About the IFG | IFG History | IFG Board of Directors | IFG Staff

Jerry Mander
Co-Director and Founder

Debi Barker
Co-Director

Katie Damasco
Office Manager

Claire Greensfelder
Director of Development and Communications

Randy Hayes
Senior Staff Associate

Victor Menotti
Program Director

Yeshica Weerasekera
Director of Operations

Dale Wen
IFG China Fellow

Suzanne York
Research Director

Current Interns:
Lauren Bennett (2007/2008)

Employment and Internship Opportunities

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Staff Biographies

Full length bios available upon request.

Jerry Mander, Co-Director and Founder In addition to his role at IFG, Jerry Mander is the program director for the Foundation for Deep Ecology, and is a senior fellow at Public Media Center. Back in the 1960s Mander was president of a major San Francisco advertising company before turning his talents to environmental campaigns that kept dams out of the Grand Canyon, established Redwood National Park, and stopped production of the Supersonic Transport. His books include Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television (1977), In the Absence of the Sacred (1991), The Case Against the Global Economy And For a Turn Toward the Local, co-edited with Edward Goldsmith (1996), and Alternatives to Economic Globalization: A Better World is Posssible.

Debi Barker, Co-Director While working for the Foundation for Deep Ecology in 1993, Debi Barker helped to organize seminal meetings of NGO leaders concerned about globalization, out of which the IFG was created in 1994. She co-authored Invisible Government-The World Trade Organization: Global Government For The New Millennium with Jerry Mander and has edited several IFG publications including Blue Gold: The Global Water Crisis and the Commodification of the World's Water Supply and Views From the South. Debi received her degree in journalism from the University of Oregon. She also serves on the boads of the Center for Technology Assessment and the Sustainable Cotton Project.

Katie Damasco, Office Manager Katie Damasco has been with IFG since February 2006. Starting out as an intern, she was a primary researcher for IFG’s new publication, The Rise and Predictable Fall of Globalized Industrial Agriculture, by Debi Barker. Katie also assisted with the production of IFG’s last two Teach-Ins: Indigenous People’s Resistance to Economic Globalization (November 2006—New York City) and Confronting the Global “Triple Crisis” (September 2007—Washington, D.C.). She earned her degree in Global Studies from the University of California, Santa Barbara in 2005.

Claire Greensfelder, Director of Development and Communications Coordinator, IFG Working Groups on Climate and Energy Claire Greensfelder is a former Nuclear Free Future Campaign director for Greenpeace USA and a lifelong peace, ecology and justice activist, writer, editor and radio journalist based in Northern California. She graduated from UC Berkeley with an emphasis on environmental education in 1975 and has spent 27 years organizing locally, nationally and internationally for a phase-out of nuclear power and weapons and promotion of renewables, energy efficiency, conservation and nonviolent resolution to conflict. Claire is the co-founder and executive director, together with artist Mayumi Oda, of the Plutonium Free Future International Women's Network - a project of INOCHI - a Japanese/US NGO focused on nuclear and energy policy. Claire most recently collaborated with Congresswoman Barbara Lee to create the Martin Luther King, Jr. Freedom Center for Nonviolence, Equality, Youth and Ecology in Oakland California.

Randy Hayes, Senior Fellow Randy Hayes, founder and board president of Rainforest Action Network, is Senior Fellow with IFG. Believing that the international and national levels have failed to date to orchestrate the shift to a deeper ecological sustainability, Randy calls for a green city-led, bottom-up movement to revolutionize the economy. He sees this as our best shot to protect the large natural systems that nurture all life as well as to foster dignified lives for all people. Randy is a veteran of many high-visibility corporate accountability campaigns and has advocated for the rights of Indigenous peoples. He worked as the President to the City of San Francisco Commission on the Environment and Director of Sustainability in the office of Oakland with Mayor Jerry Brown. Randy has a Master’s degree in Environmental Planning from San Francisco State University; his master’s thesis was the award-winning film The Four Corners, which won the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences award for “Best Student Documentary” in 1983. He is a contributing author to Alternatives to Economic Globalization: A Better World is Possible.

Victor Menotti, Program Director Victor Menotti is IFG's program director. He earned his degree in International Relations from UCLA. He has worked in numerous international NGOs and speaks several languages. After attending the Rio Earth Summit, he traveled to South America laying the groundwork for an international citizens' network on economic integration issues. In 1993, he was the editorial researcher for the Earth Island Press Book, The Case Against Free Trade, and coordinated the Clearcut Book Project for the Foundation for Deep Ecology. He is the author of the IFG report, Free Trade, Free Logging: How the World Trade Organization Undermines Global Forest Conservation, contributed a chapter on "WTO and Native Sovereignty" in Paradigm Wars: Indigenous Peoples' Resistance to Economic Globalization, and author of WTO and Sustainable Fisheries for the Institute for Fisheries Resources.

Yeshica Weerasekera, Director of Operations Bio coming soon.

Dale Wen, IFG China Fellow Dale Wen is working with IFG on China and globalization issues. Coming from China in 1993, Dale got her PhD from California Institute of Technology and previously worked in the high-tech industry. Starting with voluntary work in rural China, she witnessed the plight of the rural community and began to question the top-down globalization model. Several of her papers regarding sustainable development and rural education have been presented in international conferences in China. Her primary interests are in environment, education and women’s issues. She also serves as an advisor for Rural China Education Foundation.

Suzanne York, Research Director Suzanne York has been with IFG since 2000. She was primary researcher on Alternatives to Economic Globalization, Globalization and the Environment, the Indigenous Peoples and Globalization map, and authored and edited several articles in Paradigm Wars: Indigenous Peoples' Resistance to Economic Globalization. She also worked on producing a map depicting the genetically free areas of the world. Suzanne has a master’s degree in public policy from American University. She is chair of the Sierra Club's Responsible Trade Committee and a member of the California Coalition for Fair Trade and Human Rights steering committee.

John Cavanagh, IFG Board President John is director of the Washington-based Institute for Policy Studies and co-author of eleven books on the global economy, including Alternatives to Economic Globalization: A Better World is Possible and Global Dreams: Imperial Corporations and the New World Order. He has written hundreds of articles in such publications as the Washington Post, the New York Times, Foreign Policy, and The Nation. He has worked as an international economist for the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development and for the World Health Organization.