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

Victor Menotti (bio | email)
Executive Director

Claire Greensfelder (bio | email)
Deputy Director for Communications, Development, and Special Projects

Jerry Mander (bio | email)
Founder and Distinguished Fellow for Long Range Strategic Planning

Yeshica Weerasekera (bio | email)
Deputy Director for Management, Finance and Operations

Katie Damasco (bio | email)
Office Manager

Alexis Halbert (bio | email)
Program Associate and Researcher

Mr. Oronto Douglas (bio | email)
African Scholar in Residence

Dale Wen (bio | email)
IFG China Fellow

2008-2009 Staff Transitions
Debi Barker (email)
Center for Food Safety, International Director

Laura Delman
Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors, Administrative Assistant

Randy Hayes (email)
World Future Council, Policy Director

Suzanne York

Employment and Internship Opportunities

Internship Positions Available

Basic Function:

Provides research assistance and administrative support for the International Forum on Globalization (IFG) research staff. Current priorities include tracking media and policy positions on climate and energy issues in the U.S. and in the UNFCCC climate negotiation process.

Principal Duties and Responsibilities:

Research:
* Conducts research on international relations and issues concerning globalization.
* Assembles data, reports, interviews, documents, and transcripts in support of research.
* Writes summary reports of forums, symposia, and conferences; drafts abstracts, summaries, and analyses of books and articles.
* Monitors and summarizes current developments regarding regional specific issues.
* Compiles bibliographies and chronologies.
* Performs document retrieval using world wide web and other online resources.

Administrative Support:
* Copy, edits and proofread.
* Manages logistical arrangements for forums, seminars, and conferences sponsored by IFG.
* Develops and maintains spreadsheets and databases.
* Screens calls to determine purpose and nature of requests.
* Maintains paper and electronic files.
* Prepares and sends mass mailings.

To apply for the internship, please submit a cover letter and resume to:
kdamasco@ifg.org

Staff Biographies

Full length bios available upon request.

Victor Menotti, Executive Director (email) Victor Menotti is IFG's Executive 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.

Claire Greensfelder, Deputy Director for Communications, Development, and Special Projects (email) 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.

Jerry Mander, Founder and Distinguished Fellow for Long Range Strategic Planning (email) In addition to his role at IFG, Jerry Mander is the former program director for the Foundation for Deep Ecology, and is the former founder and executive director of the 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.

Yeshica Weerasekera, Deputy Director for Management, Finance and Operations (email) Yeshica Weerasekera is IFG's Deputy Director for Management, Finance and Operations and has over twenty years of experience with a diverse number of public sector, philanthropic and non-profit organizations in the United States, the U.K. and West Africa. She has wide-ranging experience in projects and program management, grants development and management, as well as financial and office administration. Born and raised in Sri Lanka, Yeshica worked for six years in several West African countries as the local Sahel Representative for Ashoka: Innovators for the Public, as well as with Oxfam America, and RADI, a community-based non-profit organization in Senegal. After moving back to the U.S. she served as the Africa Program Director at International Development Exchange, as a Projects Coordinator at the Tides Center and most recently as Program Manager for Changemakers, an organization that supports and promotes community-based philanthropy.

Katie Damasco, Office Manager (email) 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.

Alexis Halbert, Program Associate and Researcher (email) Alexis Halbert works with the IFG as a Program Associate and Researcher. Halbert has a degree in Globalization and Natural Resource Ecology and Management from the School of Natural Resources and Environment at the University of Michigan, as well as a certification in Project Management from San Francisco State University. As a former business owner, permaculture designer and educator, she has consulted local businesses and non-profits on sustainability practices, and also currently works with the City of El Cerrito as a watershed programs coordinator.

Mr. Oronto Douglas , African Scholar in Residence (email) Oronto Douglas 42 is a leading human rights attorney in Nigeria, and served as one of the lawyers on the defense team for the Ogoni leader Ken Saro Wiwa, who was executed by Nigeria's military rulers in 1995. Douglas co- founded Africa's foremost environmental movement, the Environmental Rights Action/Friends of the Earth Nigeria and has served in the board of several non profit organisations within and outside Nigeria. Though he has been arrested and tortured by successive military regimes, he continues to work for and speak out on issues of social justice in a corporate- military state. He was the first Niger Delta activist to be hosted by a serving American President – he presented the Niger-Delta struggle at the White House to President Bill Clinton. Douglas who advises the Nigerian Vice President on strategic issues of community and the environment, is a fellow of both the George Bell Institute (England) and the International Forum on Globalisation (USA). Widely traveled, Douglas has presented papers in over 200 international conferences and has visited over 50 countries to speak and present on human rights and the environment. He is the author of several works including the ground breaking WHERE VULTURES FEAST, Shell and human rights in the Niger Delta which he co-authored with his friend Ike Okonta.

Dale Wen, IFG China Fellow (email) 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.