Meet the board

Matthew Gemello is a Partner at Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP, where he serves as Global Head of Corporate and leads the firm's M&A and Private Equity practice. A Silicon Valley-based deal lawyer with nearly three decades of experience, Matthew guides global technology companies and their financial sponsors through transformational domestic and cross-border transactions, including private company buyouts, public takeovers, and complex multi-jurisdictional spinoffs and carve-outs.

Recognized as a leading M&A lawyer by Legal 500 and Super Lawyers Northern California, he was also named one of the top 10 Innovative Corporate Lawyers in California by the San Francisco and Los Angeles Daily Journal. Prior to Orrick, Matthew chaired the North America Corporate & Securities Practice and the North America Pro Bono Practice at Baker McKenzie. He holds a J.D. from Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law and a B.A. in American History from UC San Diego.

Kim Syman is a Senior Partner at New Profit, where she has spent over two decades helping to build and evolve one of the nation's leading venture philanthropy organizations. A member of New Profit's founding Idea Team, Kim is pioneering how the organization supports social entrepreneurs tackling complex, systemic challenges, not just scaling programs or shaping policy, but shifting deeper conditions like mental models and power dynamics to drive sustainable, equitable progress across health and wellbeing, economic mobility, democracy, child welfare, and beyond.

Hr path to systems change began with a volunteer public service role in New York City and work on a documentary series about American healthcare, experiences that revealed how profoundly the circumstances of birth shape life trajectories. That awareness led her to City Year, where she spent five years on the national team, before joining New Profit in its earliest days. A Pahara-Aspen Fellow, Kim has served on the boards of AVANCE, Inc. and The Health Initiative, and on the Youth Villages Massachusetts & New Hampshire Advisory Board. She holds a degree from UC Berkeley.

Chipo Sachirarwe is a seasoned COO/CFO and co-founder of BLK GRVTY, a social enterprise built to make it normal for women, Black, and Indigenous people to be wealthy and well and for all communities to thrive. With over two decades of financial and operational leadership, Chipo has driven discipline and scale across public, private, corporate, and venture-backed organizations, including more than a decade at Universal Music Group and a tenure as COO/CFO of Living Cities, where she led award-winning impact investment funds and guided work across 12+ cities testing pathways for BIPoC communities to fairly create, build, and sustain businesses at scale.

She began her career at Arthur Andersen before moving through roles at Fox Sports, Brunswick Group, and several growth-stage startups, building deep expertise in strategic execution, financial systems, and audit-ready operations. Chipo believes that permanent solutions to systemic issues require using all the levers of our market systems, alongside public, private, and philanthropic vision, to ensure financial systems justly serve everyone by default. A CPA and graduate of the University of Southern California, she currently serves on the Foundation Board of Jersey City Free Public Libraries and the Trinity School of NY PA Board.

Rita Soronen is the President and CEO of the Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption, where she has led the organization's U.S. and Canadian operations for more than two decades in pursuit of finding permanent, loving families for the more than 130,000 children waiting in North America's foster care systems. A nationally recognized child welfare advocate with over 40 years of experience, Rita created the Foundation's signature Wendy's Wonderful Kids program in 2004, which a rigorous five-year evaluation by Child Trends found makes children up to three times more likely to be adopted.

With the support of Blue Meridian Partners and generous donors, she scaled the program to all 50 states and Washington, D.C., with more than 500 specialized recruiters helping to find forever families for over 16,000 children and counting. Under her leadership, the Foundation dedicated more than $41 million in 2025 to grants and award-winning programs. Rita has testified before the U.S. House Ways and Means Committee and the Senate Caucus on Foster Youth, and is a requested national speaker on children's welfare and social innovation.

Prior to joining the Foundation, she served as Executive Director of CASA of Franklin County. She currently serves on the board of directors of Think of Us and the advisory board of the Congressional Coalition on Adoption Institute, among others. A graduate of the University of Louisville, Rita has been honored with an honorary Doctorate of Community Leadership from Franklin University, the YWCA Woman of Achievement award, and the Angels in Adoption Award from the Congressional Coalition on Adoption Institute.

Kathleen Holt-Whyte is the Owner of Success Strategies, a training and consulting enterprise she has led for nearly 30 years. With deep experience in the foster care and child welfare space, Kathleen brings a practitioner's understanding of the systems, workforce challenges, and organizational dynamics that shape outcomes for children and families. Her expertise spans management training, staff development, custom-designed training programs, video training, and executive education instruction, developed across a broad range of sectors including healthcare, banking, retail, and media.

Before founding Success Strategies, she spent over a decade at Hallmark Cards, where she served as Training Manager and Manager, building a strong foundation in people-centered organizational development. Kathleen holds a Master's degree in Human Resource Management from Webster University and a degree from the University of Missouri-Columbia.

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Megan Smith is an award-winning entrepreneur, engineer, and technology advocate, and the CEO and founder of shift7, where she drives collaborative, tech-forward solutions to systemic social and economic challenges. She served as the third United States Chief Technology Officer and Assistant to the President under President Barack Obama, becoming the first woman to hold the role. As U.S. CTO from 2014 to 2017, she championed initiatives in AI, data science, inclusive economic growth, and STEM education, including landmark efforts like TechHire and Computer Science for All. Prior to her White House appointment, Megan spent nine years as a Vice President at Google, leading new business development and serving as General Manager of Google.org.

Earlier in her career, she served as CEO of PlanetOut and worked on early smartphone technologies at General Magic. A passionate advocate for diversity and inclusion in tech, Megan co-founded the Malala Fund and serves on the boards of MIT and Vital Voices, as well as the USAID Advisory Committee on Voluntary Aid. She holds bachelor's and master's degrees in mechanical engineering from MIT.