclean, Virginia, with his wife and two children. 

Bill Reese served as the Chief Executive Officer of the International Youth Foundation (IYF) from January 2005 until his retirement in December 2018. Having joined IYF in 1998 as Chief Operating Officer, Bill oversaw IYF’s operations and programs supporting positive youth development in more than 70 countries. Under Bill’s leadership, IYF invested in scaling and sustaining proven practice programs focused on workforce development and youth-led entrepreneurship, as well as leadership development for young founders and CEOs of social enterprises.

Before joining IYF, Bill spent 12 years as President & CEO of Partners of the Americas, the largest citizen-run, volunteer organization working to promote economic and social development in the western hemisphere. Bill served for 10 years with the Peace Corps, first as a volunteer in an urban community development project in Salvador, Brazil, and later as director of Brazil operations. He was deputy director of the Latin American and Caribbean Region, before heading a special task force that managed the international celebration of the Peace Corps’ 20th anniversary in 1981.

Bill served on the U.S. Government’s Advisory Committee on Voluntary Foreign Aid from 1991 to 2009. He was appointed chair by the Administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), and served nine years, the longest serving chair in the 70-year history of this federal advisory commission.

Previously, Bill was treasurer, board chair, and chairman of the Standards and Membership Committees of InterAction, the trade association/coalition of 200 US-based non-profits working in international development and humanitarian assistance. He also was treasurer of Episcopal Relief and Development, and board secretary of Women Thrive Worldwide. Over the last three decades he has served on the boards of the Independent Sector, the Basic Education Coalition, Eureka Communities, Amigos de las Americas, the Brazilian American Cultural Institute, the Alliance for International Educational and Cultural Exchange, the Washington Office on Latin America, the International Development Conference, the Rondon-Roosevelt Center (in Rio de Janeiro), Fundación para la Educación Superior/USA, COLEAD (Coalition for American Leadership Abroad), Child Hope International, and the Friends of the Art Museum of the Americas (OAS). He was vice chair of the Debt for Development Coalition and Finance for Development, Inc.

A Dean’s List graduate of Stanford University in 1970, Bill majored in political science and Latin American relations. He did graduate work at the George Washington University’s School of International and Public Affairs and taught U.S. diplomatic history. He attended the Stanford Executive Program at the Graduate School of Business in 1995. He resides in Washington, D.C. Bill and his wife, Suzanne M. Frederick, have four adult children.

Justin is Chief Marketing Officer at Pipefy, a SaaS software company founded in Brazil now expanded in the US and globally. He feels very fortunate to speak both English and Portuguese every day at work. For ten years prior to joining Pipefy, Justin led enterprise software marketing teams to position products as category leaders, including Hortonwork which he helped grow and take public in 2014. As Pipefy CMO, Justin brings his domain experience with data, analytics, and artificial intelligence, combined with his functional experience leading product marketing, analyst relations, demand gen, web, and social marketing. Justin holds an MBA from UC Berkeley and a BA in International Relations from Stanford. The leadership skills he honed during a decade volunteering with AMIGOS gave him transferable skills that he has used throughout his education, career, parenthood, and ongoing volunteer work.

Justin volunteered in Paraguay 1990; Azuay, Ecuador 1991; Oaxaca, Mexico 1992; and Project Director in Cotopaxi 1995. He worked professionally for AMIGOS as Regional Director for Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean  1997-2000.  He lives with his family in the San Francisco Bay Area, where he was born and raised.

Catherine’s work with Shell (formerly ‘Royal Dutch Shell’) began in 2007, and she currently serves as Organizational Development Consultant. She has designed and led global initiatives focused on leadership, including a 2-year stint designing and testing Shell’s approach to managing safety globally. Prior to Shell, Catherine worked as a consultant in healthcare and public education. She holds a BA from Columbia University and an MEd from Seattle University. Catherine credits AMIGOS for teaching her the foundations of systems thinking, appreciative inquiry, team dynamics, cultural sensitivity, personal safety, environmental and energy awareness, and leadership development, all of which play into the role she has with Shell today. 

Catherine has a long history with AMIGOS, beginning in 1990 as a Correspondent Volunteer in Oaxaca, Mexico. She served as Project Supervisor in Cuenca, Ecuador, in 1992; Assistant Project Director in Oaxaca in 1994; and Project Director in AMIGOS’ first ever fuel-efficient earthen stove project in Guanajuato, Mexico, in 1995. She served as Training Director of the Seattle Chapter for 6 years and International Office Training Director for 4 years.  

Scott grew up in Tucson, Arizona, and earned a BS from U of Arizona and a PhD from U of Washington, both in Chemical Engineering.  He and his wife, Catherine,  split their time between Houston, TX where she is co-founder of the Rutherford BH Yates Museum, and Scottsdale, AZ.  Their son, Chris, was an AMIGOS volunteer in the 1980s in Ecuador.

Scott retired from Royal Dutch Shell in 2008 after working 35 years in their downstream oil and chemicals businesses.  His career ranged from technical assignments in research and engineering to business management roles in supply, trading, and chemicals to senior management roles such as President of Shell Mexico, VP Lower Olefins business, VP NW Europe Manufacturing, and EVP Global Chemicals Manufacturing.  He has lived and worked in 5 states as well as in Costa Rica, Mexico, United Kingdom, and the Netherlands.

He has served as Chairman of the International Board of AMIGOS and as a board member for AMIGOS Foundation,  NACME (National Action Council for Minority Engineers), ANIQ (Mexican Chemicals Manufacturer’s Association), Institute for Civility in Government, and Shell Alumni Association of Houston.  He has also served on Chemical Engineering advisory boards for Cornell, Colorado School of Mines, and U of Washington. Currently, he volunteers as a Trail Ranger for Pinnacle Peak Park in Scottsdale.  In 2020, Scott and Catherine were honored by the University of Washington College of Engineering with the Diamond Award for Distinguished Service.