Meet Some of Our Members

Meet some of our founding members. Every day, these women are using their influence to shape their communities and create positive change at home and abroad. Join The Mission List, and join them in creating positive change for the causes that interest you.

Caroline Urdaneta has a professional background in the art world once working as Assistant Curator of sculpture at Brookgreen Gardens. Today, Caroline is a designer of family craft projects which can be found all over the web from PBS Parents to Apartment Therapy and on her blog, Salsa Pie. Founded in 2009, Caroline created Salsa Pie to foster an innovative spirit in her own children. She writes about project ideas for the whole family and how to encourage creativity in kids.

Chrysula Winegar is a mother, work life flexibility advocate, social media obsessive and business woman. She has four young children who have taught her infinitely more than her almost twenty years of experience in blue chip corporations including Ernst & Young, Estee Lauder Companies and NatWest UK.

Chrysula has blogged with MomsRising.org, the Huffington Post, Corporate Voices for Working Families and others. Chrysula’s work will be featured in two books being published in 2012, Dream, Dare, Do: Remarkable Things Can Happen When You Dare to Dream and The 12 Powers of Motherhood. Passionate about connectedness and the power of social media to foster mobilization and thought leadership, Chrysula is also the Social Media Marketing Director for www.powerofmoms.com. She has presented the past two years at the United Nations Foundation/Mashable Digital Media Lounge for UN Week on Changing the World One Mother at a Time and is a regular speaker both nationally and abroad. Her personal blog on motherhood and mother activism is www.whenyouwakeupamother.com, and she also blogs at www.chrysulawinegar.com.

Leticia Barr founded Tech Savvy Mama to assist parents in navigating the ever-changing world of technology but has loved the doors that have opened as a result of relationships formed in the blogging and social media world.  A lifelong teacher, she’s passionate about raising awareness of important causes and using her influence to create social good whether advocating for American Cancer Society or returning to Haiti to teach women technology skills to improve their lives. Leticia feels her distinctions of Parents Magazine’s Editors’ Pick for Best Tech Blog, Babble’s Top 100 Mom Blogs, and named as one of the 50 Top Twitter Moms by Babble help advance her personal mission to spread social good!  She can almost always be found online unless she’s unplugged to spend time with her husband, 2 children, and their overly enthusiastic Yellow Labrador.

Jen Barth is founder of Big Small Brands, an award-winning small business and nonprofit branding & marketing firm founded in 2010. Jen brings to her client work more than 15 years of experience in corporate, agency, and nonprofit marketing & revenue development, and senior management roles at leading strategic branding, research, and interactive marketing firms. She is Oregon’s 2011 delegate, and a national 2012 mentor, for the Mom Congress on Education & Learning, and Founded Books Make it Better, a national grassroots early literacy movement. Jen was also recently named Executive Director of Schoolhouse Supplies, a leading Oregon education nonprofit organization operating a free store for teachers and students in Portland, Oregon.

Isabel Kallman is the founder and chief at Alpha Mom, an online parenting website. Isabel and Alpha Mom have been featured by leading national media such as USA Today, The Today Show, and Good Morning America. Forbes anointed Alpha Mom one of the Top 10 Mommy Hood Gurus and Parents Magazine named Isabel one of the ten “Power Moms.”

Isabel is currently on the Board of Directors of non-profit organizations Children’s Cancer and Blood Foundation and The Dance Theatre of Harlem.   She is also a mom ambassador for Healthy Child Healthy World.

Before launching Alpha Mom, Isabel spent a decade at a leading Wall Street firm working in international investment banking and equities where she worked on capital raisings for companies and advised large mutual funds and pension funds on their portfolios. Isabel lives in New York City with her husband and eight-year-old son.

Morgan O’Neill is currently a Ph.D. Candidate in MIT’s Program in Atmospheres, Oceans and Climate with the support of a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship. She studies the dynamics of hurricanes and Saturn’s south polar vortex. She is an MA-certified EMT-B and actively volunteers for an ambulance service and the Red Cross. Morgan O’Neill received her B.Sc. in Physics from the University of New Hampshire in 2009, where she did four years of applied research for the star sensor on NASA’s Interstellar Boundary Explorer satellite. She has worked in campaigns ranging from a city council race to a presidential election, and this social organizing experience (and personal experience with tornadoes!) has been an asset to recovers.org; a company she cofounded that makes tech tools for disaster relief.

