Whitney Brimfield '98 (she/her)

CEO at Spark Point Fundraising
Biology Major
Feminist and Gender Studies Minor

Whitney Brimfield owns Spark Point Fundraising, a boutique consulting firm that helps nonprofits match their fundraising strategy to their mission and impact through broad strategy development projects and through outsourced grant writing and foundation relations support. Started in 2014, Spark Point is a DC-based, but nationally reaching company that helps organizations raise tens of millions of dollars annually. Whitney has almost 25 years of experience in fundraising, business development, and social enterprise at the local, state, and national level.

She has worked on a variety of issues, including public health, education, health policy, youth development, the environment, and the arts, raising millions of dollars for numerous causes. Some highlights include the School-Based Health Alliance, the nation’s technical assistance and advocacy organization for school-based health care; MMG, a specialty advertising and marketing firm that creates campaigns to recruit patients for clinical trials; and the DC Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy.

She specializes in helping organizations move their fundraising efforts to a new level, whether that means adding a new revenue stream, improving systems, developing a winning grant proposal, or creating a completely new fundraising strategy. She is skilled at designing highly successful development strategies, coaching Boards of Directors and executive leadership to overcome fundraising fears, writing winning grant proposals, engaging corporate donors, and building individual donor programs. She brings a marketing eye to resource development, always thinking about how an organization’s communications and messaging must dovetail with its investor outreach.

She is an active volunteer and sought-after board member, currently serving as Treasurer for the Association of Fundraising Professionals DC Chapter (through December 2022). Her past board appointments include the Washington Improv Theater, the NARAL Pro-Choice Maryland Education Fund, and the Women’s Information Network. She holds a Master of Health Science from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and a Bachelors from Haverford College."

Barry Ticho '81 M.D., Ph.D. (he/him)

Chief Medical Officer for Stoke Therapeutics
Biology Major

As Chief Medical Office, Dr. Ticho is responsible for Stoke’s efforts to develop first-in-class RNA based disease-modifying medicines to treat severe genetic diseases. He is also co-founder and former CEO of Verve Therapeutics which is developing therapies to edit the genome and confer protection from cardiovascular disease.

Prior to joining Stoke, Barry was Head of R&D for Cardiovascular and Metabolic Diseases at Moderna Therapeutics. He was previously Head of External R&D Innovation for Cardiovascular and Metabolic Diseases at Pfizer. Prior to that he was Vice President of Clinical Development at Biogen where he led clinical development for neurology and cardiology programs.

Barry obtained his M.D. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Chicago and completed Pediatrics training at Northwestern University and a Cardiology fellowship at Children’s Hospital in Boston. He was on clinical staff at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital. Barry received his BA from Haverford College.

Karina Gomez '16 (she/her)

Community Engagement Manager; Policy & Advocacy Coordinator; Policy Analyst; Executive Assistant to the CEO at Center for Environmental Health; Coalition of Orange County Community Health Centers
Chemistry Major
Health Studies Minor

Karina aspires to live in a world where all people can thrive and live their best lives. With a chemistry and public health background, she brings expertise working with an array of partners, including communities, non-profit and community-based organizations, coalitions, and elected officials. At CEH, she serves as the Community Engagement Manager for the Illegal Toxic Threats Program to work for and alongside community partners to remove or reduce exposures to toxic chemicals. In her free time, you can find her attempting to re-create some of her mom’s traditional Mexican dishes, relaxing at the beach, reading a book, or taking on a new hiking challenge.

Ramien Pierre '92 (He/Him)

Director, Institute for Leadership Development & Research for The Executive Leadership Council
Political Science Major (at Bryn Mawr)

I grew up a shy and introverted only child with stranger-danger. I would never have guessed I would have had the life I've lived (so far). Nor would I have expected to have held the kinds of positions I've held: middle-school history teacher, assistant dean at a boarding school, assistant dean at Haverford College, dance company executive director, administrator for Education at The Kennedy Center, consultant, research project manager, NASA training manager, and now professional development and research director at a not-for-profit whose mission is to put Black corporate professionals into C-Suite jobs at Fortune 1000 companies.

How did I do it? A healthy sense of humor... and persistence.

I'm sure that's what my husband means when he says I'm "trying".