Meredith Lobel (Ashoka) mlobel@ashoka.org
Meredith brings to the Ashoka's Citizen Base Initiative team two years of experience as Research Officer in Ashoka's Executive Office, during which time she conducted investigations and analyses for CEO Bill Drayton. She also manages the income-generating selection process for Global Development Network's "Most Innovative Development Project" Award and was a member of Ashoka's Latin America fundraising team. Meredith's considerable experience in Latin America includes research on Central American agroexport models, interaction with local fair trade coffee organizations, and evaluations in Mexico and Venezuela. She graduated with a B.A. in Sociology and a concentration in Latin American Studies from Wesleyan University, where she developed Wesleyan's Socially Responsible Investing (SRI) principles and led two student organizations. Meredith is currently the Acting Director of Ashoka's Citizen Base Initiative (CBI), overseeing its implementation in eight countries and developing its expansion strategy.
Karin Hillhouse (Ashoka) khillhouse@ashoka.org
Karin is director, Changemakers Partnerships and editor of the Changemakers Library. Before starting at Ashoka in September 1997, working for Fellowship Support Services and Development and then for Changemakers, Karin was based in Denver, Colorado, and spent several years as a freelance writer, publishing articles, essays, and reflections on literature, art, and architecture, solar energy and historic preservation. She won a writing fellowship from the Rocky Mountain Women's Institute to work on a novel. Additionally, she co-taught "Architectural Theory and Practice" at the University of Colorado at Denver and apprenticed as a landscape architect.
As a consultant to Colorado Governor Richard Lamm, she was instrumental in the state's winning a national competition to launch the country's principal research center for the development of solar energy and other renewables. Employed as a senior policy analyst, she was part of the core start-up staff at the Solar Energy Research Institute (now NREL). Working for the Environmental Law Institute, Karin was principal investigator and co-author of a National Science Foundation-funded study of the legal and institutional barriers to solar energy development. She was editor of the Open Space Report, a monthly publication of the Rocky Mountain Center on the Environment.
Karin received her undergraduate degree in philosophy from Smith College, a master's degree in comparative literature from the University of Wisconsin at Madison, and a master's degree in urban planning and community development from the University of Colorado Denver.
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