Karen Wolrond is a writer and photographer, and creator of the award-winning site Chookooloonks. Karen is the author of The Beauty of Different, a book that will convince you that the thing that makes you different might just be your superpower. Having contributed to several major national publications, she is a sought-after keynote speaker, and has appeared television and other news media, including appearing on CNN.com, PBS and The Oprah Winfrey Show.

Katherine Stone is an award-winning, nationally-recognized peer advocate for women who suffer mental illnesses related to pregnancy & childbirth. She is the creator & editor of Postpartum Progress, and a survivor of postpartum OCD.

Katherine was named among the top ten most influential mom bloggers by Babble in 2011. In 2012, she was listed as one of the fiercest women in America as part of More magazine’s annual Fierce List. She was also chosen by WebMD as a 2008 Health Hero, recognizing individuals who overcome challenges and help transform healthcare. Additionally, she won the 2010 Bloganthropy Award, given for using social media to make a difference, and a 2011 Media Award from Mental Health America, given for outstanding coverage and portrayals of mental health issues during the previous year. She has shared her story openly and written about PPD as a contributing expert for BlogHer, the world’s top community for and guide to blogs by women, as well as for PBS’ This Emotional Life website, has appeared in videos on postpartum depression for Health.com and iVillage, and her supportive words have appeared on The Today Show’s website and ABC’s Million Moms Challenge.  Katherine speaks widely about postpartum depression, as well as blogging and using social media for good.

Katherine is also the founder of Postpartum Progress Inc., a national nonprofit focused on vastly improving the support and services for women with perinatal depression. Additionally, she is currently a parenting news writer for Babble’s Strollerderby.  And she’s got two fabulous kids. Prior to becoming a full-time advocate and stay-at-home mom of two, Stone spent seven years in marketing at The Coca-Cola Company, most recently as Director of Experiential Marketing.  She lives in the Atlanta area.  Follow her on Twitter at @postpartumprogr.

Cynthia Changyit Levin took her first advocacy action in 1997 with a hunger event at her church. Years later, after resigning from her position as an automotive engineer to raise her newborn daughter, she searched for a way she could better the world from home while caring for infants. She returned to advocacy and is now a dedicated anti-poverty activist with RESULTS, Bread for the World, ONE and Shot@Life. Her letters-to-the-editor have appeared in Chicago area newspapers as well as the Washington Post, the New York Times and the international Financial Times. Levin shares what she has learned about advocacy by leading volunteers in face-to-face lobby meetings with members of Congress, media advocacy, and letter-writing events.

Levin has served on the Board of Directors for RESULTS and currently works part-time for RESULTS Educational Fund as a fundraising coach for grassroots volunteers.

Stacey Ferguson aka “Justice Fergie” is a former Communications major, recovering technology attorney, wife to JoeFerg,  and mother of three children, ages 7, 5, and 3.  She began her blogging career in 2006, writing at the award-winningMamalaw.com about work-life balance, parenting, and pop culture.  In 2009 she launched FOODe, where she showcased her love of food and social media.  Today she inspires her readers to celebrate the everyday at Life IS the Party on JusticeFergie.com.

and has been featured in various media, including NPR, Fox, Southern Living Magazine, The Washington Post, The Loop21, Mashable, Sirius-XM Radio, Uptown Magazine, and all around the Web.

Justice Fergie also is an accomplished public speaker, presenting at conferences and events nationally and served as an Advisor for Media Bistro’s Summer 2011 Social Media Marketing Bootcamp.  She was a contributing writer for Babble’s MomCrunch column and is a vlogger on the 2011 OMMA award-winning SheKnows’ Mommalogues, among several other sites.

Last, but not least, she is Chief Curator of the Be Blogalicious online community for multicultural women bloggers and hosts the yearly Blogalicious Weekend conferences.