Meet the Team
Staff
Lucy Martinez Sullivan
Executive Director
Lucy Martinez Sullivan is Director of 1,000 Days. Lucy began her career in the private sector. Her business experience spans the consumer products, retail and finance industries, where she held management positions for a number of Fortune 500 companies, including Merrill Lynch, L’Oréal, and Limited Brands.
Prior to joining 1,000 Days, she was Executive Director at CCS, a management consulting firm that provides counsel to non-profit institutions and civil society organizations on issues of strategy and philanthropy. Lucy’s work at CCS included leading a study for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation of the U.S. donor landscape for nutrition and serving as interim Chief Development Officer at the Wildlife Conservation Society. Prior to CCS, Lucy lived and worked in northern Mozambique as a volunteer for TechnoServe, an organization that helps provide business solutions to poverty; it was there where she realized her business skills could be used to advocate for people whose voices are not often heard.
Lucy holds a Masters of Business Administration from the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania, and a Bachelor of Arts with distinction from the University of Florida.
Jennifer Rigg
Director of Policy & Partnerships
Jennifer Rigg is Director of Policy & Partnerships at 1,000 Days. Previously, Jennifer worked at Save the Children on public policy and advocacy, where she led advocacy on nutrition and food security, livelihoods, foreign aid reform, early childhood development and education. As an InterAction Food Security Working Group Co-Chair at that time, she helped organize the 1,000 Days launch in 2010. Jennifer serves on the Roadmap to End Global Hunger Steering Group. She has also worked with CARE, United Way Worldwide, Agros International and the American Friends Service Committee. Earlier in her career, Jennifer served as an Americorps*VISTA with TeamTECH, an innovative public-private partnership to build the technology capacity of nonprofit organizations.
Jennifer holds a Master in Public Administration and graduate certificate in International Development Policy and Management from the University of Washington, certificate in Leadership and Nonprofit Management from the University of Washington/Learning Institute for Nonprofits, and a B.A. in International Studies/Political Science from Emory University.
Mannik Sakayan
Director of Advocacy & Outreach
Mannik Sakayan is Director of Advocacy and Outreach at 1,000 Days. She has extensive experience working on both foreign and domestic policy issues on and off Capitol Hill.
Prior to joining 1,000 Days, Mannik served as Deputy Director of Government Relations at Bread for the World, where she led advocacy to end global and domestic hunger and poverty. She has worked within a broad range of coalitions to build congressional support for U.S. investments in cost-effective and life-saving global food security and nutrition programs, aid effectiveness, and trade and economic growth policies. Earlier in her career, Mannik served as a senior foreign policy aide in the U.S. House of Representatives.
At 1,000 Days, she leads efforts to engage congressional champions of global nutrition to advance U.S. policy and funding for maternal and child nutrition during the critical 1,000 day window of opportunity.
Mannik holds a B.A. in Political Science/International Relations from the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA).
Yesenia Garcia
Communications Coordinator
Yesenia is the Communications Coordinator at 1,000 Days. Previously, she worked as a Program Associate for the Alliance to End Hunger, an organization that engages diverse institutions in building the public and political will to end hunger. Yesenia first entered the communications field during the 2004 presidential election cycle when she helped run a boutique Hispanic political-communications firm. From 2003-2004, she served as an Emerson National Hunger Fellow at the Children’s Alliance in Seattle, WA and the National Council of La Raza in Washington, DC.
Yesenia holds a Masters of Arts in Law and Diplomacy from the Fletcher School at Tufts University, and a Bachelor of Arts from Boston College. She serves on the board of Bread for the World.
Alley Brindza
Outreach and Operations Coordinator
Alley is the 1,000 Days Outreach and Operations Coordinator. Alley joins 1,000 Days from the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN) where she supported the Policy & Advocacy team. Previously she has worked with the Development and Communications team of HarvestPlus at the International Food Policy Research Institute and the Foundation for Tomorrow, a small education and development-focused NGO that works with orphaned and abandoned children based in Arusha, Tanzania. Alley began her career in the non-profit sector providing event management for the Levine Museum of the New South in Charlotte, NC.
Alley holds a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Mary Washington.
Leadership
Sam Worthington
President and CEO, InterAction
Sam Worthington has served as president & CEO of InterAction since 2006. Since his arrival, he has led InterAction to renewed prominence as a vibrant and vital force advocating globally on behalf of the world’s poor and vulnerable, protecting NGO and civil society space, and promoting partnership with multiple actors as a means of addressing poverty, environmental impact and food security, human rights and more.
Prior to joining InterAction, Mr. Worthington was CEO of Plan USA, a position he held from 1994 until he joined InterAction. He also sat on Plan’s global executive management team and chaired Plan’s national CEO team. Plan has programs in 62 countries and is focused on child development.
Mr. Worthington is a Member of the Council on Foreign Relations, serves on USAID’s Advisory Committee for Voluntary Foreign Assistance (ACVFA) and the Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC) at the United Nations. Additionally, he sits on the boards of the U.S. Global Leadership Campaign, the Alliance to End Hunger, and is an International Trustee of Religions for Peace. Previous leadership roles include chairing the global NGO Impact Initiative on behalf of the office of the UN Special Envoy for Tsunami Recovery (President Clinton) and co-founding the Hope for African Children Initiative (HACI), a partnership of NGOs working to address the impact of AIDS on children.
Lindsay Coates
Executive Vice President, InterAction
Lindsay Coates serves as Executive Vice President for InterAction and heads the Policy and Communications Team, where she works to realize the goals of InterAction and the community nongovernmental organizations it represents. From 2004-2008, Lindsay was the COO at Population Action International, a research and advocacy institute. Prior to her work in the NGO world, Lindsay practiced civil rights law in various capacities, among them Chief of Staff for the U.S. Department of Education, Office for Civil Rights and Equal Employment Opportunity Attorney and Officer at the National Gallery of Art.
Lindsay’s volunteer service has included the Obama administration’s Task Force on Global Poverty—run by the Office of Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships—and the Public Policy Committee of the Independent Sector. She has been a Trustee for her alma mater the University of the South at Sewanee and a Board Member for the Mississippi Volunteer Lawyers Project, which provides legal services to low income citizens.
During the 2008-2009 academic year, Lindsay was a non-resident Fellow of Seminar XXI of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Center for International Studies. She completed the Graduate Executive Leadership Development Program of Columbia University, holds a J.D. from the University of Mississippi School of Law, with Honors, and a B.A. (magna cum laude) in Political Science (focus on International Relations) from Sewanee. As an undergraduate, she did her junior year abroad at the London School of Economics.
Michael Madnick
Board Member, Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN)
Michael Madnick joined GAIN in March 2010 as Deputy Executive Director. In this role, he works with GAIN’s Executive Director and the Leadership team to define and implement the foundation’s strategic goals.
Michael comes to GAIN from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation where he served as Deputy Director, Global Health Policy & Advocacy. In this capacity, he oversaw several teams including Advocacy, Government Relations, Multilateral Relations, Industry Relations, International Financial Partnerships and Emerging Donors.
From 2000 to 2007 he served as Vice President for Partnership and later as Senior Vice President of the United Nations Foundation (UNF), where he institutionalized an organization-wide partnership strategy. This strategy transitioned UNF from a private foundation like model towards a cross-sector partnership facility able to work on a far larger scale of impact. He also led the UNF-Gates relationship for several years, which resulted in numerous collaborations. Michael serves on various boards and advocacy/partnership related sub-committees. He holds a Juris Doctor from Pace University School of Law and a Bachelor of Arts in Political Sciences from the State University of New York – Albany.
