Team
Kath Delaney, Founder and Principal
Team:
Andre Carothers, Senior Strategist
Stuart Cowan, Ph.D., Senior Consultant, Sustainability Strategist
Erik Johnson, Executive Producer
Manny Hernandez, Social Media Consultant
Tarek Saleh, Communications Associate
Kath Delaney, Founder and Principal
Kath has 25 years experience managing nonprofit organizations, high-level special events and public relations campaigns. Ms. Delaney has and a national reputation as a market leader in strategic communications and social marketing. Her expertise includes big picture organizational strategy, fundraising, marketing and strategic communications. She is closely tied to social mission organizations and involved in vital campaigns for women’s leadership, environmental awareness and progressive social change.
Prior to launching Madera Group, Kath was Managing Director of the Global Security Institute (GSI), founded by the late Senator Alan Cranston. The mission of GSI is to promote security through the elimination of nuclear weapons. Long on the world stage, Kath has represented leaders to the press, and has produced high-level events for numerous heads of state, Nobel Laureates, elected officials, opinion leaders and other change agents.
In addition to her extensive NGO experience, Kath has worked in the political arena on seven presidential campaigns in communications, field operations, advance planning and fundraising. Kath also served as National Coordinator for the 20th Anniversary of Earth Day in 1990, and as a producer and consultant to Earth Day 1991, 1992 and 1995.
Kath brings to Madera Group an extensive network of social venture professionals, philanthropists and a wide range of media relationships. In forming Madera Group, she enlisted best-in-class professionals in event planning, fundraising, organizational development, Internet strategy, public relations, social media, web-based programming, video production, and related fields to form the agency’s client service teams.
Andre Carothers, Senior Communications and Organizational Strategist
Andre has more than 25 years of experience in nonprofit management, organizational and leadership development and strategic planning. He is the co-founder, former Executive Director and now a Senior Fellow at the Rockwood Leadership Institute, a national nonprofit training and consulting organization. He is also senior adviser to the Weinmann Charitable Trust and the New Place Fund. He received a Master’s in Environmental Science from the University of California, Berkeley.
Stuart Cowan, PH.D., Senior Consultant, Sustainability Strategist
Stuart Cowan, Ph.D., is a Partner of Autopoiesis LLC (www.apoiesis.com), which offers strategic planning, ecological design, and sustainable finance services with a particular emphasis on biocultural restoration, renewable energy, and carbon neutral community development. The firm applies complex living systems models and frameworks to enhance the resilience of communities and organizations. Autopoiesis LLC has worked with a wide range of financial institutions, municipalities, state and federal agencies, tribes, non-profits, utilities, companies, and religious orders. Stuart also serves as a Senior Consultant for Madera Group, where he assists sustainability clients with strategy and hybrid capital campaigns and other financing.
He served as a Transaction Manager and founding team member with Portland Family of Funds, an innovative community bank, and played a key role its successful effort to obtain multiple allocations of federal New Markets Tax Credits for the Portland Development Commission and external clients. These allocations have provided critical financial support for the development of numerous landmark projects in Portland. He also served on the development team for a variety of projects, including the Gerding Theater, which is the first Platinum LEED historic renovation and the first Platinum arts building. He played a key role in developing a triple bottom line investment strategy for Portland Family of Funds and its national affiliate, United Fund Advisors, which have together closed $2 billion in transactions, generating 16,000 jobs.
He served as Conservation Economy Research Director at Ecotrust (www.ecotrust.org), an innovative sustainability non-profit in Portland. He led the development of a comprehensive framework for a carbon neutral bioregion available at www.reliableprosperity.net. This framework provides a fractal integration of patterns of natural, social, and economic capital, and has been used internationally for strategic planning purposes. He also assisted in securing an allocation of New Markets Tax Credits for an Ecotrust affiliate for long-term ecological forestry management.
He is the co-author with Sim Van der Ryn of Ecological Design (Island Press, 1996/2007), a visionary overview of the integration of ecology and architecture, land-use planning, and product design that has been translated into three languages and was recently reissued in a special tenth anniversary issue. This book has become a standard reference on sustainable design.
He received his doctorate in complex systems from U.C. Berkeley, with a particular emphasis in ecological economics. He has taught ecological design, sustainability, and complex systems at a wide range of universities and institutes, including Portland State University, the sustainable MBA program at Bainbridge Graduate Institute, U.C. Berkeley, New College of California, and Naropa Institute. He serves on the Board of the Regenerative Design Institute.
Erik Johnson, Executive Producer
Erik Johnson is an award winning Multi-Media Producer of video, interactive technologies, website design, and integrated communications. He has been recognized by AV Multimedia Producer’s Magazine as one of the top 100 video producers in the US.
Erik has over 17 years experience in both client and agency environments. He has produced and managed multi-media projects for companies including: Adobe, Canon, Columbia Tristar, Nikon, Sony Computer Entertainment, Palm, Japan Airlines, Nvidia, Mandalay Resort Group, Mcann Erickson and Wired Magazine, and non profits such as the World Expo 2008 in Zaragoza Spain and the William J. Clinton Foundation.
Erik spent his early career as an environmental organizer and was a National Campaign Director for Greenpeace. He graduated from the University of Vermont with a degree in Environmental Science.
Manny Hernandez, Social Media Consultant
Manny Hernandez is a nonprofit leader, a recognized social media author and consultant and a passionate diabetes advocate. He has over 15 years of experience in team management and project management and an extensive background in Web Product Development, Content Development and Online Community Management.
Manny has spoken about Social Media and their intersection with Nonprofits and Health in events such as BlogWorld Expo, Health 2.0, ePatient Connections, Nonprofit Technology Conference and Yale Healthcare. He has been interviewed by the New York Times, NPR, Fox News Health, Diabetes Forecast, Univision, El Pais (Spain) and El Universal (Venezuela), among other media.
In 2007, he co-founded TuDiabetes.org and EsTuDiabetes.org. As President of the Diabetes Hands Foundation (DHF), he has been instrumental to the development of the DHF’s diabetes awareness programs and continued outreach to offer support and diabetes information to nearly 200,000 people touched by diabetes every month.
Tarek Saleh, Communications Associate
Tarek Saleh has been working in the non-profit sector for several years, both in California and in Central America. He began his work at the International Rescue Committee (IRC) and the American Association of Yemeni Scientists and Professionals (AAYSP). After placements with Food for the Hungry International and Nuestra Casa (in Costa Rica) and Honduras This Week (in Honduras), Tarek returned to the Bay Area to work for the International Forum on Globalization (IFG). Tarek graduated from UC Berkeley with degrees in Sociology and Spanish Literature.
