Board of Directors
Bill Haney - Chairman & Founder
Bill Haney is the Chairman of World Connect's Board of Directors. He is also a director, screenwriter, and producer. Prior to becoming a filmmaker, Bill was an inventor, entrepreneur and active environmentalist who spent 20 years founding and managing biotechnology and environmental technology companies. He serves or has served on a number of boards, including for Harvard University's Kennedy School, The President's Circle of the National Academy of Sciences, World Resources Institute, Huntington Theater and a number of other organizations. Bill lives in Boston with his wife Anne, a painter, and their three children.
Marcie Tyre Berkley
Marcie Tyre Berkley is a Scholar at Brandeis University’s Women’s Studies Research Center. Her research and writing focuses on feminist mothering and the cultural issues affecting mothers in America. From 1988-1999, Marcie taught Management of Technology at MIT’s Sloan School, where she was named the J. Richard Standish Career Development Professor of Management. Her teaching at Sloan focused on product and process innovation, and her research examined the introduction and use of new process technologies. Marcie also taught Production and Operations Management at Harvard Business School, where she earned the Doctor of Business Administration (1988) and the MBA (1982). At HBS she was named both a Dean’s Doctoral Fellow and a Baker Scholar. Marcie was a Henry Luce Fellow in 1984-5, teaching business school in Jakarta, Indonesia. Marcie earned her BA in economics from Wellesley College, and before that attended Germantown Friends School in Philadelphia.
Currently, Marcie is a Trustee of the Fenn School, where she chairs the diversity committee, and a member of the Board of Advisors of Polaris Project. She is the past founder and director of a grass-roots environmental organization, the Seaside Environmental Alliance. With her husband Forrest, Marcie is active in various environmental organizations including the Maine Coast Heritage Trust. Marcie resides in Concord with her husband Forrest, and their two sons Scott and Linc. The family loves to hike, cross-country ski, rock climb, and explore the outdoors.
George Biddle
George Biddle is the executive vice president of the International Rescue Committee (IRC), a global humanitarian organization that goes to crisis zones to rescue and rebuild lives. Internationally, the IRC delivers lifesaving aid, rebuilds shattered communities, restores livelihoods, and strengthens the capacity of local organizations and institutions. In the U.S., the IRC helps newly admitted refugees make a fresh start and become self-sufficient. Mr. Biddle has direct oversight of the IRC’s program departments and works closely with the IRC’s president in managing all aspects of the agency’s operations.
Previously, he was the vice president of the International Crisis Group, an organization that works through field-based analysis and high-level advocacy to prevent and resolve deadly conflict. He was also president of the Institute for Central American Studies, an organization he founded in 1989 to assist post-cold war Central America in its transition from violent conflict to peace and democracy.
He serves on several non-profit boards including World Connect's, is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and holds an AB degree from Harvard and an MA in International Relations from Johns Hopkins.
Benjamin Downs
Benjamin Downs is an entrepreneur who has focused his professional career on technology start-ups. He has founded or co-founded a number of companies that have gone public or been acquired. Ben has been responsible for the operations and finance of many of these companies. In addition to business Ben is an active volunteer both locally and internationally. Ben, his wife and four children lived in Kenya from 2002-2004 where they worked at a school and ran a micro-loan program. Ben and his family live west of Boston.
Robert Hecht
Currently a Managing Director of the Results for Development Institute, a Washington based non-profit specializing in policy analysis and advisory services in health, education, and governance. Dr Hecht manages a portfolio of projects related to AIDS, health insurance, innovative financing for development, immunization, and improving R&D and access to new health technologies in developing countries.
Before coming to Results for Development, Dr. Hecht spent four years as senior vice president for Policy and Advocacy at the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative. Prior to this, he had a 20 year tenure at the World Bank, where he occupied a number of senior posts including director of the Bank's central unit for Health, Nutrition, and Population, with oversight for global strategies, knowledge, technical services, and partnerships; chief of operations for the Human Development Network; principal economist in the Latin America region, and member of the core team and a lead author of the 1993 World Development Report, "Investing in Health."
Dr. Hecht served as a director of the Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) from 1998 to 2001, where he managed technical units based in South Africa, Cote d'Ivoire, and Thailand, and in Geneva. He led UNAIDS efforts to portray AIDS as a development and poverty issue impacting a wide range of social and economic goals, and published a number of papers advancing this view. Dr. Hecht is the author of more than 30 articles and other publications. He received his undergraduate degree from Yale and his doctorate from Cambridge University.
Maura McCarthy
Maura comes to World Connect with several years of operational experience in the venture-capital arena with business startups, but has a strong personal interest in public health. Maura serves as the Treasurer, coordinating legal, accounting, and other back-office activities for World Connect, as well as providing strategic help on fundraising and growth plans.
Araceli Ruano
Attorney Araceli Ruano is a community leader dedicated to education, arts and environmental issues. She serves as president of the LA County Arts Commission, a trustee of the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts), a council member of the Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theatre (REDCAT), a trustee of the Mexican American Bar Foundation and has served on numerous prestigious boards. Most recently, she was chief executive officer of ALAS, a foundation devoted to improving health and education for children in Latin America. Prior to her legal career at an international law firm, she was senior policy advisor to Al Gore's presidential campaign in 2000 and worked at the White House as assistant political director the Vice President and policy advisor to Tipper Gore.
Timothy Phillips
Timothy Phillips is the co-founder of the Project on Justice in Times of Transition, a pioneering and widely respected conflict resolution and reconciliation initiative that has made important contributions to the consolidation of peace and democracy around the world. Affiliated with Tufts University and Columbia University, the Project brings together leaders from a broad spectrum of countries to share firsthand experience in ending conflict, building civil society and fostering peaceful coexistence. Mr. Phillips is also co-chair of the Project and a visiting lecturer at Tufts University, where he teaches a course on the critical role of leadership in conflict transformation. He has published on transitional justice, conflict resolution and national reconciliation. Currently he is developing a documentary film called Talking with the Enemy, which will explore dramatic examples of U.S. and international leaders who have engaged with their adversaries to bring about a fundamental shift in relations, reduce international tensions and resolve seemingly intractable conflicts. Mr. Phillips serves of the board of directors, trustees and overseers of numerous international organizations and cultural and educational institutions, including the Club of Madrid, the Institute for Global Leadership at Tufts University, the University of the Middle East, the Foundation for a Civil Society, Coexistence International, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, and the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston. He is a frequent advisor to governments and nongovernmental and international organizations such as the Council of Europe and the United Nations on conflict resolution, civil society and democratization. Mr. Phillips was educated at Suffolk University and the London School of Economics.
