Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation - President and CEO

Philip Allsopp is a former CEO of both Axios Data Analysis Systems and Apogee Informatics Corporation. He also helped to found a not-for-profit architecture and public health research firm, Center Research, and has been a vice president at A.T. Kearney, where he headed both the firm’s health care and systems dynamics work.

Among Mr. Allsopp’s areas of special expertise is analyzing the performance of built environments and their impact on human activities. Mr. Allsopp studied architecture at Kingston University, London, and health services planning and design at Columbia University. 

The Stanley Foundation - President

Vladimir Sambaiew was most recently the minister counselor for economic affairs at the U.S. Embassy in Mexico, Mr. Sambaiew joined the foundation following a 30-year State Department career where he was responsible for all aspects of economic and trade relations between the U.S. and Mexico; he served in similar positions in Paris and Ottawa.  Mr. Sambaiew directed the State Department’s Office of Bilateral Trade during the time of China’s entry into the WTO.  In the mid-90s, Mr. Sambaiew was counselor for environment, science and technology at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow where he was in-country lead on the U.S./Russia program to control “loose” Russian nuclear materials.  Mr. Sambaiew was a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University where he explored post-Cold War issues, and taught globalization while a diplomat-in-residence at the University of Oklahoma.  He holds a B.A. from Princeton University and is fluent in four foreign languages:  Russian, Spanish, French, and Japanese. 

Urban Gateways: Center for Arts Education - Executive Director

Julie Simpson founded, and for six years directed, Columbia College’s Office of Community Arts Partnership. Her work there included developing and managing partnerships to support arts programming linking Columbia College faculty and students with youth in Chicago’s neighborhoods and public schools. Ms. Simpson also established the country’s first arts in youth and community development graduate program and, in an earlier role as executive director of The Dance Center of Columbia College, co-founded the DanceAfrica Chicago festival. Earlier in her career, Ms. Simpson danced professionally and taught dance at the university level in New York City.

Natural Resources Defense Council - Senior Director Midwest Regional Office

Henry Henderson came to NRDC from Policy Solutions, Ltd., an environmental and economic policy consulting firm he co-founded. He has also taught environmental law and policy at the University of Chicago.  As Chicago’s first commissioner of the environment, Mr. Henderson created and built a department responsible for all of the City’s environmental enforcement, energy policy, and natural resource rehabilitation work. In that role, Mr. Henderson led the City’s groundbreaking Brownfields Initiative, developed the Chicago Regional Clean Air Initiative, and established the Chicago Environmental Fund. Earlier in his career Mr. Henderson was an assistant Illinois attorney general. He has also been a senior fellow at UIC’s Great Cities Institute and has practiced antitrust, insurance, and commercial law.

Illinois Fresh Taste Initiative - Director

Karen Lehman is currently a senior associate at Cambridge Leadership Associates and an advisor to Communitas Charitable Trust.  Ms. Lehman will bring 25 years’ experience studying and influencing food systems in her native Minnesota to her new role. 

Ms. Lehman has been director of both the Food System and Regional Economy programs at The Minnesota Project.  She founded and was co-director of the Youth Farm and Market Project in Minnesota and was director of that state’s Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy’s Food and Agriculture Program. 

Ms. Lehman has held an endowed chair in agricultural systems at the University of Minnesota, has worked as a Ford Foundation program officer in Mexico, and attended Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government as a Bush Foundation Leadership fellow.  She has worked with Northwestern University’s Asset-Based Community Development Institute in Minnesota and in Mexico.

Lumpkin Family Foundation - Program Officer, Organization and Leadership Development

Annie Hernandez is currently vice president of Leadership Ventures, a management support organization located in Indianapolis.  She was previously public information officer and director of leadership development for Indiana's then-newly-created Office of Rural Affairs, and has also been executive director of Fiesta Indianapolis, Inc., and program manager for The Community Leadership Association.  Ms. Hernandez was the inaugural recipient of the national Emerging Capacity-Builder Award from the Alliance for Nonprofit Management, and was Indiana's 2006 delegate to the U.S. Nonprofit Summit in Washington, D.C.

Ms. Hernandez earned a master's degree in agricultural, environmental communication and education at the University of Illinois, and a bachelor's degree in agricultural development from Texas A&M University.