Aspiration's Board of Directors is comprised of individuals with a long history of engagement in the nonprofit technology assistance sector, and deep knowledge and experience in innovative work within the field of nonprofit technology.

Misty Avila

Misty Avila serves as Chair of the Aspiration Board, and is the Program Officer at the James B. McClatchy Foundation. Prior to her current position, she was Chief Admin Officer for UC Davis Continuing and Professional Education, where she served as a liaison for organizational process and technology and to enable programmatic strategy for the Center for Human Services and Professional Studies. Prior, she was Program Director for Aspiration, collaborating with community organizations to identify emerging leaders in social justice and technology and to grow capacity building efforts including the statewide nonprofit technology festival and network. Misty has trained and delivered the Aspiration participatory facilitation methodology for the design and delivery of interactive strategic events around the globe. She enjoys participating in the annual Carnaval in San Francisco part of Latin Dance Grooves and advocating for systems change led by youth voice.

Camille Ramani

Camille Ramani serves as Treasurer of the Aspiration Board. She is an accomplished manager with 20+ years proven experience in international and economic development, social enterprise, non-profit, non-governmental and public sectors. Her professional experience in the social sector ranges from program development and implementation, monitoring and evaluation, operations and technology, and performance and impact measurement. In 2008, she launched Ramani Consulting which focuses primarily on building organizational backbone with a keen focus on operations and technology and usage and role of data within organizations to create a stronger, equitable social sector. Formerly, she served as COO/CTO of Upwardly Global, a social enterprise focused on assisting unemployed and underemployed immigrants and refuge professionals to find a path to their careers. Camille has served on the Board of Directors for 3rd I South Asian Independent Film for over 15 years and is an advisory board member to Brown Girl Surf. When she is not focusing on social justice, global migration and labor, and organizational capacity building, she indulges her other passions: explorations through travel and surfing the world's oceans.

Aman Ahuja

Aman Ahuja serves as Secretary of the Aspiration Board. He is a senior consultant with over a decade of experience helping organizations develop and implement data strategies. He combines his technical knowledge with business acumen to help teams tackle complex problems. Aman has served as a product manager, data scientist, and team lead for projects in a range of domains including life sciences, energy, and healthcare. He has a long background working with government, foundations and non profits, and was a founding leader of the San Francisco chapter of DataKind. Aman is a senior member at The Data Guild, an impact-driven data product studio.

A leading advocate for conscientious and ethical applications of data, Aman works with teams to develop processes and organizational structures that lead to both successful and sustainable outcomes. He lives in Oakland, California.

Harlo Holmes

Harlo Holmes is the Director of Newsroom Digital Security at Freedom of the Press Foundation. She strives to help individual journalists in various media organizations become confident and effective in securing their communications within their newsrooms, with their sources, and with the public at large. She is a media scholar, software programmer, and activist; and contributes regularly to the open source mobile security collective The Guardian Project.

Steve Wright

Steve Wright is a Computer Science Teacher at Oakland Technical High School, and has worked for more than 20 years at the intersection of technology and education. He previously served as Interim CEO of EARN.org, and prior to that was Vice President, Poverty Tools and Insights at Grameen Foundation. Before joining Grameen, he served for a number of years as the Director of Innovation and Technology at Salesforce.com Foundation. While there, he established himself as a thought leader in the social metrics space through extensive experience working with organizations such as the Acumen Fund, GIIN (Global Impact Investing Network) and members of ANDE (Aspen Network for Development Entrepreneurs). Steve also a long background as a high school administrator and classroom teacher, and started his career in the Peace Corps. In 1990, while teaching at Pasadena High School, he became interested in the role that electronic communications could play to promote and facilitate interactions between students in underserved communities and the rest of the world. Today, Steve’s work concentrates on helping microfinance institutions and other development organizations measure and manage their social performance using the Progress out of Poverty Index.

Jack Aponte

Jack Aponte is a worker-owner at Palante Technology Cooperative, which helps progressive community organizations and other nonprofits move forward with the help of technology. Jack specializes in planning, building and maintaining open source websites, organizational digital security, and training and documentation. Jack is a writer whose work can be found at jackaponte.com. They are involved in activism and organizing in movements for social justice and liberation in queer, trans, and people of color communities.

Board Members Emeritus

We are grateful for the service of past board members and include them here to acknowledge their leadership and contributions to Aspiration.

Jonathan Peizer

Jonathan Peizer is the Founding Board Chair and Co-Founder of Aspiration, and previously was the developer and director of the Open Society Institute's Internet Program, as well as the original CIO for its systems operations. Jonathan has been in the technology industry throughout his career in both the profit and non-profit sectors and on technology-related projects in 75 countries.

Gavin Clabaugh

Gavin Clabaugh is "Mostly Retired". Prior to his current state of professional repose, he was Vice President of Information Services for the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation. Gavin oversaw the administrative, developmental, and operational aspects of technology, and had overall responsibility for the Foundation's worldwide information, library, and technical services. Gavin developed a keen interest in philanthropy and technology and an expertise in technology for non-profit organizations over the past 15 years of working with scores of non-profits and foundations. Before joining the Mott Foundation, he was vice president of the Telecommunications Cooperative (TCN), a not-for-profit information technology cooperative serving thousands of NGOs and non-profit organizations worldwide. Prior to joining TCN, in 1987, Gavin was director of research for the Washington-based Present/Futures Group (formerly TRAC, Inc.), a think-tank specializing in social trend analysis and issues management. He was also senior research associate with the Naisbitt Group in Washington, D.C., and associate editor of John Naisbitt's Trend Letter. Before his formal association with the Naisbitt Group, Clabaugh was a personal consultant to John Naisbitt, and designed and managed the research process culminating in Naisbitt's best-selling book, Megatrends. 

William Lester

William (Bill) Lester is a Senior Consultant at Humentum. A visionary in use of Information and Communications Technologies (particularly in low-resource settings), Bill is well-known in the nonprofit knowledge management and technology communities and is a popular speaker at many industry gatherings. Bill was a co-founder and Executive Director at NPOKI from 2007 to 2017. As Chief Information Officer at EngenderHealth for 15 years, Bill was instrumental in capturing and sharing the organization’s operational and programmatic best practices and lessons learned. In 2007, he was honored with NTEN’s Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2017, he was awarded the InsideNGO Operational Excellence Award for Technology. He was a Humentum board member from 2004 – 2013, a NTEN board member from 2000 – 2007, participated on the Advisory Committees for NPOWER and KABISSA, and was a NPOKI founding member. A strong proponent of social entrepreneurship, Bill works worldwide to promote and encourage problem-solvers. His personal mission is “Imagine • Build • Connect”.

Maxwell Pearl

Maxwell Pearl received his B.A. in Natural Science and Mathematics from Bennington College, and his Ph.D. in Biology from Case Western Reserve University. Max taught at Hampshire College from 1989 through 1999, as Assistant and Associate Professor of Biology. He was involved in several grant-funded projects to enhance in-service science education for educators in the region, particularly in terms of use of technology in the classroom. He helped organize two conferences on technology in education, in 1998 and 1999. In 1995, Max started a consulting practice that served the non-profit and educational sectors, primarily in the areas of developing database-driven web-sites, the implementation of Open Source software, and strategic technology planning. He was a nationally recognized leader in the nonprofit technology field, and has authored and contributed to open-source projects.. He was on the steering committee of the Non Profit Open Source Initiative (NOSI), and was a member of the boards of the Nonprofit Technology Network, and of Aspiration from 2003 to 2005.