US Staff
Kjerstin Erickson - Executive Director
Kjerstin Erickson is the founder and Executive Director of FORGE. She founded FORGE in 2003, when she was a 20 year-old junior studying Public Policy at Stanford University. Now 25, Kjerstin continues to manage FORGE's operations, growth and development. She has developed partnerships with the UN refugee agency and has worked with local governments in Zambia and Botswana to bring FORGE's work to serve 60,000 refugees in four different refugee camps in Southern Africa. Prior to starting FORGE, Kjerstin conducted research on women grantees in HIV/AIDS for the National Institutes of Health, worked in local community development as the Chair of the Sonoma Youth Volunteer Corps, and coordinated several service programs for underprivileged youth. She has been named a Haas Public Service Fellow at Stanford, a "Top 10 College Woman" by Glamour Magazine, and a "Person You Should Know" by CNN.
Annelisa Pedersen - Development Director
Annelisa Pedersen became a part of FORGE in 2006 when she co-founded Kunachi, School and Farm, a preschool and farming initiative in a community of vulnerable refugees in the Meheba Refugee Settlement. After working as Team Coordinator for the Meheba Team in 2007, Annelisa now works as FORGE's Development Director. In 2005 Annelisa co-directed Refugee Youth Summer Enrichment (RYSE), a low-cost summer program for recently arrived refugee and immigrant youth living in the greater Boston area. Following college, she also worked as the Special Assistant to the Co-Directors at Roxbury Preparatory Charter School in Boston. Annelisa graduated magna cum laude with a degree in Music & English from Harvard University in June 2006.
Abby Speight - Programming Director
Abby Speight began working with FORGE in 2006 as a Project Facilitator in Mwange Refugee Camp. She partnered with the community to found Journal Mwange, a monthly newspaper written by a refugee staff and about the refugee community. Upon her return to the states, Abby took on the role of one of FORGE's Northern California Hub Coordinators, overseeing the recruitment and training of the 2007 Mwange Project Facilitator team. In the 2007-2008 school year she has been a FORGE Program Associate, working mainly to create a manual to facilitate the refugee-led project planning and implementation process. Before working with FORGE, Abby served as first the Director of International Health and then the President of the Children's Public Health Initiative at Stanford, organizing events that raised funds and awareness for Public Health Issues that affect young people around the world. Abby graduated from Stanford University in 2008 with a Bachelor's degree in Psychology.
Penelope Pang - International Intern
Penelope Pang is from Hong Kong and has joined FORGE recently as a visiting scholar of UC-Berkeley under the W.T. Chan Fellowships Programme. Her life goal is to help alleviate poverty problems in the world, and she is most concerned with the problems in de-colonised Africa. In 2006-07, she joined Oxfam (in Hong Kong) as a Youth Campaign Partner studying Corporate Social Responsibility and campaigning for labor welfare in developing countries. She graduated from Lingnan University in June 2008 with a Bachelor’s degree in English and History and will be returning to Hong Kong to continue her Masters of Philosophy at the University of Hong Kong, studying the history of the British Empire.
Sharaf Rizvi - Web-Based Marketing Associate
Sharaf Rizvi graduated from the University of California, Berkeley with a B.S. in Business Administration and Minor in Education. While at Berkeley, he was a mentor and board member for Project S.M.I.L.E., the largest mentoring program on campus, and a member of Delta Sigma Pi. He also participated in numerous case competitions, was a member of the Haas External Case Competition Team, and was one of four students selected to participate in the prestigious McCombs Internation Business Challenge in Austin, Texas. Sharaf's past professional experience includes work with Deloitte Financial Advisory Services' Valuation group, FMV Opinions, Sysorex Consulting, strategic consucting for Dreyer's Grand Ice Cream and marketing and PR for the Golden State Warriors.