Martha Choe
Chief Administrative Officer

Martha Choe oversees the foundation's Information Technology, Human Resources, Security, and Site Operations teams. Choe joined the foundation in 2004 as the director of the Global Libraries initiative in the foundation's Global Development Program.

Before joining the foundation, Choe served as the director of the Washington State Department of Community, Trade and Economic Development and led the state's bid for the Boeing 787 final assembly production work. She also served two four-year terms on the Seattle City Council and chaired the transportation and finance committees.

Prior to public service, Choe was a vice president at the Bank of California for two Washington state branches. She also taught high school in Eugene, Ore. Choe has a bachelor's degree in speech and ethnic studies from the University of Washington and received her master's in business administration from Seattle University. She has long been active in civic and Asian American organizations and serves on several boards.

Denise Barndt
Director, Security

As director of security, Denise Barndt is responsible for the management of protective services for the foundation's employees, contractors, and guests while at foundation offices, events, and convenings, as well as security for foundation assets and offices.

Prior to joining the foundation, Barndt worked with Point B Solutions focusing on crisis management services and project management. Prior to her experience at Point B, she served as director of security at Vulcan Inc. and was a director in the risk management practice at PricewaterhouseCoopers for crisis management and business continuity. Barndt also served as the chief of emergency operations for the Florida Division of Emergency Management. In this position, she led the governor's Emergency Operations for Disaster Response and Recovery for a wide range of natural and human-induced crisis.

Barndt graduated from University of Pittsburgh with a Bachelor of Arts degree in political science and Appalachian studies. She holds numerous crisis management and security certifications and has received various emergency management honors.

Connie Collingsworth
General Counsel and Secretary

Connie Collingsworth joined the foundation as general counsel in 2002. Prior, she was a partner at the law firm Preston Gates & Ellis, LLP and was co-chair of Social Venture Partners, a Seattle-based nonprofit organization that focuses on social and environmental issues.

Collingsworth also has served as co-founder, past president and board member for the French American School of Puget Sound. She is currently an advisory board member of Attenex Corporation. She also is a member of the International Program Advisory Committee for Independent Sector and sits on the selection committee for the William H. Gates Public Service Law Scholarship Program.

Collingsworth received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Andrews University, a Juris Doctorate from the University of Nebraska, and a Master of Laws degree in international business legal studies from the University of Exeter, England.

David Fennell
Chief Information Officer

David Fennell joined the foundation as chief information officer in 2006. Prior to the foundation, Fennell worked for The Boeing Company as vice president of Boeing information technology and as chief information officer for Boeing commercial airplanes. Fennell's participation at Boeing spanned assignments in technology, operations, applications systems development, and general management.

Fennell graduated summa cum laude in economics from the University of Maryland and received a Master of Business Administration degree from the University of Washington. He is also a trustee of the Seattle Art Museum and serves as a member of the museum's executive committee.

Alexander S. Friedman
Chief Financial Officer

Alexander S. Friedman is chief financial officer for the foundation. Friedman oversees finance, financial planning and analysis, strategy, impact planning and improvement, and a number of special initiatives.

Before joining the foundation in 2007, Friedman worked as an investment banker with Lazard, the international investment bank. Prior, he led corporate development at Medarex, a publicly held biotechnology company. He also served as a White House fellow and as an assistant to the secretary of defense for special projects in the Clinton Administration.

Friedman holds a Juris Doctorate from Columbia Law School, a Master of Business Administration degree from Columbia Business School, and a Bachelor of Arts degree from Princeton University. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, serves on the Finance Committee of the Seattle Art Museum's board of directors, and is a member on the board of several other national nonprofit organizations.

Geoffrey Lamb
Managing Director, Public Policy

Geoffrey Lamb is managing director of public policy for the foundation. In this position, Lamb serves as the senior advisor on international policy development and leads a team that partners with public policy colleagues in each of the foundation's three program areas—Global Health, Global Development, and United States—to help build strategic relationships that are critical to the foundation's work. Prior to becoming managing director of public policy, Lamb was a senior fellow for the foundation's Global Development Program. Before joining the foundation, he held several senior development positions at the World Bank, most recently vice president of Concessional Finance and Global Partnerships. An Irish citizen, Lamb was born in South Africa and educated in South Africa and the United Kingdom, where he was a fellow and deputy director of the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex.

Heidi Sinclair
Chief Communications Officer

As chief communications officer, Heidi Sinclair is responsible for protecting and extending the foundation's reputation, increasing awareness of foundation issues, and providing oversight of our external and internal communications functions.

Prior to joining the foundation, Sinclair served as president and CEO for Europe, Africa, and the Middle East for the global public relations firm Burson-Marsteller. At Burson-Marsteller, she led the company into the technology sector and was a key figure in building the practice. Previously, Sinclair also served as a managing director for the talent and literacy agency International Creative Management.

Sinclair graduated from Stanford University with a Bachelor of Arts degree in English. She is currently a trustee for the Computer History Museum and a member of the Young President's Organization, the International Women's Forum, and the European Professional Women's Network. Sinclair has received various communications and marketing honors. She is a Seattle native who most recently lived in Madrid, Spain with her husband and three children.

Fay Twersky
Director, Impact Planning and Improvement

Fay Twersky is director of Impact Planning and Improvement. Prior to joining the foundation, Twersky was the founding principal of BTW Consultants-informing change, a firm in Berkeley, Calif. that consults to the nonprofit and philanthropic sector.
 
Before founding BTW Consultants in 1998, Twersky was a senior research consultant for nonprofits, philanthropic organizations, and the public sector for 10 years, first with the Center for Applied Local Research, and then with Harder + Company Community Research, located in San Francisco, Calif.

Twersky received a Master's degree in city planning from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a Bachelor’s degree in Middle Eastern studies and rhetoric from the University of California at Berkeley. In 1996, she co-edited the book New Social Entrepreneurs: The Success, Challenge and Lessons of Non-Profit Enterprise Creation and has written other monographs and papers on applied evaluation and performance measurement.